3.5 stars. Rating: R, for considerable violence, gore and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.18.13
The New Year seems to have
brought a run of transplanted Westerns.
Last week, the Magnificent
Seven template wound up in 1950s Los Angeles, as Gangster Squad. This week,
Howard Hawks’ iconic 1959 John Wayne oater, Rio Lobo — which John Carpenter
riffed, just as suspensefully, as 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13 — has been transformed
into a modern-day mission to stop a notorious Mexican drug kingpin from making
it back to the safety of his native country.
 |
| When screwball Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville, being carried) gets pinned down by gunfire, Frank (Rodrigo Santoro) charges into the thick of battle in a rescue attempt. Things have gotten out of hand in the sleepy little town of Sommerton Junction, and they're about to get even worse... |
The only thing in his way: the
helplessly outnumbered and outgunned citizens in the pokey little border town
of Sommerton Junction.
The Last Stand marks the
American directorial debut of South Korean director Kim Jee-woon, perhaps known
on these shores for A Tale of Two Sisters and his genre-bending Oriental
Western, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, which was Korea’s top box-office hit
in 2008.
No surprise, then, that Kim would
favor us with a variation on a classic American Western known for its blend of
suspense, deftly sketched characters and snarky humor (in this case, quite dark
at times).
Frankly, Arnold Schwarzenegger
couldn’t have selected a better comeback vehicle, at this point in his career.
Andrew Knauer’s story — clearly shaped by the earlier Hawks and Carpenter
films, with scripting assists from Jeffrey Nachmanoff and George Nolfi — plays
to Arnie’s advancing age, while amply demonstrating that movie action heroes
never die, they just find more inventive ways to get the job done.
Mind you, this scenario is wholly
outlandish and ludicrous, and no laws are broken more than the basic laws of
physics. But it’s all in good fun — if unexpectedly gory at times — and you’ll
have no trouble embracing Kim’s all-stops-out rhythm.
Events kick off late one evening
in Las Vegas, as grim-faced FBI Agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker) oversees
the transfer of drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) via a special
prisoner convoy. Borrowing a gag from James Bond’s You Only Live Twice, Cortez makes an impressive escape; within minutes, he’s speeding from the scene
at 250 miles per hour (!) in a tricked-up Corvette ZR1.
Worse yet, Cortez has a hostage
handcuffed in the passenger seat: FBI Agent Ellen Richards (Genesis Rodriguez).
