I must be watching between 100 and 200 movies a year, for this blog. It's both a good and a bad thing, because I discover all sorts of hidden gem on this pilgrimage, but I also lose patience for bullshit movies a lot quicker. Tired patterns, hollow writing, unoriginal gimmicks, it becomes much more obvious once you're given a wide range of comparison. It's not hard to make a decent movie. THE LAST STAND is basically a two hours long joke/tribute to Arnold Schwarzenegger and his legacy of on-screen ultraviolence. It's not a very smart movie, it doesn't even try to be, but it's righteous nonetheless because it knows what it's trying to be and it's only trying to be awesome.
Ray Owens (Arnie) is the sheriff of the small border town of Summer Junction, Arizona and arguably the only competent lawman in town. He's been trying to take it easy to his day off, but a series of strange occurrences have been keeping him busy: shady strangers at the local diner, the violent death of a local hermit (the amazing Harry Dean Stanton) and a phone call from some random FBI big shot (Forest Whitaker) telling him a cartel boss on the loose (quintessential Hispanic cinema villain Eduardo Noriega) will probably try to cross HIS town on his way back to Mexico later that day. Well, it's not going to happen on his watch. It doesn't matter if he's ill-equipped and understaffed to face death and destruction, it's not happening on his goddamn watch.
THE LAST STAND is not a particularly well-crafted movie. Sometimes, it feels like it doesn't even try to create compelling scenes or tell a story worthy of your attention for two hours. There's this scene where Zach Gilford and Jaimie Alexander are facing an army of trained, well-equipped killers alone, with their service weapons only. It's a bad scene meant to make the nameless bad guys feel invincible. The villain squad (lead by other quintessential villain Peter Stormare) are unexplainably geared up to overthrow a government. At one point, they decide to kill the lights and turn on their night vision goggles in order to face two terrified small town deputies. Same goes for Eduardo Noriega's character, who's more of a guy riding a collection car for two hours than a compelling bad guy.
All these years later, he still doesn't give a fuck.
The obvious and sometimes painful flaws of THE LAST STAND ultimately don't matter because Arnie's in it and when he takes the screen to dish out punishment and justice, he makes all your woes go away. This is how THE LAST STAND comes off as self-aware genius: Everything in that movie is an excuse for Arnie to fuck shit up and fuck shit up he does. Does anybody know if the guy designs his own on-screen kills? Because they are absolutely gruesome and fantastic. My two favourites would be running guys over with his Jeep while shooting others from the window with his shotgun and shooting some poor fool in the face WHILE falling down from the roof of a building. Nobody can do what Arnie does in movies, anymore. He has this kinetic gracefulness about inflicting death to anonymous, yet deserving bad guys that would make me watch just about anything he does.
So, was THE LAST STAND a poorly crafted movie saved by an iconic action movie star, or was it an elaborate love letter to Arnold Schwarzenegger's uncanny talents for violence and destruction? I have no idea, but I prefer to this it's the latter. THE LAST STAND cannot avoid its destiny of being filed as another triumph for Arnie. It doesn't have a strong identity, it's another one of these movies that use the Mexican cartels as a placeholder for evil, not even bothering to craft interesting characters because it takes for granted that the viewer understands why the cartels are evil in the first place. Arnie's what THE LAST STAND does best, and fortunately enough for the viewer, he has a VERY large place in the storyline (him and his creative kills both). In the end, it's simple: just watch it for Arnie, guys. He will make it all OK.
So, was THE LAST STAND a poorly crafted movie saved by an iconic action movie star, or was it an elaborate love letter to Arnold Schwarzenegger's uncanny talents for violence and destruction? I have no idea, but I prefer to this it's the latter. THE LAST STAND cannot avoid its destiny of being filed as another triumph for Arnie. It doesn't have a strong identity, it's another one of these movies that use the Mexican cartels as a placeholder for evil, not even bothering to craft interesting characters because it takes for granted that the viewer understands why the cartels are evil in the first place. Arnie's what THE LAST STAND does best, and fortunately enough for the viewer, he has a VERY large place in the storyline (him and his creative kills both). In the end, it's simple: just watch it for Arnie, guys. He will make it all OK.