Critics reviews

[The plot] alone could make for satisfyingly stripped-down genre fare all on its own, but a great deal of The Last Stand's raucous energy comes from its acute casting. As a former narcotics officer with a distaste for violence, Schwarzenegger's Sheriff Ray Owens is a cheeky cinematic/political catalyst to the film's melting-pot cast of characters, and precisely the kind of downplayed comeback role the aging star's career needed, if not quite the one he deserved.

It's obviously a Bad Movie: lame, erratic, sometimes risible. It does end strongly, in an extended shoot-out that doesn't disgrace Korean director Kim Jee-woon (though it doesn't match the pugnacious power of his outrageously good I Saw the Devil), but everything before that is snooze-worthy.

The film feels like a South Korean action comedy with its funky compositions and fluid camerawork, which privilege spatial coherence over moment-to-moment sensation. This is enjoyable but familiar, full of craft and comic energy but devoid of thematic urgency or personal investment.

One hallmark of Kim's directing that made the transition to his Hollywood debut, albeit with less panache or success, is his habit of rapidly intercutting between wide shots of an unfolding battle and shaky, vibratory close-ups—inflected by zooms and pans—which may issue from any point on the vertical axis, independent of any point of view. This technique not only shapes the narrative visually but excerpts the action in a way that's simultaneously slightly illegible and extremely exciting.

Crisp action sequences which play with perspective also raise the film beyond the casual shaky cam aesthetic, and the film is brilliantly structured with Cortez quite literally driving to a climax, cross-cutting between innovative car chases and Ray's sleepy town.

Schwarzenegger isn't quite right for the plot's easygoing Eastwoodian setup and, though critics may dare to dream, he's never going to grunt through his own Rio Bravo. Yet these shortcomings disappear as the movie strips down to its surprisingly satisfying payoff: an '80s-style actioner heavy on the squibs and catchphrases. (Normally a lot artier, South Korean director Kim Jee-woon has done his dutiful homework and nails it.)

The Last Stand commits few major sins while indulging all the usual minor sins (overemphatic blood-and-guts, useless exposition about stuff we don't care about and hardly any explanation of stuff we might actually be curious about). Those sins are ones we've gotten used to forgiving while enjoying our action pablum. But after the hyper-fire-powered standoff in the middle of town, the movie's second-tier climax brings a new definition to the term "corny" and winds up falling very flat.

Making his Hollywood debut, South Korean director Kim Jee-woon (I Saw the Devil, The Good, the Bad, the Weird) has good fun with such American iconography as the Arizona desert, oversize guns, and Arnold Schwarzenegger; but the film still feels like a South Korean action comedy in its funky compositions and fluid camerawork, which privilege spatial coherence over moment-to-moment sensation.

...The Last Stand marks the Hollywood debut of prolific Korean genre director Kim Jee-woon, who seems to have tamped down his florid extravagance for American consumption—particularly during the movie's dreary, expository first hour. Then Kim finally lets loose, and the imaginatively choreographed mayhem that ensues—culminating in two fast cars chasing each other across a pesky cornfield—can be a wonder to behold.

One of the most refreshing aspects of The Last Stand, despite its foreign inflection, is its acceptance of both western and action-film conventions on their own terms, refusing to regard itself as operating outside of or superior to the genre; it aspires instead to simply be a great example of classical genre filmmaking, a modest but nevertheless admirable goal. Would that more modern action films did the same.