Review: ‘The Last Stand’

Come with me if you want meager box office returns…

Making his return to what made him popular to begin with, Arnold Schwarzenegger is back in his first leading role in an action movie in ten years, this time playing not a homicidal cyborg from the future nor an undercover cop disguised as a kindergarten teacher nor a barbarian nor a pregnant man but a small town sheriff, presiding over a workforce comprised of three deputies keeping watch over a town that seems to consist of one main street and one intersection, on which every business is conveniently located. To say that Arnold’s newest action movie is a small one is a bit of an understatement, but what better way to make your once and future action star seem larger than life all over again?

In “The Last Stand,” Arnold plays Sheriff Ray Owens, who of course can’t just be a regular old small town sheriff, as it is quickly revealed and repeated in several scenes that Ray was a primetime narcotics agent with the LAPD and took the job as a small town Arizona sheriff as a form of retirement. But of course in a movie when a guy has seen too much action and blood and danger and actively tries to get away from that danger, he finds that the danger and destruction follow him, so set forth into motion a plot involving a ruthless Mexican cartel leader breaking out of US Federal custody and using a super powered Corvette to speed back to Mexico through Sheriff Ray Owens’ lil ole town. Of course Owens ain’t having none of that. Mexican stand out off. With a car. Boom.

It’s a ridiculous movie, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is much to its own benefit. The action is over the top and absurd, as people are cut in half by submachine guns and blood splatter becomes a regular thing, but the most absurd aspect of it all has to be old Arnold running around doing action-y things. Once or twice he pokes fun at his age but for the most part he’s back to doing his old superhuman schtick, though this time around his age is painfully obvious to everyone whenever he tries to lift himself off the ground or has to do any serious quick movement. Which is often. Because this is an action movie.

But overall it’s fun and fairly entertaining so I’m not going to be hard on it. It is better than movies like “The 6^th Day” and “Collateral Damage” and the other dreck he had done in the late 90s and early 00s before his stint as governor of California, so it all depends on how much you like the guy and want to see him in such a role. Being surrounded by the well-meaning but now low-rent likes of people like Johnny Knoxville, Luis Guzman, Eduardo Noriega and Jaimie Alexander doesn’t do him any favors, as this movie definitely feels like a direct-to-video type of affair if it wasn’t for Arnold’s high profile involvement. This is definitely the kind of movie that would make for an amusing DVD rental on a rainy Saturday afternoon, that’s for sure.