English Title: The Last Runway
Original Title: Leal, solo hay una forma de vivir
Country: Paraguay
Language: Spanish
Year: 2018
Rating: 5.5/10
The Last Runway was the first Paraguayan movie on Netflix, and so far it’s the only one. I don’t know if that’s because there aren’t too many Paraguayan movies available or because Netflix gave up after this one. Either option seems fairly possible. That’s not to say The Last Runway is awful. It’s not, but it’s also nothing really worth going out of your for. Unless you’re really into watching drug dealers get killed.
The most interesting aspect of the movie is the part they almost completely skip over. One of the first scenes shows us a team from their national anti-drug agency (SENAD) getting played by a group of drug dealers. When they show up the cartel has snacks and drinks set up for them and has called the media to embarrass them. This scenario seems interesting to me. How did they know they’d be coming? Did the media know it was going to be a clusterfuck? Who chose the snacks? Unfortunately, we never get to the bottom of any of that.
What we do get is what you’d expect from any number of American police procedurals. One good cop comes in, cleans house, hires more good cops, then those good cops go out and kill the drug dealers. There’s only one woman on the team and of course, the guys don’t like her at first but begrudgingly accept her once she proves useful. It’s all very predictable, there’s a bit of clumsy romance, and some fun action but nothing that stands out.
If watching cops take out drug dealers is your thing, there’s nothing too wrong with this movie, but that’s not my bag. I think there could have been something much more interesting if this movie had been made from a more uniquely Paraguayan instead of just aping all of the similar American/European movies that came before it.
Subs & Dubs: It’s on Netflix so subtitles are available in English or probably whatever your local language is. It’s not important enough to get the English dub treatment, but honestly this thing is so predictable that even if you don’t speak Spanish you could watch it without subtitles and probably figure most of it out.
Trailer: Speaking of…Netflix cares so little about this one they couldn’t even be bothered to put out subtitled trailer. Here it is in Spanish.
Other Than English 