The Last Outlaw

What's with Mickey Rourke? He's like a cross between a bad imitation of Marlon Brando and Charlie Chan. This movie had so much potential with the great character actors in it. The script was deplorable. I've seen Saturday morning cartoons with more of a plausible story line.

In this movie I saw at least 10 great character actors whom I've seen in other movies, and their previous movies were pretty good.. when I read the cast-list for this movie I thought: "WOW, MAN!...this ROCKS!" - so I decided to see this so-called "Exciting Western"... And boy, was I disappointed...words cannot express my feelings of misery after watching this completely meaningless carnage... All these excellent actors, with all that potential, and what are they given?... a handful of cliché-lines, and then getting shot - usually some place where blood can spurt out in gallons, so there's something for the gorehounds!

Well, Mickey Rourke (Angel Heart) did a nice enough job...he portrayed their heinous criminal gang-leader very well, and did all he could do with this generic "Ten Little Indians"-inspired script..

Dermot Mulroney (Young Guns) as the second-in-command was somewhat decent in this role too...very sympathetic guy. Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs) ...aw, man... my favorite actor in this semistar-studded cast... I thought his character had some interesting background-information (wearing the army hat and rambling about their previous adventures), but we never really get a chance to know his character before he "exits" (it was fairly obvious, as soon as he started to talk about his "Hacienda" and his future plans, etc).

Keith David (The Thing), plays a seemingly cool guy, but suddenly he turns crazy for some reason, I didn't understand what the hell happened to him... the movie had this sense of "mystery" throughout, as though Rourke's character had supernatural abilities.... Not quite "The Quick and the Dead", but more like "The Superfast and the Soon-to-be-Dead".

John C. McGinley (Scrubs), I've always liked this guy...but he doesn't make sense in this movie either.. why does he have to be a 'knife-man'... when he NEVER even uses the knife for anything, other than accidentally cutting himself...and the 'traitor'-part...money out of the window? Such a stupid script.. All the others are great actors, but they're all totally wasted in this feeble adventure... the sheriff, the banker, the possé, EVERYONE gets it...except...well, you figure it out for yourself.

Other great actors in this flick: Ted Levine (Silence of the Lambs), Daniel Quinn (Scanner Cop), Gavan O'Herlihy (Lonesome Dove), Richard Fancy (Seinfeld), Paul Ben-Victor (Tombstone), and many more!

But in some sense, I still liked it, because of the great locations, and some good scenes (where people die, of course)... They probably won't make a sequel to this, but a PREQUEL would certainly kick more ass than this did! A movie where the gang of these intriguing characters go berserk and raid banks and stuff, and how we get to see their development, etc.

I orginally gave this 5/10, but will up the rating to 7/10 because....well, because I liked the cast, and gore is always somewhat entertaining.. and cowboys are so rugged and cool!

The Last Outlaw

I don't think they could have got a better cast if they tried, you just have to look at the stars in this film to show that, Mickey Rourke, Steve Buscemi, Ted Levine, Keith David, John C. McKinley and the wasted Dermot Mulrony who a lot of western fans will remember him for one of his early roles as Dirty Steve in Young Guns. I saw this when it came out on video in the mid nineties and films that went straight to video back in the nineties were great like Surviving the Game, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man etc and the Last outlaw was the same. The beginning of the film is a blatantly obvious homage to the beginning of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch where they rob the bank and the town's sheriff and his men are waiting for them to have a huge gun battle. But the film really starts when Dermot Mulrony shoot's the leader of the pack Graff (Mickey Rourke) for trying to execute one of there men and that's when the films suddenly becomes a revenge story. Of course Graff survives and is picked up by the posse hunting them down and instead and giving himself up he ends up offering the posse to actually be there leader and hunt down his own men for leaving his for dead. From there it's like a cat and mouse western which doesn't stop till the end credits and it really delves into the story of leadership. You have fine performances here from Mickey Rourke as the sadistic Graff but the films goes to Dermot Mulrony as the desperate Eustos who battles with thought of whether what he did was right as his men are picked off one by one. This film ain't no Good the Bad and the Ugly but it definitely bests any John Wayne film ever made (I'm an obvious John Wayne Hater).

I don't know what I didn't like about this the most. Mickey's bad makeup, bad writing or bad production. It was painful to watch. Mickey Rourke looks like a flamboyant pirate cowboy. I've seen high school one act plays with better production and better writing. One outlaw was shot in the hip, they splinted his thigh. Other injuries & gunshot wounds were written like they were merely scratches. The acting is abysmal. I've seen most of the actors in other movies do so much better. The only thing worse than the movie is trying to find enough negative descriptions to review this movie. This is time I'll never get back.

An interesting cast does their best, with some material borrowed from Peckinpaugh and Leone. We get the closeups, and the blood spurting slow motion, along with some genuine tension. Mickey Rourke's character is menacing in an almost mystical way. What is not so good is that one must suspend disbelief, when the posse makes Mickey Rourke their new leader, when men seem to take endless bloody gunshots with little effect, and the distracting, out of place use of four letter words. The scenery is stunning, camera work above average, along with some acceptable acting. I consider "The Last Outlaw" to be a slightly above average western. - MERK