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Recently, TV dramas and movies about fraud have become increasingly popular.

From "All or Nothing" to "The Grass and Trees", from "Pigsy" to "Crazy 3", different countries and different genres seem to be focusing on this topic.

Is it the end?

No.

Recently, a scam movie that you have never seen before was released.

Rotten Tomatoes rating is 99%.

The protagonist of the film is a 93-year-old "magic grandma":

The End of the Road

Thelma

01

Selma (June Squibb) is 93 years old. According to common sense, if there is nothing going on in the next few years, she will probably spend her later years in boredom like other old people.

Until one day, she received a call from an unknown number.

On the other end of the phone, someone said anxiously:

Grandma, I hit someone and I need $10,000 to settle.

Something happened to your grandson?

As viewers, we all know that this is aScam calls, which is specially designed for the elderly.

And Selma had her doubts.

However, due to the "urgency of the situation", she was unable to get through to her grandson on the phone, so she had to quickly gather together $10,000, and then rushed to the post office to remit the money.

But what is the result?

She soon realized she had been deceived.

what to do?

When a man in his nineties encounters something like this, generally speaking, he can only accept it.

But Selma is no ordinary person.

That day, she opened the newspaper and saw an article on the front page about Tom Cruise personally filming Mission Impossible at an advanced age. It said:

mission Impossible

Superstar Tom Cruise shows the audience that he is still strong

So I made up my mind.

She also wants to complete a Mission Impossible and show others that she can still do it.

From then on, a "spy operation" officially began.

How to do it?

The first step is to be fully armed.

Clothes, water cups, shoulder bags, hearing aids, cash, smart watches... and classic sunglasses are not to be missed.

The second step is to obtain the target.

Professional agents are good at finding clues accurately through searching, and they can find the remittance address in the post office trash can and directly lock on to the target.

The third step is to form a team.

At this point, difficulties finally arise:

Can't shake teammates.

Stroke, heart disease, scurvy, moving... everyone who could be contacted had their own "situations", and what was even more "hellish" was that some of them had already died.

Fortunately, the knight grandfather who was rehearsing a program in a nursing home came online.

However, what grandma is interested in right now is not grandpa himself, but:

His three-wheeled electric scooter.

The plan to chase the fraudster was opposed by the car owner's grandfather, so a wonderful chase took place in the nursing home.

Grandma rode her electric three-wheeler and started racing along the corridor.

Grandpa also followed closely behind on his electric scooter.

This tense "racing" scene even involves drifting.

In the end, the two cars collided and the brave one won. In addition to the car, the old lady also gained a teammate.

The fourth step is counter-reconnaissance.

After successfully forming a team, they successfully escaped the pursuit of their family members.

Step 5: Equip weapons.

The way is to go to an old friend's house and steal a gun.

Divide the work, grandpa attracts attention and grandma sneaks into the bedroom.

Different from Tom Cruise's tough guy aesthetics and wall-climbing, grandma's adventure is more down-to-earth, like a slow game.

The challenge is not to cross a hail of bullets, but to climb stairs with the help of handrails and roll onto a mattress.

Finally, execute the task.

After following the scammer to the final battle site.

The grandparents work as a duo, one attacks and the other responds, using hearing aids instead of walkie-talkies to convey commands.

Not to mention, the tension is at its maximum, and it feels like an agent going deep into the scene.

Pass through the ambushed light bulbs in the lighting store and use the rolling action to cross the obstacles again.

It has all the elements and scenes that should be in an action scene.

At the very end, the criminal boss showed up.

Unexpectedly, he was also an old man.

it is justAn old man who was abandoned by the times and chose to defraud others.

Seeing that the other party does not accept a peaceful solution, they resort to violence.

The camera turns and the grandmother displays her special agent skills: she pretends to be weak and surrenders, but actually makes a fatal attack from behind.

It was not until a gun was pressed against his back and his oxygen tube was grabbed that the fraudster realized it.

I messed with the wrong person.

finally.

With an explosion, the old lady completed the task.

It can be said.

The mixture of the 90-year-old man's anti-fraud mission and spy warfare elements makes this road trip full of laughter but also full of warmth.

And this is the main reason why this movie is so well received.

02

But the question is, is this really a comedy?

Perhaps beneath the appearance of comedy, its underlying tone will move many people:

The difficult question of how the elderly can survive.

Why did the old lady insist on completing the task of recovering the defrauded money alone?

In fact, it is the unwillingness to admit one's own uselessness.

A detail.

The day before, the grandmother heard the conversation between her children in the room. When her son said, "This wouldn't have happened a year ago. She wasn't so independent," the grandmother quickly took off her hearing aid.

Were the children saying bad things about her?

no.

