He always said he’d be back and Arnold Schwarzenegger is, flying solo as the leading man in The Last Stand. After finishing up with politics and his Expendables 2 buddies, Arnold is on a quest to bring real action back to the big screen. So far though, the movie has bombed massively. Have cinemagoers had enough and want to chop down the finest of the Austrian Oaks? Or is there still a space in their hearts for Arnold or grow on them once again?
Schwarzenegger stars as Sheriff Ray Owens, and is enjoying the quiet life in a sleepy border town between the U.S. and Mexico, after a previous brutal and bloody career in the LAPD. The most he gets to enforce the law is by saving cats from trees, and he likes it that way. A plot nearby though sees a group of mercenaries camping out nearby, waiting to get escaped cartel warlord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega, Vantage Point) across the border to freedom. Teaming up with a bunch of oddballs and misfits, Owens is the only man who can stop Cortez from getting away in a dramatic and violent Last Stand.
We don’t come to see Arnold Schwarzenegger films for high quality acting, we want to see Arnie wreck-up the place and deliver one-liners. Despite a notable scaling back in actual physical work (likely due to his age), he stands firm on his own two aging legs; the pacing and introduction for Arnold here was spot-on; he’s there at the start as a tease for the audience, before being shown in full force. It takes about half the runtime for him to do anything action-esque, but that’s fine. He’s like the oncoming storm – you know it will arrive so all you do is sit and wait for the carnage to begin.
The rest of the cast is barely notable. Academy Award winner Forest Whittaker (The Last King Of Scotland) is slumming it as an FBI taskforce leader chasing Cortez. Noriega himself as Cortez is only fine (he plays a sleazy businessman quite well with his continued upping of offers to buy out Owens for example, but considering this is someone from the notorious cartel, he doesn’t do anything especially violent to solidify his character), and Johnny Knoxville (Movie 43) turns up as vintage arms dealer hick Dinkum in a near-nothing comedy role. The always welcome Harry Dean Stanton (Seven Psychopaths) is also relegated to a cameo farmer role, and despite a few interesting “oh it’s that guy from that thing” spots on the cast, The Last Stand is the Schwarzenegger show all the way.
The Last Stand takes the route of being a total guy movie. Being an action film with Arnold Schwarzenegger always helps as a foundation, but with a slightly ludicrous opening mystery with a stolen prototype supercar you get the idea what we’re in for. Various scenes show off said supercar in traits of speed and even manages to take out an FBI 4×4 special. It’s not going to be the equivalent of The Fast And The Furious 7 but it’s on it’s way. There are a few bits of eye candy too, and as a slab of male escapism at the cinema it does it’s job, but you’re always left yearning for a bit more.
The biggest determent for anyone to see this film is the Asian/Korean influenced comedy floating about. Director Kim Ji-woon brought the wonderfully oddball The Good, The Bad And The Ugly pastiche, The Good, The Bad, The Weird, to life in his homeland of South Korea and can do that style of film really well. However he tries to stick that to a western action film which doesn’t really work within the genre. In that kind of cinema, there seems to be a lot of slapstick humour and character moments rather than plot advancement and focus on action scenes. Translated to Arnold’s return movie and Kim doesn’t bring to the table what Arnold fans would want from an Arnold action fest. I’m not saying western action doesn’t have the above but there is more emphasis on those aspects when they should have gone straight with the humour coming from the ridiculous situation Owens finds himself in.
In an age of massive, blockbuster superheroes, new age action movies and, younger, more believable and rounded stars, The Last Stand manages to do well enough in comparison. Arnold is treated as a special attraction and wheeled out to do his schtick at the right moments, despite a serious lack of good one-liners (most of them are soaked in that awful Korean comedy). The action set pieces are memorable, especially in the finale with two supercars driving through a massive cornfield trying to spot each other. There are some cool sequences including when a big yellow school bus does a handbrake turn so Arnold and Knoxville pop out the back with a gatling gun and dispose of various henchmen, but it’s all a bit rose-tinted; yet it doesn’t fail as an action film at all, even with some dodgy blue screen in the film ending brawl.
On his performance here, Arnold doesn’t do too badly. He’s superior to his role in Expendables 2 and people do still want to see him. Sadly though, films like The Last Stand are going to be his calling from now on. He’s never going to be in the shape for another Commando or Predator and wouldn’t be considered for a big blockbuster leading man role, due to various younger action actors like Jason Statham being on the block. Although it’s still a surprise how poorly this film did at the box office; the concept as an excuse for an action vehicle is fine, but there are admittedly much more interesting options available during awards season and god help Sylvester Stallone’s next film Bullet To The Head on the back of this film’s performance. The twilight of the superhuman action hero is clearly drawing to a close.
As an Arnold fan, I came away slightly disappointed. I know our favourite Austrian oak isn’t in the prime of his career anymore, but at the same time I wanted more hard action, not the reliance of rubbish comedy we get here by a poor choice of director. It is the Arnold show all the way but since he’s brought out when needed and not overused in his appearances here the rest of the cast can hardly support the slightly weighty expectations bestowed upon The Last Stand. Enjoyable but missable.
Terry Lewis – @thatterrylewis.
