Review of The Last Stand (2013) by Damon R — 24 Feb 2014

Crammed full of more Z-Grade slapstick than a Three Stooges marathon featuring Joe Besser, Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest actioner unfortunately laughs all the way to box office bankruptcy. No stranger to dumbed down shoot-em'-ups, the one-time Governor of California has certainly seen more Commandos than Terminators throughout his career. Talk of this being his comeback, however, is purely presumptuous. It's more like a rebound from an unfortunate breakup, with our puffy out-of-breath pensioner hero disappearing for long stretches with the supporting cast doing most of the heavy lifting. Hopefully, the title isn't as prophetic as all that. He deserves a better send off. Frankly, we all do.

In this R-rated actioner, the leader of a drug cartel (Eduardo Noriega) busts out of a courthouse and speeds to the Mexican border, where the only thing in his path is a sheriff (Schwarzenegger) and his inexperienced staff (Johnny Knoxville, Luis Guzman, Jaimie Alexander).

With his breakthrough The Good, the Bad, The Weird, director Kim Jee-woon found a successful formula integrating knockabout comedy into blood sport. With this bloody spectacle, however, such integration proves completely miscalculated. Both the jokes and bloodshed are presented in such an over-the-top manner that the laughs and winces come in the wrong places--you laugh at the bloodshed and wince at the jokes. And how is it that Schwarzenegger's small-town sheriff came from Texas, honed his skills in LA, returned home, and STILL has an impenetrable Eastern European accent? There's been a lot of suspension of disbelief over the years with the Austrian Oak, but such a gratuitous misstep can't be explained away.

Bottom line: Collateral Dammit.