Arnold Schwarzenegger has aged, but he’s still a badass on film. He proved to me he still ‘had it’ with his scenes in The Expendables 2 (that squinted eye look while he’s aiming a gun is classic). With The Last Stand, Arnold gets back to Hollywood with a leading star role, one that he was accustomed to regularly before spending several years as the governor of California. In an unlikely pairing, Korean Director Jee-woon Kim’s first movie in Hollywood, or anywhere outside of Asia for that matter, is The Last Stand. Working with a translator the entire time, it’s kind of remarkable how Arnold and Jee-woon’s paths crossed.
The story of The Last Stand is fairly familiar, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting or entertaining. Arnold plays Ray Owens, a decorated former LAPD narcotics officers who moved out to Sommerton, AZ to become sheriff of a small, peaceful town. He’s well liked amongst the populace and his handful of deputies including characters played by Luis Guzmán, Zach Gilford, and Jaimie Alexander. Things are normal in Sommerton until one night in Las Vegas, a drug cartel leader, in FBI custody, manages to escape. Forest Whitaker plays a familiar role as the FBI agent in charge, by the way. Eduardo Noriega plays Cortez, the escapee on the run. He’s determined to high-tail it to Mexico and with his supped up Corvette he might just make it there. In fact, he meets little resistance on his way to Sommerton, the last town that stands in his way of a mobile bridge that his private army are building just a few miles from Sommerton. The events of Cortez’s escape and his eventual fate play out over about six hours. With FBI aid not coming in time, Arnold decides that, life or death, he’s not going to let Cortez and his thugs pass through Sommerton unphased. With the help of Johnny Knoxville’s military geek character named Dinkum, and his massive collection of weaponry, the law of Sommerton may yet have a chance.
On the whole, The Last Stand is entertaining and I’m glad I finally got around to seeing it as I first intended to go see this in theaters a few months ago. That’s the big picture takeaway, but any deeper analysis of the movie reveals a lot of ‘facepalm’ moments whereby the viewer is asked to work through a lot of cheesy, clichéd, unrealistic, or otherwise bad scenes. The fact that Cortez could drive for several hours at well over 100MPH without having to fuel up is ridiculous. Jamie’s gun scenes at the end where she’s popping out of cover and firing a bolt action sniper rifle from the hip with precision is a joke. The scene where Arnold’s massive truck, headlights on and barreling over the countryside at high speeds, pops out of nowhere to surprise the enemy is also disagreeable. Furthermore, fans looking to see a lot of Arnold in action may be disappointed. I won’t quite go as far as to say the trailer shows most of his action scenes, but it’s darn close. I guess I was just hoping for more, but he is sixty-six afterall, and this is his first movie back.
So The Last Stand does not fit in my top ten Arnold movies nor very high amongst any all time action movie list I might make. It is however worth a watch for those that like Arnold or action flicks, especially ones that inject some attempts at humor and in which you know the majority of the good guys survive. That said, this makes a fine rental.
What may sway consumers on the fence is the presentation quality and extra features. The image quality is excellent throughout the movie, from the weathered wrinkles of Arnold’s face to the sweet Corvette used by Noriega. Images are crisp and well-shot, and I didn’t notice any significant issues at all. The 7.1 audio mix does very well for itself, too. In a nutshell, the presentation quality does not disappoint. Neither do the extra features, which include:
-“Not In My Town: Making The Last Stand” (HD, 28m11s) – The most enjoyable part about this making of feature is all of the footage of Arnold talking during production. He does a great job of giving the fans what they want. An understandably length segment is spent on Director Jee-woon as well.
-“Cornfield Chaos: Scene Breakdown” (HD, 11m21s) – Without trying to spoil anything, this key scene is broken down by the special effects guys that made it happen. One company that was brought in whose name I did not note uses a remote control helicopter with a camera attached to get their footage in real-time, which was neat to see.
-“The Dinkum Firearm and Historic Weaponry Museum” (HD, 11m21s) – Weapon consultants and armorer’s talk about some of the unique weapons seen and used in the film.
-“Actor Cam Anarchy with Jamie Alexander and Johnny Knoxville” (HD, 10m32s) – This was actually really neat. You get a very candid point-of-view video of the set and some of the many crew members there as seen and narrated by Jamie. Johnny has a shorter segment that is similar.
-Deleted Scenes (HD, 8m15s) – Six scenes that didn’t make the cut.
-Extended Scenes (HD, 2m40s) – Seven additional bits that didn’t make the final cut.
With that, let’s get to the summary…