Last Set: Swapping Self-Improvement for Self-Annihilation

Joe Acierno’s 19-minute sports drama Last Set grapples with the fine, destructive line between ambition and obsession as two bodybuilders hurtle down whichever path will get them to their goal as quickly and decisively as possible.

Opening in medias res with Garcia (Casey Ericson, the older and more advanced of the two in all ways good and bad), having a heated argument with his partner over his steroid use. It is ugly, especially with the camera functioning as his partner; it sets the audience up with a counterbalancing view of the character when Montez (the screenwriter Jose Alberto Alvarez) all but idolises him. Garcia serves as the cautionary tale in action as Montez also pushes himself too hard, wants success too much and too quickly, and is also willing to go down the path of steroids. Standing in his way is his father/coach (Steve Downing), who could not help Garcia or himself, but hopes for better this time around. Conflicts abound, par for the course.

The film is consistently tense, emphasised by handheld camerawork and unshaped lighting. When Montez is not clashing with his dad or overstretching himself for his ambitions of inhuman perfection, he is abuzz with anxiety, resentment, and self-loathing at being too far from his goal. The obsession is only abstractly understandable: on screen there is just a man with a sculpted body.

Well, two men. Garcia views himself with the same loathing, exponentially more intensely. The ghost of Garcia haunts the narrative, existing almost exclusively in the throes of some nightmare. Other people share his world only through objects: the phone (his landlord, Montez’s dad), or off-camera (his partner), or a positive pregnancy test. Even when he shows up in a scene with Montez, he seems more phantasm than real as they sit discussing Montez’s options in the middle of the woods. It quickly becomes instinctive for the viewer to see the character and feel uneasy.

The two-part climax is staggered by a pause for introspection. The restrained score foregrounds the performances of Alvarez and Downing in a fraught scene leading to catharsis. For his part, Ericson is haunting.

Last Set is undergirded by compelling writing. Obsession with perfection transforms into an obsession with destruction as the two protagonists aim for the annihilation of their humanness in favour of a monstrous ideal. One succeeds.