Propelled by Joan Didion’s eponymous novel, the dramatization The Last Thing He Wanted has Elena McMahon (Anne Hathaway), a fruitful Washington columnist exploring a South American arms business in 1984, in the spotlight. Everything changes when the champion finds her own dad (Willem Dafoe) in the business. To dispose of it with a spotless face, it does precisely what it shouldn’t, which is to pass the opposite side of the law, putting its future and life in danger.