Last Stand, The : Movie Review


To call the ho-hum and inconsequential "The Last Stand" a B-movie is to give it too much credit; only on rare occasions does it deserve even a C. The first leading-man role for Arnold Schwarzenegger in a decade (his last, not counting his virtual cameos in 2010's "The Expendables" and 2012's "The Expendables 2," was 2003's "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines"), the film has gunfire and exploding body parts to spare, but wastes the former mayor of California in a one-note stock part that doesn't trust his age (he's 65) or his abilities and gives him little to do until the relatively crowd-pleasing finale. Before this mano-a-mano, bridge-set fight to the death overlooking a canyon, Schwarzenegger mostly makes "I'm-getting-too-old-for-this" faces and utters a single bull's-eye one-liner: when drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) exclaims, "You fucked up my car!" Schwarzenegger replies, "You fucked up my day off!" The rest is ultra-violent drivel, filled to the brim with supporting archetypes and caricatures not worth caring about and a plot that values guns more than human life. With no higher aspirations or thematic intentions, let alone deeper historic significance (think 2012's "Django Unchained"), the results are more queasy than a good time.

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Author : Dustin Putman