RocShemp

Same reason Ashley ditched her bun in Mass Effect 3.

Geofferson

I better catch this in the theater before it's too late.

DonnachaOne

A fool and his money...

A Haunted House has been our busiest film for two weekends. Mama did great on Friday and Saturday (horror always does), but Haunted has been the consistent moneymaker.

dsa_shea

Coming from the same person that thought Texas Chainsaw 3D was good.

GatorDeb

May have been the annoying teenagers who laughed at every stupid joke like it was highbrow entertainment.

hanshotfirst1138

Who or what is Mowg?

At least it's honest. After an absence of over a decade serving solely in cameo parts, one-time mega-icon Arnold Schwarzenegger returns to the screen. Surprisingly though, Schwarzenegger's return came with an intriguing pedigree, the attached director being Korean cult favorite Kim Ji-Woon. Sadly, those hoping for subversiveness or anything out of the ordinary will be largely disappointed. In spite of Kim and his ace DP from across the sea and composer in tow, The Last Stand comes with Hollywood factory product stamped all over it, thanks largely to a pestrian sceenplay with some of the worst dialogue in recent memory (from an unknown screenwriter, with alleged rewrites from others). Coming courtest megabucks action producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, The Last Stand plays like a modern-day Western sprinkled with Southern Gothic, with a dash of Sergio Leone's European opera, dragged through Korea, and shipped back to Hollywood in an attempt to sand off as much of its edges as possible.

The Last Stand is the tale of Sheriff Ray Owens, a peacekeeper in a town where almost nothing goes on. But of course, being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, he carries a dark past where he was once secretly a super badass who walked away after seeing too much bloodshed. FBI agent Forest Whitaker has the country's number one drug fugitive in custody and is taking him away, but as he neglected to notice a giant crane on the roof, he manages to escape in souped-up Corvette ZR-1, which is awesome. It's a mass orgy of product placement from General Motors! He naturally decides to make a break for the border, but to do it, he has to go through Ray's town. After one of Ray's own winds up the victim of a gunshot wound courtesy of one of the evil Cortez's goons, Owens deputizes his Magnificent Seven squad for battle. It includes a wisecracking Johnny Knoxville, a sultry Jaimie Alexander, troubled Rodrigo Santoro, and Luis Guzman. Much choreographed chaos ensues.

Kim's world is one that's deliriously off-kilter, giving many scenes a slightly odd tone. His action set pieces attempt to be wildly out of control as well, but given how jaded most audiences are these days, he has to work hard for it. He does though, and the results are nothing new, but lots of fun, a giant pile of crashed cars, spent machine gun shells, and CG bloodletting. Kim wholly embraces the sheer absurdity of the whole enterprise, and keeps shaky cam and fast editing to a minimum. The film's extremely stilted dialogue ("My honor is not for sale!") and Kim's cast of odd Southern grotesques create a weird, super-stylized could play like a pack of massive cliches, or as a peculiar satire, it's difficult to tell which. A post-modern contemporary Western directed by a Korean with Austrian lead a supervillain played by a Swedish actor with a Southern twang accent should give you some idea of what kind of film you're watching. Even Knoxville is funny rather than annoying.

Schwarzenegger's weather beaten face is well-exploited by Kim, who paints him as an aging action hero who's past catches up with him. Schwarzenegger still winks like crazy at the audience, but Kim tinges his character with a melancholia about the cost of violence, and if you're intrepid, the whole film could be read as a wild satire, but it's also determinedly straight-faced. There's no irony to the proceedings at all, at least not overtly, and the film wholly embraces its High Noon by way of Rio Bravo by way of Assault on Precinct 13 premise. The film boasts some nice atmosphere and some cotton-candy colors, but it's largely played for good, old-fashioned fun. Kim carries the Western motifs to their conclusions, including a gleeful car-to-car cornfield duel and a wide-shot bridge showdown. The whole thing feels so determinedly old-fashioned, you just kind of have to smile.

In the meantime though, for Schwarzenegger fans and those pining for the glory days of 80s action cinema when the good guys were all outrageously righteous, the bad guys bled gallons and gallons of blood and all had foreign accents, and all little progress cinema has made since then completely ignored will probably take to The Last Stand. It's junk, but it's perfectly serviceable junk food, clocking in at a lean 107 minutes and full of all of the requisite blood and explosions action fans hanker for. It's totally unpretentious, aiming only to fulfill it's quota of good guys meting out justice to bad people in violent ways. It's gloriously old-fashioned, and it's loads of fun. Ah-nuld's back, and he's still kicking plenty of ass.

