The Last Thing He Wanted

The Last Thing He Wanted is a 2020 political thriller film directed by Dee Rees, based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Joan Didion, from a screenplay by Rees and Marco Villalobos. The film stars Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Rosie Perez, Edi Gathegi, Mel Rodriguez, Toby Jones, and Willem Dafoe. The Last Thing He Wanted had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2020, and was released on February 21, 2020, by Netflix. The film was panned by critics, who criticized the writing. Plot Elena McMahon is a journalist reporting out of the Atlantic Posts Central American bureau in El Salvador who is forced to flee during the civil war. A few years later she is pushing to reopen the bureau, but her editor reveals that Congress is secretly pressuring the paper to dial back their coverage of Central and South American affairs, so reopening the bureau is not an option. Instead, he reassigns Elena to cover Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984.