Traqués

Years ago the word was 'Last Man Standing' was Jeff Wincott's best effort from PM Entertainment. So now that I've seen it, I understand why. First what the company did very well is on full display here. I'm talking good stunt work, multiple fireball explosions and decent car chases. The only downside? Story is an absolute test pattern. Two parts cliche and one part very predictable.

LA Detectives Kurt Bellmore (Wincott) and veteran partner 'Doc' Kane (Jonathan Banks) called to a hotel stumble onto criminal Snake Underwood (Jonathan Fuller) completing his latest deal. When he makes bail easily and some of the evidence disappears, Snake goes onto commit more bank robberies with his crew as Doc gets killed and the picture of dirty cops being involved starts to emerge. As Kurt gets suspended and his bank executive wife Anabella (Jillian McWhirter) gets personally involved.

The faces in the cast certainly earns it some points. Wincott gets to juggle guns and fisticuffs while Fuller goes full ham with the villain. Michael Greene (Eve of Destruction, To Live and Die in LA) plays a police captain while Robert LaSardo and ex-Playboy Playmate Ava Fabian play central heavies. It sucks Banks doesn't have a bigger part or more to do, but he delivers nicely given his small role. McWhirter getting in on the action - firing off guns, taking out baddies, saving her husband - is a nice change of pace from the stock female role (in distress / needing rescue) usually found in these pics.

It's hard to hate on 'Last Man Standing' as a b-movie fan or action junkie because what it does so well partially offset the weak storyline. There's even some gratuitous female nudity here via a trip to a strip club. Too bad the dialog and musical score in addition to the plot are such howlers. If you like 90's dtv cheese, PM or enjoy Jeff Wincott it's still worth a view though.

Jeff Wyncott years ago was a B movie action star and he used to deliver good and funny movies like Martial Law and so many others. In this case, with the classic style so remembered from the eighties (tough hero, threatening situation, duet with someone close, quick and painful punishment for the villains) we have a fast-moving film that offers various situations to delight the viewer. Wyncott should not try too hard with this material which does not have much depth but meets the first and most important premise of cinema: to entertain. It is a good film that can be seen by anyone nostalgic for the time when the heroes were really tough.

I'm sure that the creators of this movie were going for many things; Believability was not one of them. Our hero Kurt (Punch Rock Groin) opens the flick by chasing a bad guy thru a hotel. Along the way he jumps a 20ft staircase and chases the guy thru 5 or 6 plate glass windows coming up without a scratch. Even more believable is this guy's marriage to his wife whom he evidently knows nothing about, demonstrated by his surprise at her ability to use a gun. As villains chase them with guns and bomb empty barns, she stays true to the 2dimentional stereotype that she is and "Stands by her man".

The movie also somehow leaves out or ignores several details about police procedure. Mainly that a cop should identify himself as a police officer and warn suspects to comply before kicking there A**. Or, that after a police officer is suspended, commandeering a civilian vehicle is known as GRAND THEFT AUTO, which our hero commits twice in this film. I mean Heck! Joe Don Baker's "Mitchell" follows police procedure more than this guy does.

Overall it seems that the filmmakers must have bought a book on how to make the most cliché, over the top action movie possible and followed it line-by-line, complete with the poser outfits and bad dialogue. My favorite part of the movie was when the big boss bad guy Underwood refers to himself as "The Swashbuckler".

Chuck Norris watch out, your days as the king of Cheese ball action movies are numbered!

This film is actually pretty good. There is good chemistry between Wincott and Jonathan Banks, and it's certainly one of Joseph Merhi's best films. The stunts are excellent, half of the budget must have gone into that side of the production, including three great car chases, and a very big explosion halfway through the film.

It's a b-movie, but a very good one.

7 out of 10 stars for this effort.

Impressed with other PM movies such as Executive Target, Ring Of Fire 3 and Rage I imported the US DVD release of this when it came out in early May after reading the review on The Unknown Movies Page. For your info, I was in California this summer and noticed this DVD (as well as The Sweeper, another good PM movie) is available for for $5.99 in the under $10 section in every Virgin Megastore. Should you buy it? I recommend you do so, as this is one of the most competent and entertaining all round action movies I've seen.

First things first, it has a relatively simple and easy to follow plot, but one that's not so simple that it insults your intelligence, and one which is kept alive by some excellent pacing and minor twists at just the right places, and is beefed up by some of the best action scenes ever seen on DTV material that you would only find in a PM movie.

The action is by far the movies strongest point. The shootouts and the fight scenes are all professionally handled and very sure of themselves. But what stands out most are some fantastic chase scenes, one on foot and 2 main vehicle chases. All of them have some very daring stunts. The vehicle chases (I say "vehicle", as one of them involves an armored van and a motorcycle), are what really stands out. Merhi and Pepin were by far the the best at doing car chases with tons of smashes, crashes and explosions on a small budget in my opinion. These scenes are very well done, and edited together just as well as many big budget pictures like Ronin for example, using appropriate camera angles and never letting us lose track of the action.

I was also fairly surprised by the performances of the cast, which raised slightly above the usual standard of straight to video material. Johnathan Fuller provides a slimy, racist character who we can't help but dislike, while Steve Eastin plays the tough, corrupt cop in typical fashion. The performances from the lead characters, Jeff Wincott and Jillian McWhirter as his wife also surprised me. The chemistry between the two is very good. McWhirter comes off as a woman who is very much in love with her husband, and displays a surprising amount of believability when she refuses to leave his side while Kurt is in trouble. Wincott doesn't have a huge amount of dialogue, but what he has and in the few scenes where he has to show emotion, he gives it what he can and is no worse than Chow Yun Fat was in The Replacement Killers. The reason I compare them is because of the lack of dialogue Chow got in that movie.

Also interesting is given the fact that Jeff Wincott is a trained martial artist, this does not overdo the martial arts like many B-movies starring martial artists in the lead. Wincott only has a couple of scenes in which he uses them, and these are well executed.

All in all, Joseph Merhi has thrown as many action sequences as possible into 90 minutes while still manage to make a comprehensible, well paced and above all thoroughly entertaining action movie around it. Everything is over the top yes, there are continuity errors yes, but what movies don't have that these days? Picture Michael Bay working on a tenth of the budget, but actually being more fun than that.

Take it for what it is, and it certainly satisfies.

Rating: 8.5/10

Oh, and to user "hardane": "As a matter of fact, it was so bad, it inspired me to write this, my only movie review ever"

A word of advice. Please never write any more "reviews". Ever. Obviously you haven't seen many movies so you've not been exposed to enough cinema to have an informed opinion.