Last Embrace

Last Embrace is a 1979 thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme. Based on the novel The 13th Man by Murray Teigh Bloom, it stars Roy Scheider, Janet Margolin and Christopher Walken.

Plot summary

Government agent Harry Hannan goes across the Texas border from El Paso to a town in Mexico to meet a contact in a cantina. But it's a set-up and his wife is murdered.

Harry ends up in a Connecticut sanitarium, where his sanity is in some doubt. He receives a mysterious anonymous letter written in Hebrew and signed: "Avenger of Blood."

Helped by a woman named Ellie Fabian who has a few secrets of her own, Harry ends up in a life-threatening climactic chase at Niagara Falls.

Cast

• Roy Scheider as Harry Hannan
• Janet Margolin as Ellie Fabian
• Christopher Walken as Eckart
• Sam Levene as Sam Urdeil
• John Glover as Richard Peabody
• Marcia Rodd as Adrian
• Charles Napier as Quittle
• David Margulies as Rabbi Drexel

Reaction

Vincent Canby in a May 4, 1979 New York Times review of Last Embrace wrote of Scheider: "No other leading actor can create so much tension out of such modest material."

External links

• Last Embrace at the Internet Movie Database
• Last Embrace at AllRovi