The Last Stand

The Last Stand - Dir. Kim Ji-woon (2013)

"How are you, Sheriff?"

"Old."

Well, he said, he'd be back. After serving two terms as the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger returns to the silver screen with The Last Stand. It's his first starring role since Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003.

Arnold is Ray Owens, a former LAPD officer now working as the sheriff of sleepy Summerton Junction, located near the border of Arizona and Mexico. Away from big city life, Owens' main problem is the obnoxious mayor constantly parking his Camaro in a fire zone. Those peaceful and tranquil days are over when notorious drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) escapes from FBI custody. Grabbing a female agent (Genesis Rodriguez) hostage, Cortez races to the border at over 200mph in a modified Corvette ZR1. Cortez already has a small army waiting for him near Summerton building a bridge across a canyon to escape into Mexico. The only ones that can stop him are Owens and his ragtag bunch of deputies (Zach Gilford, Jaimie Alexander, Luis Guzman), a war vet (Rodrigo Santoro) sleeping it off in their jail cell, and a local nutcase named Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville).

Arnold never was the most talented thespian, but he succeeded because of his charisma and undeniable screen presence. Neither of those things has dulled even in his sixties. Sure, he's older, a little less mobile, and his one-liners don't have the same zing they used to. "You fucked up my day off," won't go down in movie history the way, "Hasta la vista, baby" did. Still, he's pretty damned entertaining. The Last Stand doesn’t attempt to hide the fact that we are dealing with an aging Arnold as he assumes the kind of grizzled role Clint Eastwood might have.

The script was penned by Andrew Knauer with rewrites by Jeffrey Nachmanoff (The Day After Tomorrow) and George Nolfi (The Adjustment Bureau) to tailor the project once Arnold signed on. The story is a modern day equivalent of Rio Bravo while trading on the usual clichés and narrative formulas of the action genre. The supporting cast is filled with archetypes including the eager to please rookie thirsting for more action and the chronic underachiever who must rise to the occasion. And The Last Stand may have gone overboard in giving Arnold two comic relief sidekicks in the form of Luis Guzman (at his most Luis Guzman) and Johnny Knoxville. While Eduardo Noriega doesn't make the most memorable villain, he does have Peter Stormare as his lead henchman. Stormare is always fun as a bad guy and his inexplicable attempt at a southern accent is hilarious. Unfortunately, the movie grinds to a halt whenever it cuts to the FBI control room where Forest Whitaker proves his tactical genius by shouting, "Find him," and "Do it now," at his underlings.

You don't go to a movie like The Last Stand for emotional character development. As a solid action movie, it doesn't disappoint. The credit goes to Kim Ji-woon who makes in his first American directorial effort. Kim leads a South Korean invasion to Hollywood with Park Chan-wook's Stoker seeing release in March and Bong Joon-ho arriving later in the year with Snowpiercer. Anyone who has seen Kim's The Good, the Bad, and the Weird or I Saw the Devil might go into The Last Stand with high expectations. However, none of the action sequences ever match up to the wild inventiveness seen in either of those pictures. Yet, it never feels as if Kim were handcuffed the way. Cortez's daring escape with a giant magnet is well-staged and the climactic confrontation is riddled with cool moments such as Arnold tackles a man off a roof and shoots him in the head in mid-air and the best use of a flare gun ever committed to film. Then, there's a great car chase with Owens and Cortez playing cat and mouse through a corn field.

The Last Stand's release is rather untimely with the debate on gun control raging across the country. This isn't just because of the violence, but also because much of the humor is derived from Knoxville's character as a gun collecting loony who has found various ways to skirt government regulations. But, The Last Stand is so silly and inconsequential, it could hardly be taken seriously the way Zero Dark Thirty ignited discussions about torture.

Arnold's star power has lost its luster over the years. In the 80's, The Last Stand may have opened to big numbers. Today, the film opened in 9^th place with a paltry $6.2 million. Maybe The Last Stand will find its audience on DVD because it is incredibly fun with an action-packed third act.

Rating: *** (*****)