The Last Stand (2013)
Directed by Kim Jee-woon
Ray Owens is sheriff of the quiet US border town of Sommerton Junction after leaving the LAPD following a bungled operation. Following his escape from the FBI, a notorious drug baron, his gang, and a hostage are heading toward Sommerton Junction where the police are preparing to make a last stand to intercept them before they cross the border. Owens is reluctant to become involved but ultimately joins in with the law enforcement efforts.
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What critics say influenced The Last Stand
The title tells us "The Last Stand" is a modern-day Western, borrowing elements of "Rio Bravo" and a dozen other films.
So do any citizens who’ve seen the movies The Last Stand is based on: the 1959 Howard Hawks Western Rio Bravo and John Carpenter’s 1976 sorta-remake Assault on Precinct 13.
Anyway, the sheriff like Gary Cooper in “High Noon” — or maybe it’s John Wayne in “Rio Bravo” — stands in the street of his little Arizonan border town and dares Cortez to come through.
The extreme violence is a distraction, because at its heart, "The Last Stand" is as simple and familiar as a favorite cowboy film - particularly "Rio Bravo," the Howard Hawks classic that had John Wayne, an old coot, a drunk, a green kid and a lovely lady trying hard to bring a well-connected criminal to justice.
It's a modern-day Western -- a souped-up and dumbed-down "Rio Bravo," if you will -- with Schwarzenegger making like John Wayne as border town Sheriff Ray Owens, the last man standing between a runaway bad guy (Mexican drug baron Eduardo Noreiga) and his freedom.
Tossing together spare parts from “Rio Bravo,” “Jackass,” NRA promos and vintage muscle-car commercials, this thin, jokey star vehicle elevates a back-of-the-bar-napkin script with a string of proficient and sensationally violent setpieces.
(Exhibit A: The slice-and-dice treatment of John Woo’s “Hard Target.”)
So do any citizens who’ve seen the movies The Last Stand is based on: the 1959 Howard Hawks Western Rio Bravo and John Carpenter’s 1976 sorta-remake Assault on Precinct 13.
Korean director Kim Ji-woon is among the most gifted, versatile genre stylists in the world, with a wrestling comedy (The Foul King), an idiosyncratic horror melodrama ( A Tale Of Two Sisters ), a spaghetti Western/comedy ( The Good, The Bad, The Weird ), and a serial-killer thriller ( I Saw The Devil ) to his credit.
The movie is far from Kim Jee-woon’s best work, but it’s a mostly enjoyable U.S. debut that will hopefully inspire audiences to track down some of his previous films, especially the excellent revenge thriller "I Saw the Devil."
"The Last Stand" is the English-language directorial debut of talented Korean filmmaker Jee-woon Kim (2011's " I Saw the Devil "), and while his penchant for gore has stayed intact, the brains to go along with it have been obliterated beyond recognition.
The cartoonish nature of the proceedings is at times heightened and at other times mitigated by Kim’s forceful action chops, which were recently demonstrated in his spaghetti-Western pastiche “The Good the Bad the Weird” and his merciless revenge thriller “ I Saw the Devil .”
Perhaps best known for such high profile foreign films as A Tale of Two Sisters, The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, and the brilliant I Saw the Devil, he brings a knowledge of the genre and all its telling blood-soaked tropes without kowtowing completely to them.
The Last Stand is very much a star vehicle, cleverly written by Andrew Knauer and directed by Korean genre-master Kim Je-woon, especially known for his action films such as the disturbingly violent I Saw the Devil .