Is Justin Lin genuinely curious about other cultures? It’s a question that came to me early on while watching Last Days, his latest feature. Based on Alex Perry’s sparkling profile (for Outside magazine) on American missionary Jon Allen Chau, who attempted to make contact with the North Sentinelese tribe in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands to convert them to Christianity, Lin’s film advertises its lack of rigour by scoring a montage shot in Port Blair (the capital of the archipelago) to a Rajasthani folk song.
Being among the handful of Indians in the screening being held in Park City (Utah), I laughed out loud at this jarring and half-hearted choice. The lack of cultural resonance between the visual and the music didn’t seem to bother viewers around me. Probably because, as far as they were concerned, this was a film set in India scored to Indian folk music. Cultural specificity be damned. It’s also the kind of low-effort film, where an Indian restaurant is called Khaana Peena (Food & Drink).
Lin’s film is riddled with bad choices: inspectors in Andaman & Nicobar Islands speak in English, even while talking to local fishermen. It sounds even more amusing when they’re being hysterical and berating their juniors. Naveen Andrews, Hollywood’s go-to conduit for most things South Asian, isn’t the worst thing in the film. There are shades of a cynical cop without any of his subordinate’s (Radhika Apte) idealism. It’s the cut-out of a trope, something Andrews isn’t able to elevate. What infuriated me more is the film’s treatment towards Meera (Apte).
Radhika Apte is a committed actor, unafraid of the big swings, making it that much easier to make her look silly in bad films. Playing a freshly-minted cop from the academy, the American embassy’s point-of-contact for their missing national, Apte’s Meera has to jump through the hoops of her clearly misogynist, dismissive superior (played by Andrews). Meera is shown to be a closeted queer character – a detail purely so that the film can convince us of her empathy for the Sentinelese. It’s a shockingly amateur choice by director Lin and screenwriter Ben Ripley.
The film embraces none of the complexity of Perry’s profile – exploring the blurred lines between faith and delusion. Jon (Sky Yang) – a second-generation Asian American raised to be a Christian – is shown to be graduating from a Christian college. Gifted a stethoscope by his father (Ken Leung) for his graduation, Jon doesn’t wish to go to medical school, a life-long dream held by his father. He wishes to preach God’s word to the remotest corners of the world.
What makes a missionary so rigid in their belief system? Especially in the case of Jon – who seems to have the vocabulary to debate, and make a case for his faith against non-believers. We see no verbal sparring in Lin’s film. What makes him so hell-bent on contacting the North Sentinelese, apart from youthful hubris? Also, did no one confront him about it, and did he never have any doubts in his own faith? It’s Lin’s lack of commitment to interrogate the role of missionaries in a world where Western imperialism is recognised that is to be blamed here.
Yang is a good-looking actor, who tries to imbue Jon with sincerity and good intentions, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that Lin’s film could be used as a recruitment video by Christian missionaries, where Jon Allen Chau might be mourned as a ‘martyr’.
It’s a shame because Perry’s profile of Jon Allen Chau clearly underlines a promising, bright young man, who was so devoted to his faith that he walked into certain death because of it. It’s a tragedy, but Lin’s film gives it the tone-deaf Hollywood thriller treatment. The film is not supremely confident about pointing out Jon’s transgressions. There’s a laughable track where Jon is momentarily convinced to abandon his mission by a girl flying to Bangkok. Lin’s film and Ripley’s script don’t have Jon Allen Chau’s interiority worked out, glaringly apparent in their film.
By the end, I was left with many questions: Who was Jon Allen Chau? What made someone as academically bright as him such a fierce advocate for a religion? Was it ambition, faith or pride that made him pick a suicide mission? What was going through his head as the moment for it arrived or how do his parents look at religion after such an extreme event? We have no answers. Just like the makers here, and the apologists for institutionalised religion.
Last Days premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2025.
