The last stand movie action clip

Back from the Governor's Mansion in Sacramento to the daily grind of Hollywood, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not only in an action movie that might have been designed for Clint Eastwood, he's also as slimmed-down, craggy-faced and ill-coiffed as his fellow Republican politician. Under the expert direction of Kim Jee-woon (this is the Korean film-maker's English-language film debut), Arnie plays former top LA cop Ray Owens, now in semi-retirement as a small-town Arizona sheriff on the Mexican border. What starts out as a cop movie turns into a western when a third-generation drug kingpin escapes from the Feds in Las Vegas and heads south to the border, where a gang led by Peter Stormare are installing a bridge to facilitate his return to Mexico.

The Last Stand movie cast and crew

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Forest Whitaker
 
Titos Menchaca  

Peter Stormare
 
Richard Dillard  

Eduardo Noriega
 
Luis Guzmán  

Sonny Landham

Jaimie Alexander
 
Mathew Greer  

Johnny Knoxville  

Chris Browning

Zach Gilford  




Directed by
Jee-woon Kim

The Last Stand movie overview

The advertising tag-line for The Last Stand, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rust-nibbled comeback vehicle, runs as follows: “Not in his town. Not on his watch.” It’s as gruffly confident as might be expected, and yet it raises two awkward questions: is this still Arnold’s town, and is his watch still ticking?

Almost a decade has passed since the 65-year-old bodybuilder-turned-avatar of the American Dream last anchored a film, and The Last Stand’s box office postings suggest that the answer to these questions is no. Schwarzenegger’s action-western hybrid made $6.3 million in the US on its opening weekend: a far cry from the $44 million debut for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003, his last feature before serving two terms as Governor of California.

Happily, The Last Stand lis a zippier, zestier film than both Terminator 3 and its own hackneyed premise suggests. For this we can probably thank its Korean director Kim Jee-woon, who, having crafted an Eastern Western in The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), is now revisiting the most American of all genres on its home turf.

Schwarzenegger plays Ray Owens, the sheriff of a sleepy border town through which an absconded cartel boss (Eduardo Noriega) plans to make his escape to Mexico. Between him and freedom — the bad, Mexican kind — stand Owens, his cowpoke deputies (Luis Guzmán, Jaimie Alexander, Zach Gilford) and a local gun nut called Dinkum (the Jackass star Johnny Knoxville), who has stockpiled a comprehensive range of armaments in an enormous metal shed.

Big Law Enforcement, led by FBI agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker), are no help whatsoever.

There is a survivalist ethos at The Last Stand’s heart that might have been lifted from a National Rifle Association pamphlet: when trouble comes calling, Dinkum’s wildly paranoiac hoarding proves to have in fact been very sensible, and his arsenal (which includes that trusty western staple, a Gatling gun) is put to good use.

This is a truer reflection of the proclivities of the American gun lobby than, say, the stylised violence of Quentin Tarantino, although to penalise The Last Stand on those grounds would mean reappraising every dumb Hollywood action flick made between 1982 and 1999. Accept it instead for what it is: a fun mulch of car chases, gunplay and deadpan one liners, which ends, perhaps tellingly, in a giant field of maize. In Schwarzenegger’s America, there is still corn as far as the eye can see.

The Last Stand movie review

Back from the Governor's Mansion in Sacramento to the daily grind of Hollywood, Arnold Schwarzenegger is not only in an action movie that might have been designed for Clint Eastwood, he's also as slimmed-down, craggy-faced and ill-coiffed as his fellow Republican politician. Under the expert direction of Kim Jee-woon (this is the Korean film-maker's English-language film debut), Arnie plays former top LA cop Ray Owens, now in semi-retirement as a small-town Arizona sheriff on the Mexican border. What starts out as a cop movie turns into a western when a third-generation drug kingpin escapes from the Feds in Las Vegas and heads south to the border, where a gang led by Peter Stormare are installing a bridge to facilitate his return to Mexico.

There's an allegory lurking here. The FBI are led by decent-minded African American Forest Whitaker who doesn't trust the local sheriff, and when things go pear-shaped, the only man able to put the American hearse before the Mexican cartel is Arnie. Loudly echoing John Wayne in Rio Bravo, he swears in five trusted deputies to protect the town against the approaching Hispanic thugs. Fortunately they're not only armed to the teeth, but one of their number runs a historical weapons museum, and a local old lady is packing a rod. What do you call a place like this? Home – if you belong to the National Rifle Association, who might well have sponsored this film.

The Last Stand movie images

                                                       Click here for more images