THE LAST REPUBLICAN (2024)
Featuring Adam Kinzinger, Maura Gillespie, Sofia Kinzinger, Austin Weatherford and Steve Pink.
Directed by Steve Pink.
Distributed by Media Courthouse Documentary Collective. 88 minutes. Not Rated.
Screened at the 2024 Philadelphia Film Festival.
Former representative Adam Kinzinger is an old-school fiscal Republican, the type of tax-and-spend, small-government, center-right conservative who have become extinct (quite literally, in Kinzinger’s case) in the Donald Trump era of the Republican Party. I’m not going to lie, I have no doubt that Kinzinger and I would have a great many policy disagreements – and I think he way overestimates the popularity of Ronald Reagan – however, he is the type of conservative who you can have a conversation with and with whom you can debate your beliefs in good faith.
Yet Kinzinger, and his ultra-conservative colleague Liz Cheney, were both essentially expelled from the Republican Party after agreeing to take part in the January 6th investigation in the house. Kinzinger was both censured by the party at large and also primaried so that he lost his house seat of 12 years.
Now, as a young man of 46, he is having to completely reinvent himself. He still believes in conservatism and hopes to be around if there is a reset in the Republican Party to more traditional values, although he recognizes that at this moment in history that is looking rather unlikely.
Because he stood up to Donald Trump and acknowledged that what happened at the Capital Building that day was a crime, he has lost his job, lost his career, lost his idealism, lost his friends, and needed to take on full-time security to protect his young family.
All of this because he took a principled stand and put country before party.
It’s a fascinating and slightly tragic story in this era of MAGA.
The Last Republican is directed, interestingly enough, by Steve Pink, a legit comedy filmmaker (Gross Pointe Blank, High Fidelity, and Kinsinger’s favorite Hot Tub Time Machine). Pink, who is a long-time friend of John Cusack, is also a devout progressive, and he teases Kinzinger about their political differences throughout. (Pink is heard asking questions throughout the film, but only appears on camera briefly at the end.)
It's actually not all that shocking that Pink would be interested in something like this. Fellow comic filmmakers Jay Roach (the Austin Powers and Meet the Fockers movies) and Adam McKay (Anchorman and Step Brothers) have both done some of their finest work on film when they decided to explore their political convictions on film – Roach with Game Change and Bombshell and McKay with The Big Short and Don’t Look Up.
Pink’s involvement in the project gives The Last Republican a sprightly, humorous vibe – particularly in the early phases of the movie. As the story becomes increasingly serious, the film also takes on a more solemn turn.
Early on, Kinzinger tells a story of when he was a young man and through complete happenstance, he happened to be on the scene when another man attempted to murder his girlfriend. In a matter of seconds, Kinzinger had to weigh his options – to run away, to not get involved, or to insert himself in the situation, even though the other man was larger than him and brandishing a knife. Even though even he can’t completely explain why he did so, he went to help the woman at great physical peril to his own safety.
In a strange way, that is what he did for the country.
You may not agree with all of Adam Kinzinger’s opinions and beliefs, but The Last Republican reminds us how lucky we are that there are people like him out there.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 21, 2024.
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