Date Night: The Last Stand

In which I review a randomly-selected movie on Netflix with Becky.

Of the recent trend of retro-action movies headlined by rapidly aging 80's action stars, The Last Stand is probably the one that I was most looking forward to: a fit and muscular Schwarzenegger  shooting up a small desert town with the reckless abandon of model 800 Terminator, all while quipping about how he feels old.  We've certainly come a long way from the limp and sagging Governator we had to endure in Rise of the Machines.  Between that and the fact that The Sacrament was so surprisingly good, I thought that I could ease back on poking fun of Becky's method of picking out movies.

Sadly, it doesn't look like Becky will get any breaks for picking out Crockzilla.

When cartel boss Gabriel Cortez escapes from federal custody in a Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 at speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour, the FBI race to beat him to the Mexican border.  His plan isn't to make it to a heavily reinforced border crossing that is expecting him well in advance, but to construct a bridge crossing into Mexico where the canyons  are thinnest: just outside of Sommerton Junction, Arizona.  When Sommerton Junction sheriff Ray Owens uncovers the plot, resulting in the death of one of his deputies, nothing will stop him from arresting the men responsible.

The Last Stand is a movie that had everything going from it: a reinvigorated Arnold Schwarzenegger, a universally under-used Forrest Whitaker, up-and-coming female action star Jaime Alexander (Lady Sif from the Thor films and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and Johnny Knoxville - who is consistently funny despite himself.  It had a suitably 80s set-up, promising fast cars and excessive explosions.  It didn't even look to take itself too seriously, incorporating some self-directed meta-humor concerning the age of its star.

Despite everything it had going into production, however, it never quite seemed to coalesce into a workable film.  While it's never exactly a bad one, it is likewise never near being a good one.  The films parallel plots - investigating a curmudgeonly old farmer's murder and Cortez's desperate bid for the Mexican border - don't really come together the way that you'd hope that they would.  Sheriff Owens' back story seems more necessitated by nostalgia than by the plot and the on-the-ground villain is easily the most forgettable character in the film (and I am including Deputy So-and-So who valiantly died to motivate his coworkers into actually doing their job).

When Cortez actually makes it to Sommerton Junction, the resulting standoff between him and Owens lacks the visceral thrills of the movies that its trying to emulate: merely sloshing through the tired motions of what an action genre climax is supposed to look like.  We get car chases, firefights and explosions - even mid-bridge punchout between Owns and Cortez - but nothing that's actually all that exciting to watch.  Its like director Kim Jee-woon understood what people liked about movies like Die Hard without actually understanding why they liked it in the first place.

When it really comes down to it, you'd probably be better off rewatching Total Recall or Terminator 2 than checking out The Last Stand.  While not quite a waste of time, it does feel like a very "by the numbers" action movie that gives audiences what it thinks that they want, rather than what they actually want.  I sincerely hope that Schwarzenegger's return to the big screen will be defined by better movies than this sub-par production.  In the end , I give the film a decent 4.5 out of 10 and Becky gives it a 6.5.

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