At age 65, most men are content to retire and rest on their
laurels. Former California governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger isn’t one to sit on his assets in his old age. Since he can’t run for the Oval Office,
Arnold is struggling to revive his career after spending about a decade
off-screen. Arnold’s pal Sylvester
Stallone, who is enjoying a modest career revival himself, cast the Austrian
bodybuilder in his two “Expendables” movies, and Arnold is scheduled to team up
with the Italian stallion again in the forthcoming actioneer “The Tomb.” These titles don’t augur well for his comeback,
but Arnold isn’t going quietly into the night.
He has lined up several projects, including a new “Terminator” sequel, a
“Twins” follow-up appropriately entitled “Triplets,” and a third sequel “The
Legend of Conan.” Meantime, Arnold is “back”
as a small-town sheriff in Korean director Kim Jee-Woon’s American cinematic
debut “The Last Stand” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) where he clashes with coldblooded,
trigger-happy villains who are bridging the way for the head honcho of a
Mexican drug cartel to cross the border back into Mexico. Basically, “The Last Stand” qualifies as a
predictable but entertaining B-movie toplining Arnold, without Sylvester
Stallone lurking in the background. Johnny
Knoxville of “Jackass” fame co-stars, along with Forrest Whitaker, Harry Dean
Stanton, and Jamie Alexander. If they
served draft beer and pizza at movie theaters, “The Last Stand” would probably
rake in a pile of dough. Nothing about
this blood-splattered, R-rated, carnage will surprise anybody who enjoys this
kind of mindless mayhem.
FBI Special Agent John Bannister (Forrest Whitaker of “Street
Kings”) is in charge of transporting convicted Mexican narcotics kingpin Gabriel
Cortez (Eduardo Noriega of “Che Guevara”) to a Federal prison. Bannister’s heavily armed convoy doesn’t even
make it out of Las Vegas before Cortez’s criminal organization springs him,
takes a female FBI agent, Sarah Torrance (Jamie Alexander of “Thor”), hostage,
and furnishes him with a souped-up Corvette that can outrun a helicopter. Nothing Bannister does to alert the authorities
along Cortez’s escape route halts the drug lord. Cortez careens along the highway like a maniac
and threatens to kill Torrance who is riding alongside him. Truckloads of armed mercenaries blast through
the road blocks and riddle everybody in sight.
Bannister scrambles every resource that he can to stop Cortez at the
border after they lose track of him.
Eventually, Bannister warns the sheriff of the tiny town of Sommerton
Junction, Ray Owens (Arnold Schwarzenegger), to get out of the Cortez’s way. A former LAPD narcotics agent who quit the
force after he survived a deadly massacre, Owens took a job as top cop in his
sleepy little border town. He has three
officers under him who have never seen the kind of violence he has
witnessed. When Cortez’s henchman,
Burrell (Peter Stormare of “Fargo”), starts blasting away at them after they
discover the make-shift bridge he has erected across a gorge, Owens recruits a
former Iraq veteran Frank Martinez (Rodrigo Santoro of “300”), locked up in one
of his own jail cells, and a nitwit arms dealer, Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville
of “Walking Tall”) to beef up his force.
Arnold Schwarzenegger looks nothing like he did in his prime. Haggard as Clint Eastwood was in “Gran
Torino,” Schwarzenegger does everything he can to make world weary Ray Owens
appear vulnerable. He takes an awful
beating at the hands of the considerably younger Cortez during a tenacious stand-off
scene at the border. Of course, Arnold
comes out on top but not without a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Nevertheless, despite a shortage of snappy
one-liners, he is still Arnold. As big,
dumb, action thrillers go, “The Last Stand” boasts stalwart villains, exploding
body parts, and enough gunfire to keep you watching it. Korean helmer Kim Jee-Woon doesn’t have a lot
to work with in “Ghost Team One” scenarist Andrew Knauer’s hackneyed screenplay. If you have seen “The Good, the Bad and
Weird,” you know Jee-Woon is a lively action director who deserves better. Undoubtedly, the prospect of directing Arnold
and staging some hellacious high-octane action scenes attracted him to this
tame actioneer. Since he has nothing but
clichés to juggle, Jee-Woon substitutes supercharged velocity for surprises,
and “The Last Stand” never runs out of momentum. Were it not for Schwarzenegger’s iconic
presence, this 107-minute melodrama would be a straight-to-video saga with
little to distinguish it. The plot has
more holes than some of the patrol cars that the villains riddle with their
fully automatic firearms. The Corvette
that our villain steals for his joyride gets the kind of gas mileage that
nobody in the real world could ever get.
Mind you, “The Last Stand” isn’t as good as lesser Arnold epics such as “Eraser,”
“End of Days,” and “Raw Deal,” but it is fun to see Schwarzenegger back on the
big screen where he belongs.
