Get bummed out with the trailer for Boulevard, Robin Williams’ last onscreen role
You might want to get your tissues and emergency funk cures ready before hitting the play button on this one: it’s the trailer for Robin Williams’ final onscreen performance, Boulevard. In the film, directed by A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints’ Dito Montiel, Williams plays Nolan, a straitlaced bank employee whose carefully constructed life and identity start to come apart after he connects with a young male prostitute (Robert Aguire). Kathy Baker plays Nolan’s wife, Joy, while Bob Odenkirk follows Williams on the “comedic actor dipping into dramatic roles” path as Nolan’s friend and confidante.
The trailer doesn’t shy away from the reality of Williams’ death in 2014, labeling the film as the actor’s final dramatic performance, and including narration where he says things like, “Nothing turned out the way I thought, I guess. And suddenly I’m 60 years old.” (Odenkirk declaring, “Maybe it’s time to start living the life you really want,” doesn’t help matters much.) And while it’ll be impossible to separate Boulevard entirely from the unfortunate fact of its beloved star’s suicide, there definitely seem to be a worthwhile performance here, with Williams playing a deeply disaffected man struggling to allow emotion and happiness to explode from behind a tightly controlled facade.
Boulevard opens on July 17. (Williams’ final final performance, a voice role in Terry Jones’ Absolutely Anything, comes out the following month.)