The Last Stand Review

I'm a big fan of Kim Ji-woon, who is among the recent slew of great directors to have come out of Korea in the past ten or so years.  With The Last Stand he makes his American movie debut, which is also the film that finally puts the governator back in the spotlight.  Not since Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines has Arnold Schwarzenegger headlined an action picture, but the question is: did we ever really want him back?  The Expendables is a showcase of how incomprehensibly bad has-been action stars can make a movie, so going into this I was pretty weary despite the director having some amazing films under his belt (and judging by the abysmally low box office - $7 mil on a ~$35 mil budget - audiences weren't excited either).  But even though this was as brainless as entertainment gets, I have to say it does have its moments and the final 20 minutes is just a lot of pure fun action.

Schwarzenegger is not a good actor.  He never was; his best role was in The Terminator where his objective was to not emote whatsoever.  That being said there was always a certain silly charm he brought to his films, and though his age really shows here, this is kind of a nice return-to-form for Arnold.  He plays the sheriff of a small town on the border of Texas, which is soon to be under siege by a group of Mexican gangsters on the run.  The plot doesn't matter too much, but I sort of found myself liking and rooting for the quirky characters in this town.  Luis Guzman and Johnny Knoxville in particular are great, and the movie takes the time to give them their little moments so when the climactic action scene happens, you actually care about what happens to them.

I do think the best thing this film had going for it was Kim Ji-woon, who knows how to shoot a damn movie.  In incapable hands this could have been a train wreck, but the action here is really well-done, and during car chases and shootouts you clearly understand the geography of all the craziness (unlike Taken it isn't just frenetic cuts and close-ups).  There's one sequence with a cat-and-mouse chase between two cars in a corn field that particularly took me by surprise in how good it was.  Besides a lot of CGI blood, I appreciated that the movie heavily focused on real, practical effects.  Especially during the car chases, there's just something missing when you know it's not real; here it is, and it's glorious.

This movie gets the little things right, but the script wasn't too hot.  There's a major subplot involving Forest Whitaker as an FBI agent tracking down these criminals that doesn't work at all.  He's probably one of the least competent non-comcial FBI agents I've ever seen in a film.  And Arnold, even though he's not "worse" than he used to be, shows his age in a negative way here. It's hard not to watch this without thinking about it; simply running up stairs seems to wind him.  At least his limited physicality opened up the action for the minor characters to have their moments.  There are some boring, half-assed characters and plots in here (like the villain and a thrown-in love interest between two deputies), but all in all it was an entertaining, non-challenging, campy b-movie that I couldn't help but enjoy despite its problems.

Rating: B-