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The Last Stand

(2013)

Arnie's comeback, and he's looking really old. The passing years gave the likes of Chuck Heston and Clint Eastwood added gravitas. But Arnie still has trouble delivering a mouthful of sentences, and his bulk now looks more like borderline flab than muscle. Which may explain why he has such trouble moving convincingly.

He's still enough of a presence that it’s a surprise when it takes so long to best Eduard Noriega in a mano-a-mano contest. But the references to his age seem borrowed from much better movies and stars (at one point he dons a pair of spectacles). Casting the Austrian Oak as a small-town sheriff must be one of the more incongruous roles he's taken (he even gets a ripe line to cover his unlikely presence, "You make us immigrants look bad"), but no one seems wholly comfortable with this cartoonish High Noon riff.

The script is neither funny nor clever enough to justify the far-fetched plot (cartel boss Noriega, busted from prison, drives a superfast car superfast to his destination, Arnie's sleepy Arizona border town, where his accomplices are building a bridge to Mexico). You wonder why Arnie picked this as his big return, but then you remember he starred in a decade of lacklustre movies before switching to governating.

Kim Jee-Woon stages an occasionally impressive piece of CGI blood-augmented action (it doesn’t looks remotely real), but his visuals are generally subdued. There’s a climactic knife fight that becomes suitably OTT, but he never succeeds in investing you in the proceedings. It’s more a case of carrying through your curiosity about how a 65 year-old action-Arnie fares. Jee-Woon also employs a rather ugly green/orange colour palate, washing the movie with a cheap sheen. Sometimes a leftfield choice like Jee-Woon pays off for a movie of this ilk, but here the results are an uncomfortable mish-mash of ill-fitting elements.

Forest Whitaker picks up his cheque as the FBI guy in pursuit of Noriega. This plot thread is highly generic (well, so is the whole thing), aside from the bizarre presence of aforementioned superfast car. Whitaker learns to grudgingly respect Arnie, of course, but the character beats are too unvarnished to make such a familiar scenario work (“He hung up on me again” is perhaps the movie’s best line).

Arnie's assortment of comedy sidekicks adds to the pervading straight-to-video vibe, like Tremors without the giant worms (or quality script, cast and confident tone). Luis Guzman does his stoned mumbling thing again, Jamie Alexander plays the girl deputy, and Johnny Knoxville acts the hyperactive arse (surprise!) I failed to notice Predator's Sonny Landham. Peter Stormare trots out his stock villain, which is reasonably entertaining. But the best moment involves Mrs. Salazar.

The Last Stand crashed and burned at the box office, and its east to see why. It looked cheapy and hacky in the trailers, which reflects the finished movie. It was cheap, but not cheap enough that it recovered its costs (even Arnie’s previously reliable international fan base stayed away). And this isn’t a great Arnie role; it doesn’t help that he no longer seems to have the vitality that previously excused his shortcomings as an actor. Where this puts his career reboot is unclear; he’ll need to find a successful solo vehicle soon, or permanent retirement may beckon.

**1/2

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

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My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

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Hold the Dark (2018)
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Ridley Scott Ridders Ranked
During the '80s, I anticipated few filmmakers' movies more than Ridley Scott's; those of his fellow xenomorph wrangler James Cameron, perhaps. In both cases, that eagerness for something equalling their early efforts receded as they studiously managed to avoid the heights they had once reached. Cameron's output dropped off a cliff after he won an Oscar. Contrastingly, Scott's surged like never before when his film took home gold. Which at least meant he occasionally delivered something interesting, but sadly, it was mostly quantity over quality. Here are the movies Scott has directed in his career thus far - and with his rate of productivity, another 25 by the time he's 100 may well be feasible – ranked from worst to best.

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Tomb Raider (2018)
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Weir’s pictures are often thematically rich, more anchored by narrative than those of, say, Terrence Malick but similarly preoccupied with big ideas and their expression. He has a rare grasp of poetry, symbolism and the mythic. Weir also displays an acute grasp of the subjective mind-set, and possesses …

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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