Precisely because this is the reality she experienced.

A reality she was unwilling to acknowledge.

So in the film, talking, finding the way, jumping over a bed, climbing stairs, using the Internet, and even trying to walk are all adventures.

There are a lot of "jokes" about "failures" due to age issues.

For example, if you get lost during a mission, your electric scooter may be accidentally hit because you forget to pull the brakes.

Or one moment he says he can complete the task by himself, but then he trips and can't get up again.

Even when he wanted his money back, he had to call his grandson and complete the transfer with trembling hands through remote guidance.

This kind of "comedic effect" makes people feel sympathetic.

So what's behind the comedy?

In fact, it is what her partner, the black grandfather said:

We are all old

Becoming a burden to the one you love

thenIn order not to become a burden, most elderly people pretend to be strong and live on.

They choose to live alone or in a nursing home.

The purpose is to prove that I am still capable while I still have breath left.

In the film, the two of them visited a friend who lived alone.

Obviously, she had Alzheimer's disease. After saying a sentence, she would repeat it after a while as if they were meeting for the first time.

She loves cleanliness, but now her home is a mess.

Even if I saw a cockroach, I didn't have the ability to kill it.

The most outrageous thing was that an old lady was stealing a gun upstairs and accidentally fired the gun, shooting through the floor.

But what was this friend’s reaction?

no response.

Her perception was obviously quite dulled.

This.

In fact, it is the current situation that a person has to accept when he gets older.

But is it enough to just pretend to be strong?

Not really.

One of the deaths mentioned in the film was that the black grandfather's wife accidentally fell and never got up again.

The body was discovered several hours later.

This incident may be painful for the old man himself, but it also hurts the survivors, so much so that the black grandfather still blames himself many years later:

I couldn't hear her fall.

So what is the film ultimately about?

In fact, this is the true face of life for the elderly: death is approaching, relatives and friends pass away, and they are gradually abandoned by the new online world.

And there was nothing they could do.

This is the biggest concern of this movie.

03

Of course, in terms of film quality, "The Last Days" is not actually that well made.

The most obvious BUG.

Whether it is the family or the police, they just exist like background boards in this film. Everyone seems to be in a state of panic, but no one can find grandma.

The watch, the cell phone, and all the clues left behind have become decorations.

But why is there such a bug?

To put it bluntly, there is only one purpose: to create a space for the old lady to complete the task alone.

This is exactly what makes the film so moving:

We see a soul that has not given up on itself.

At the end of the film, the director showed a real video of her grandmother reciting the lines of the old lady in the movie:

Look at those trees, they have so many knots.

They should have fallen

But they are still alive, how tenacious, how incredible

What's the meaning?

What it means is that a person does not become useless when he gets old. There are always some people who are still willing to fight to control their own lives.

The same is true for the leading actors of this film.

June Squibb, perhaps few people know her name, but she actually started performing at the age of 19. Over the past few decades, she has participated in dozens of films of all sizes, such as "Scent of a Woman" and "The Age of Innocence", and has dubbed many films such as "Inside Out 2" and "Soul", but she has never been able to be the protagonist.

As we get older, is it time to give up?

No.

Ten years ago, at the age of 84, she was finally nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in "Nebraska".

This year, she got her wish and played the leading role in a rare movie in her life, "The Last Granny". She even performed all the action scenes herself without a stunt double.

It turns out.

She became the biggest highlight of this film.

So what to say?

Just like the definition of car by old lady Asir in "The Last Airbender": in the moment of getting old, the car becomes synonymous with restoring life.

You lurch toward it, you wade your clumsy body into the driver's seat, you relax, and lo and behold! You're normal again! You whiz off, free and almost young again, like everyone else.

The so-called "end of the road" does not mean that there is no way to go.

As long as you have a heart that desires freedom.

Even if you wear hearing aids and live in a nursing home, you can still control your life.

Just like the end of the movie.

Faced with the cockroaches that her friend was helpless against, Grandma Selma also gave her own answer, which was:

Kill him with a newspaper featuring Tom Cruise.

Regardless of whether it is an extravagant wishful thinking that man can conquer nature.

But such people.

It truly deserves all our praise.

This also reminded Sir of the Chinese uncles and aunts doing morning exercises in the Chinese episode of "Moonlight Night" which became popular on the Internet.

Each of them is extremely energetic and possesses unique skills.

The old man crawled like a turtle and a snake, and the aunt hung upside down on the parallel bars with all four limbs.

Don’t they have troubles in life?

Of course.

But at this moment, they are living so passionately on the parallel bars, in pavilions, and on square dance venues.

So what if it's just for self-entertainment?

At least.

They are living their own wonderful lives in the present moment.

The pictures in this article are from the Internet