The leader of a drug cartel busts out of a courthouse and speeds to the Mexican border, where the only thing in his path is a sheriff and his inexperienced staff.
The film is a little High Noon, a little Rio Bravo, but mostly it’s an excuse for jokes at Arnie’s expense.
Arnie’s toe-dip back into the action-cinema pool is a daft bit of fluff rather than a bruising mission statement. Get through the plot and you’ll be rewarded with 30 minutes of whirligig mayhem.
It remains to be seen whether Schwarzenegger can fully resurrect his acting career.
Creaky, lethargic and daft.
But as comebacks go, Schwarzenegger has chosen a really good vehicle with which to remind people of how he became so popular in the first place. And while there are several jokes to acknowledge his age, the big man doesn't shirk from the physical demands of the role and still knows how to deliver a crowd-pleasing spectacle.
Accept it instead for what it is: a fun mulch of car chases, gunplay and deadpan one liners, which ends, perhaps tellingly, in a giant field of maize. In Schwarzenegger’s America, there is still corn as far as the eye can see.
Think of High Noon with a lot of explosions and a cyborg instead of Gary Cooper.
The expectations placed upon both the sheriff and Schwarzenegger are modest, but with the help of a decent supporting cast and some self-aware humour, they emerge with dignity in tact.
If this farrago is the best that Schwarzenegger is being offered these days, he might as well go back into politics.
Korean film-maker Kim Jee-woon (who gave us The Good, the Bad and the Weird) gives it plenty of directorial welly, and it's good to see a film with cop cars flying through the air.
What do you call a place like this? Home – if you belong to the National Rifle Association, who might well have sponsored this film.
This is unquestionably Arnie's show and while certainly older and less nimble, he's clearly having fun rolling back the years to satisfying effect.
More of a solid-to-middling comeback than a triumphant one, The Last Stand starts flat before exploding into an entertaining last third. Arguably it’s not a three-star film, but since it’s great to see Arnold Schwarzenegger back let’s not give him too much of a raw deal.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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