There’s a sorta funny premise at the heart of the “Becky” trilogy, an unlikely revenge thriller franchise about a jaded teenager who kills scads of neo-Nazis. Lulu Wilson plays the title character, Becky Hooper, throughout the series, and each new movie is a lightly reworked version of the last.
So you might imagine that by the third movie, “The Last Temptation of Becky,” the filmmakers would have figured out how to fully exploit their high-concept scenario: an incorrigible young brat delivers cheap thrills and superficially topical catharsis through snotty quips and immodest bloodletting.
Unfortunately, while the jokes and action in this threequel are more polished than the last two “Becky”s, there’s still not much to recommend “The Last Temptation of Becky” beyond incidental pleasures like the aforementioned gore and a typically engaging supporting performance from character actor James Urbaniak. Otherwise, wannabe fascists go splat again, and this time it’s just as impersonal as the previous times. Also, Neil Patrick Harris plays a Nazi in this one, which, again, is an amusing starting point, but, in reality, a waste of good stunt casting.
Why exactly has Becky, now 19, appointed herself the czar of Nazi-killing? A single flashback suggests an answer, intercut like a Depression-era three-bean meal across three key scenes. Here we learn that Becky does what she does because of unresolved trauma, since a group of neo-Nazis broke into her family’s lake house in the stillborn 2022 programmer “Becky.” Beyond that, “The Last Temptation of Becky” only asks us to go with the flow as Becky, now a loose cannon working for the CIA, takes it upon herself to annihilate more Nazis, this time in Poland.
There’s trouble brewing at the old Wolf’s Lair, the fabled site of Hitler’s underground stronghold, and only Becky can save the day. The Wolf’s Lair is now a cozy, Hitler-themed bed and breakfast run by the Reusses, a schtickily prim German nuclear family led by Housefrau Helga (Catherine Walker) and patriarch Wilhelm (Harris). Somehow that’s not as funny as it sounds.
Becky’s only assigned to observe and report back on the Reusses’ activities after her CIA handlers censure her for her Dirty Harry Lite behavior. She botched her last mission, and not for the first time. In one of the movie’s funnier routines, we see a quick-cut flashback montage of all the other missions where Becky’s resorted to an explosive, largely improvised “Plan C” that leaves several dead Nazis in her wake.
Nevertheless, Becky has a score to settle given that the skinheads that killed her dad in the first “Becky” were looking for a key that, on its side, features a set of engraved geographic coordinates for (you guessed it) the Wolf’s Lair. Now she must kill the Reusses and their accomplices, led by the tetchy scientist Dr. Friedrich Metzger (Urbaniak).
Urbaniak’s not the only game cast member who’s dialed into their characters, but he is the only performer who enhances his thin material. Harris only really cuts loose during a sub-Tarantinian speech at the end of the movie, to which Wilson snarks back: “Did anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?” Obviously Wilhelm’s supposed to be annoying and long-winded, but that doesn’t explain why his spiel is as dull as her comeback.
As for Wilson, she’s grown into her role over the years, but somehow that only makes her character’s programmatically sassy behavior that much more underwhelming. See Becky sip noisily from her Stanley Cup-style thermos as she debriefs and arms herself with a cache of weapons à la James Bond. Watch her struggle to work up the audience’s bloodlust, like when Becky asks Helga and Wilhelm’s dutifully murderous son Otto (Noah Leggott) if they still have the Hitler Youth in Germany. Marvel at how little effort is put into making Becky seem like a hard case with a lazy declaration of intent like, “You had me at Nazi,” or a slapdash one-liner like, “Mission Find Out What These F***ers Are Up To: commence.”
Better fight choreography or action filmmaking might have done a better job of pumping up viewers’ bloodlust, like when Becky sword-fights Helga and Wilhelm’s other child, Luisa (Aoife Hughes), and delivers a comically excessive final blow after Luisa uses the “K” word.
A more playful, relentless, or simply polished arsenal of jokes might have also capitalized on the inherent surreal-ness of watching a young woman slaughter a bunch of cartoonishly accented Nazis. Why else remind us that Becky, in the eyes of Reusses, is only a girl and therefore “not that smart” unless you can make outsmarting the Nazis as entertaining in theory as it is in practice? “The Last Temptation of Becky” is more fun than its predecessors, but that sadly doesn’t say much.
