The Last Stand - L'ultima sfida

This movie is a lot of fun for what it is, a mindless, bloody, shoot em up action movie complete with some Schwarzenegger one liners.

And splendid for us, the audience. Arnie's back! After small cameos in The Rundown ( This blink-and-you-miss-it cameo also served as passing the torch to new action star, The Rock aka Dwayne Johnson) and The Expendables finally comes an action film with Arnold as the lead.

Directed by a South Korean Jee-woon Kim who is known for bloody and violent films so this information promises a great film filled with right ingredients for Schwarzenegger movie. The film starts off slow to develop the characters which is great at least you care about the characters. Arnold might be older now but he's still go it to be an action hero. The only problem is that this film is not doing well at the box office. The planned return of the 80's is not going according to plan, which is sad because the films reminding us of the most probably best times of action films are well made films. I have seen it in a packed theatre so I guess that is a sign positive word of mouth will bring a lot of Arnold's fans to theatre.

Johnny Knoxville is not only tolerable but he is also funny. His character bring some of the funniest moments in the film. Jaimie Alexander shows once again that she can pull of amazing kick-ass heroine. Let's hope she gets more screen time in the next Thor movie. Harry Dean Stanton who is her for one only scene is just unforgettable just as the dialogue in his scene. Forest Whitaker, an Oscar Winner, gives his usual magnificent performance which sometimes seems very funny given the context of the film and its ridiculous plot.

The violence in modern movies is not the same as in the 80s, 90s. I don't want to sound like a maniac but given the credit of Jee-woon Kim I expected this film to be more "off the chain". It is like the studio executives came on the set and told the director to tone the violence and blood down. Even when things get violent it is just not the same as it used to be. Despite some flaws this film still is a great mindless fun action ride and that is exactly what I expected and it's great to see Arnold back on the big screen.

I grew up watching Arnold, I own every film of his, I am what you would call a serious Schwarzenegger fan. I have waited a decade for his return to the cinema, and I wasn't disappointed. The Last Stand isn't perfect, but Arnold fans can rejoice, for he truly is back!!

The premise (for those that haven't watched the trailer a dozen times like me) is a Mexican cartel boss (Eduardo Noriega) has escaped custody during transport and is heading to the Mexican border, and he is going to get there by going through the sleepy town of Sommerton, Arizona. Arnold is the Sheriff in this sleepy little town, and he is the FBI's last hope at stopping the ruthless gangster.

This movie is full of intense, bloody action, exciting car chases (thanks to a supped up Corvette ZR1 with over one thousand horsepower!) and funny one liner's. The film never takes itself too serious (which is good thing) and is surprisingly funny throughout. Arnold's acting is a little rusty, but he more than made up for it in the action scenes. And the (many) action sequences were exciting and bloody, the theater kept cheering out loud. The pacing was perfect, the film flew by.

The cast was great...Luis Guzman is hilarious as Arnold's Deputy, Forest Whitaker as the lead FBI agent, Peter Stormare as the maniacal "right hand man" villain, Johnny Knoxville as the town clown, Harry Dean Stanton as the crotchety old farmer, the list goes on...

The film was everything I wanted from an Arnold movie, it's fun(!), full of fast paced action and lots of (funny) one liner's. The non-Arnold fan probably won't get much from this, but this movie was made for Arnold fans, and it delivers.

The Last Stand (2013)

Well, if you take this too seriously you're missing the point. It's a comedy, and if not quite a parody of a tough lawman against the odds plot, it pumps up all the clichés nicely. It's fast, well done, and appropriately preposterous. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is true to form, even joking once about his getting old.

In a way, this is Arnold trying to be a bit like Clint. Clint Eastwood that is. Because Schwarzenegger is playing a sheriff in a lonely western town. When a bad boy drug lord (a very cute one) is set to be blast through in his Corvette, this sheriff, Ray Owens, won't tolerate it. Of course. Who would?

In this hyped up against-the-odds yarn, we have some excellent if well-worn clichés. First, the FBI gets its usual due. They are a professional team led by the ever-enjoyable Forrest Whittaker, but of course they are a bit too professional, and arrogant, and they make constant little mistakes of misjudgment. So the bad guy on the loose is on collision course with Owens with his rag-tag friends in his Arizona border town.

