The Last Stand
(USA, 107 min.)
Dir. Jee-woon Kim, Writ. Andrew Knauer, Jeffery Nachmanoff
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Forest Whitaker, Eduardo
Noriega, Rodrigo Santoro, Jaimie Alexander, Johnny Knoxville, Luis Guzmán,
Peter Stormare.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Ray Owens in The Last Stand. Courtesy of Alliance Films / Photo: Merrick Morton |
“Wham!” “Bang!” “Pam!” “Kablammo!” Somewhere at Rolling Stone magazine Peter Travers is
churning out a series of one-word pull-quotes for The Last Stand. The Last
Stand, a riotous action/comedy/western, is an inspiration for the old guys.
Arnold Schwarzenegger proves that retirement is for sissies as he gets back to
pumping lead after his stint in political office. Arnold still packs a mean
punch and proves his years of public service haven’t made him soft. At 66
years old, Arnold is as comfortable behind the machine gun as Helen Mirren is.
Whether The Last Stand is a vacation
full of beans or an audition tape for Red
3, Arnold has a lot of fun and provides good old action movie escapism.
Owens is world-weary old
westerner. Arnold’s acting skills haven’t declined during his time away from
the film set (although they haven’t improved, either), since politics is
essentially acting with a different weapon. Arnold still has the action-star stuff
of his earlier days, yet Owens is a much different, more reluctant hero
than the gung-ho gunslingers Schwarzenegger usually plays. Owens embodies a
disdain for bloody violence (he left a career in LA after witnessing too much
bloodshed), but he isn’t afraid to fire a bullet in order to protect his idyll
way of life. Unlike the gun-toting cops turned robbers of Gangster Squad, however, Owens only uses violence as a means to an
end – hyperbolically so, as we see the quaint country sheriff pull out the
heavy artillery to keep the peace.
Bullets fly and bodies pile up, but The Last Stand never takes itself too
seriously. The English-language debut by South Korean director Jee-woon
Kim (I Saw the Devil), The Last Stand is a drolly blood-soaked
exaggeration of American cinema. It's a stylish one, too, with the director orchestrating some high-octane action sequences, as well as a final car chase that slows the action down into a corn field and lets the stalks fill the screen and builds suspense with the crunch of maize. Owens' defense of his town is ultimately a comical, if overlong, take on the western genre, as The Last Stand is a tongue-in-cheek action
movie that offers a funny little farce on America’s passionate right to bear
arms. Even a cantankerous old granny pulls out the big guns to fire back at the
bad guys. One never knows who might be packing heat in these friendly little
towns.
The
Last Stand’s fun play on America’s mania for gun violence
couldn’t come at a better time. Both the right and the left could enjoy the
film, since it pits gun violence as a ridiculous circus, a brainless bloodbath
of sorts that intrudes on Arnold’s small country town and disrupts the ideal
way of American life. On the other hand, when it comes time for Arnold and the
obliging granny to arm themselves with high-calibre weapons, the gun nuts at
the NRA could easily praise the film for showing the benefits of the Second
Amendment. Either way one looks at The
Last Stand, though, America’s love for guns offers an armament of jokes. It
simply depends whether one is laughing at the gun nuts or with them.
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
The
Last Stand opens in theatres January 18th.