Review of The Last Stand (2013) by Doug R — 23 Apr 2014

The Last Stand was supposed to me Arnold Schwarzenegger's big comeback, but instead it turned out to be a big bomb and a movie that nobody remembers. Honestly, I can see why. Last Stand is a very generic action film with Arnold starring in it. It is quite boring, the characters are quite lame, most of the performances missed the mark, and Arnold seemed like he was sleepwalking throughout the entire film.

The plot is very simple. An escape convict named Cortez has escaped from FBI custody and is heading for the town of Summerton Junction. It is now up to Sherif Ray Owens (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his deputies to stop him and his friends. The plot is very straight-forward, which I do not mind if the movie is fun and the characters are enjoyable but that is not really the case.

Arnold really has no energy here. He just seemed like he was on auto-pilot, and he had no memorable lines. I know he is getting older but I have seen him give better performances lately. He gave a much better performance in Escape Plan. The other actors did not do a great job either. Everyone either underacts or overacts their lines, particularly the FBI boss played by Forest Whitaker. He is supposed to be intimidating but he just comes off as so over-the-top in this that I could not take him seriously. The only actor who does a decent job is Jaimie Alexander who plays the female deputy. She is one of the best actresses working today and deserves more jobs. She plays the only somewhat decent character too. The villains are one-note, which would be fine if the movie was fun and the good guys were fun, but that is not the case.

The only saving grace was that some of the action scenes are well-done. I like that that this is a hard R and they do not pull punches with the violence. They go for PG-13 a lot lately to make the film more marketable. Some of the action scenes particularly the action scene at the end was quite good. However I do not think there were enough action scenes. The beginning of the film was very slow and boring. A slow build is fine if the characters are fun, but they're not. Also much of the film seemed to be dedicated to promoting cars. A good portion of this film felt like a car commercial. It was horrible.

Overall, The Last stand is a forgettable action film. It had some fun action scenes, but the characters are nothing, the villain is nothing, only a couple people gave a good performance, Arnold is on auto-pilot, and much of the film felt like a car commercial. I can see why no one saw this film when it came out and why it is now forgotten. The film is good as a time-waster and not much else.