So it’s official; Arnold Schwarzenegger has finished with his childish political career and got back to the serious business of making movies. And luckily he doesn’t seem to have returned with any delusions of now being taken seriously as he’s gotten right back into the swing of things and picked up where he left off with a loud, violent, dumb and outrageously fun action movie.
The Last Stand continues the grand old 80s tradition of having Arnie play an American cop with an Austrian accent and none of the other characters finding this at all strange. But while in his heyday he was usually playing a gung-ho big city detective, here he’s ex-LAPD hotshot Ray Owens who’s now the beleaguered sheriff of a small border town. When Mexican drug-lord Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) makes a ridiculously implausible escape from FBI custody in Las Vegas, he makes a beeline for the border and decides Owens’s jurisdiction is the perfect place for him and his army of goons to blast their way back across the border.
Ridiculously implausible is the name of the game here, as it was in Schwarzenegger’s old action spectaculars. This isn’t in the same league as his more high-concept movies like Terminator, Predator or Total Recall, which had some properly original ideas in between the explosions and bicep flexing. No, this is much more standard dumb action fare like Commando or Eraser; gunfights, violence, a few amusing quips and little more, we know what’s expected and Schwarzenegger and director Kim Jee-Woon don’t fail to deliver.
Off course, The Last Stand also gets to play on Schwarzenegger’s advanced years. Like Bruce Willis in RED, Sylvester Stallone in Rambo and just about every 80s action star in the Expendables, here he gets to do his usual superhuman thing but also gets to complain about how his old bones are giving him gyp. These “geriaction films are starting to become cliché but this is the first time we’ve seen Arnie up to his old tricks for a few years so he gets away with it. You do wonder how a small-town sheriff can afford all the cosmetic surgery he’s clearly had though.
You also wonder if the script was perhaps written with an American actor in mind as he’s basically playing the iconic image of the steadfast sheriff straight out of the old-west and it’s easy to imagine someone like Tommy Lee Jones being a lot more at home in the role. It’s quite awkward hearing Arnie delivering standard Western dialogue like “much obliged in his Teutonic drawl but he does get to acknowledge his immigrant status for once in one of the films cleverest lines.
Perhaps due to Arnie being a little insecure about getting back into the saddle after so long, he’s lumbered with a posse of largely inept sidekicks who share the screen-time and the action and make him look good. Chief among these are Luis Guzman as an out-of-shape but courageous deputy and Johnny Knoxville as a weapon-hoarding redneck who, disappointingly, doesn’t get to perform many death-defying stunts in his imitable style. The baddies aren’t too memorable apart from Peter Stormare and that’s only really because his accent flits between Stockholm and the Southern states of America quite alarmingly.
All in all, The Last Stand is good, violent, stupid, fun and a proper return to form for a man who was once the undisputed king of movies of this kind. That said, while it’s a damn good Arnold Schwarzenegger film it’s a pretty disappointing Kim Jee-woon film.
The South Korean director is known for crazy, reality-defying, almost cartoonish action films probably best personified by 2008’s The Good, The Bad and The Weird. The Last Stand does give him some chances to let loose and play around with the All-American, modern day Western backdrop, dropping in visual references to his hero Sergio Leone.
But mainly it feels like he’s been reined in and subdued in order to avoid the personality of the film overshadowing the personality of its star. The action scenes are impeccably staged but don’t feel particularly visually original and the scenes with Forest Whitaker’s FBI agent and his cronies are standard stuff that could have come out of any of the Fast and Furious films. Hopefully, Jee-woon will get to make more Hollywood films and produce something as joyfully weird as his Korean work.
Overall Verdict: Picking up more or less where he left off Arnold Schwarzenegger has got another stupidly fun action film under his belt. But those hoping to see some of Kim Jee-Woon’s trademark craziness will be disappointed.
Special Features:
Not In My Town: Making the Last Stand
Cornfield Chaos: Scene Breakdown
The Dinkum Firearm and Historic Weaponry Museum Tour
Actor-Can Anarchy: With Johnny Knoxville and Jamie Alexander
Reviewer: Adam Pidgeon