I didn't expect to like this, but ended up captivated. It works the same way a "Die Hard" movie works--fast plot, do good hero, nasty bad guys, and jokes. It's not realistic, but the characters are believable. This is in contrast to a movie I saw a couple days ago along the same lines (loner man against evil), "Jack Reacher," which was filled with such strained dialog and absurd plot conditions it was irritating. "The Last Stand" has the advantage of not taking itself seriously, and so it's great fun and well done fun all along.

Yes, it's stupid. I mean, come on, that's the point! But it's smart stupid. If you have an open mind for this stuff, give it a shot.

This is pure guilty-pleasure cinema. You know you can't defend seeing lots of nameless guys in black suits and machine guns mowing down people and that there's only a bullet here or there that might get one of our good guys (and I mean, y'know, Luis Guzman, who is always fun to watch in that very familiar character-actor way by the way, same for Harry Dean Stanton's walk-on), and it hearkens back to that time in the 1980's and 90's when Arnold Schwarzenegger dominated cineplexes with this kind of action trash. But over time, as super glossy and hyper-kinetic and chaotically-shot cinema floods theaters, this almost comes as something of a refreshment. How do I simply say "I got thrilled by the action, laughed at the craziness in the set-pieces, and loved seeing Arnold tear it up and have one-line retorts: "How do you feel?" asks a towns-person - "OLD!")

But aside from the story, which seems to be fairly cookie-cutter with the Mexican cartel kingpin who is getting across from Nevada down to the border to get back to his safe land, and with various tropes that can be read from not too far away (given some heft by the fact that Eduardo Noriega cuts a very sharp figure as a madman with a zest for stunt- driving - like a character one might find almost in Rodriguez/Tarantino's Grindhouse, or a hybrid of such characters they write), what is there? How about that the director, Kim Jee-Woon, has a track record from back in South Korea as being a hardcore, awe-inspiring action and genre director, who can make them very, very intense and harrowing (I Saw the Devil), or truly spooky and harrowing in a quieter, more sinister way (Tale of Two Sisters). But what got him the job, I suspect, was The Good, the Bad and the Weird, his wild homage to everything Western - Spaghetti, yes, but good ol' American variety. He must have read the script and said 'I can do this, this is a Western to the bone just in 21st century garb... matter of fact, it's Rio Bravo on steroids!'

Well, that's my suspicion anyway. Think about it - a Sheriff in a ponam town with not many residents at all (and those that do stick around all day won't leave cause of some gunfire - there's a cheese omelette cooking after all at the diner), and has some good deputies, and some others he has to recruit not by his better judgment but by lack of other good officers, and has a Big Bad Motherflipper coming right his way. "I've seen a lot of blood and death. I know what's coming," says the not-quite quipping Arnold. And the first half does build, somewhat decently if predictably, the pieces of the characters, the basic set-ups of who may die (or will) and what betrayals are happening and who knows what (and what, really, Forest Whitaker can do as the Man in Charge in the suit - powerful, but he's not a Schwarzenegger).

It's the second half of the film, as the preparations intensify and then the big attack comes to Sommerton Junction (even the name is out of a Sam Fuller western or something) that the film REALLY picks up steam. And by steam, I mean lots and lots of bullets, sometimes from huge guns that fire way too many bullets. What helps in Jee-Woon's favor in The Last Stand is how he takes the fantasy of all of this to such a degree that you (or I really) can't help but admire how high it ends up going. It will please hardcore action fans, but unlike the only other recent Schwarzenegger films (so to speak) of the Expendables franchise, it doesn't really insult your intelligence either. The villains on display in this flick are not pushovers, and it leads to some impressive action from the performers, from the cameramen, from the bullets themselves which become their own actors. And the final chase through a cornfield, just when you think the film has nothing else to give you, comes back for a surprise set-piece that feels fresh and inventive; we haven't seen something quite like this where it's a cat and mouse chase through such a big space of land, but we know it is just a matter of seconds.

If you've grown up on Schwarzenegger flicks, it's like visiting the old(er) man at the condo, and jogging his memory full-throttle. I don't know if this is just a brief pop-up appearance for the (how do I write this without laughing but he is) veteran action icon, or a third and final career trajectory after years as a bodybuilder/up-and-comer, and superstar. But for now, it'll do, Johnny Knoxville's rambunctious comic-timing not withstanding.