In her role, Sarah Rose Harper is very good though, a woman of flinty intellect who is aware of the power of her natural allure. At times she brings to mind a young Uma Thurman in her appeal.
Mervis throws a couple of curves in the screenplay he wrote and directed, involving travel plans and playing the international money markets before the two get down to brass tacks and slowly reveal their actual stories.
It’s well-shot by cinematographer Bethany Michalski and glossy, with some fun shots of dancing and cavorting in white luxury hotel robes. There may be fewer sex scenes than you’d expect though that’s the activity that ostensibly brought them together (and keeps them so, throughout the weekend). But the conversations between the two and their thoughts on life is what actually keep the two — and the audience — tuned in through the end.
Mervis is a playwright, who most recently adapted his play “National Championship” about a pro football strike into a screenplay that will star J.K. Simmons and Timothy Olyphant later this year. So “The Last Days of Capitalism” has a kind of stagey feel as well — because of its reliance on dialogue and the claustrophobia of the penthouse setting across from The Palms, as pretty as it might be.
But the actors bring the most life into it that they can, even as the increasing amounts of money they throw around has less and less meaning.
“The Last Days of Capitalism” is on video-on-demand services Nov. 12.