People I talk to-not film buffs, just people in general-tend to tell me these movies are horrible, I don't get why they keep going.

stingermck

Saw it today and thought it was great. More brutal than I was expecting. A slow burn like Rio Bravo until everything explodes.

Not only did I see a new Schwarzenegger movie in theaters but it also has trailers for 3 Bruce Willis movies and 1 for Sly. I felt like a teenager again.

DJariya

I saw The Last Stand 2 days ago and really enjoyed it.

Good to see Arnold back on the big screen as the lead of a big action movie. Kim did good work in his 1st American movie. Really well directed with solid action sequences.

I admit, seeing the trailers with Johnny Knoxville was annoying, but his scenes didn't bother me. The humor he brought to the movie actually worked for the context of the scenes.

The movie was like a mix of an old western and a simple old school action movie from the 80's. Arnold is old and I liked how the movie didn't take itself too seriously and poked fun at his age.

I know she was only a really minor supporting character, but holy shit...Christie was hot.

Sucks box office wise the movie is for all intents and purposes a flop. Hopefully Arnold's next picture will do better.

Why So Blu?

^ Indeed she was and I actually didn't recognize Genesis Rodriguez as the female agent. Hubba hubba, my name is Bubba!

islandclaws

I blind bought this only because: you people said it was good; and it was only $14.99 on Amazon.

Holy shit - pretty terrible. I'm positive that the only saving grace was Woon's direction, which prevented it from being a cheap, pedestrian U.S. action/western.

Arnold is suffering from Harrison Bored's Disease, where he just sounds so damn tired doing his line reading that he might as well just pass right out on screen.

This might be the worst pop-up movie town I've seen. It's certainly worse than the one in Thor. The only people who seem to live in it are the characters required for the film. And, boy, are they stock.

Every supporting actor is terrible. Everyone. Even Stormare, who seems to be doing a... Southern accent? Is that for real?

The CGI bullet hits and blood could not be worse.

So, you've got a major fugitive driving toward the border and no one can assemble a team to stop him except for Arnold and some half-ass deputies? Sure, I buy that...

Knoxville had a small role and, yet, it still wasn't small enough.

Final fight was so poorly choreographed it looked like an old walrus trying to beat a seal pup to death. Someone, please, as much as I hate to say it, stop Arnold from making movies. He's clearly not into it any longer.

JumpCutz

Who the hell said that?

DJariya doesn't count, because, well he loves EVERY action movie.

fumanstan

I thought it was good!

FRwL

I thought you were dead.

Osiris3657

Watched this last night. There was some good action, the gunfights were entertaining. A few things I didn't like: when it tried to be funny, it wasn't.
What was with that southern accent that Stormare was speaking in? It was awful and really obvious that it wasn't natural. Should have just let him speak in his native accent.
Also I know this is a really minor nitpick, but why does Arnie always have an American name in movies? Ray Owens? Really? They can't give him a simple Germanic name so it makes sense with his heavy accent?

Besides the Stormare accent and feeble attempts to be funny, it was OK. I was never bored, so I suppose that's a compliment.

I'll give it a grade of C+

FRwL

Major Alan Dutch Shaefer was his greatest name.

Charlie Goose

I liked it. There is absolutely nothing new here, and I'm not exactly sure why the kingpin needed an army just to drive through town, since he did it anyway during a firefight. However Arnold is an old pro and makes it work. There's some humor, likable side characters, and good shootouts. And I'm grateful they didn't try to stick in a subplot about Arnold's wife or daughter being kidnapped.

Solid Snake

Finally saw the BD i got from BF.

Damn fun movie.

Really doesn't feel like the almost 2 hours that it is. Funny and well deserved of its rating. Cool action too. It's a little weak cuz it hits some worn bits of cliche but... damnit. Woon knows how to make a movie and I'm glad they let him make a good one.

The real irksome moment for me is the standoff between Ray and Cartel guy. Not the fight itself.... just the cgi background.

Damn fun movie. Totally worth the cheap BF price I got it for.

davidh777

A friend had recommended this when it was new so I just saw it, but I didn't realize that was four years ago! Time flies when you're having fun, I guess.

Anyway, I thought it was a fun, cheesy B-grade action flick. I like it when the villain's plot is revealed, and Arnold being a small-town sheriff reminded me of Under Siege when they say "The cook's a SEAL?" And of course in any movie like this, people do dumb things, like the girl wandering around town, and when she's told to run, she has to ask "What are you doing there? Why is the street blocked off?" And then Jaimie Alexander (who I now know from Blindspot) acting as the "lookout" and saying "I see a bunch of guys" and not bothering to say how many or how heavily armed they are.

For mindless fun, I give it 3.5/5 stars.