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91It's a crackerjack B movie worthy of comparison to such stylishly low-down, smart-meets-dumb, hyper-violent entertainments as the 1997 Kurt Russell thriller "Breakdown," Clint Eastwood's infamous police bloodbath "The Gauntlet," John Carpenter's original "Assault on Precinct 13," and Arnold's own overlooked 1986 outing "Raw Deal."
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88One of its most refreshing aspects 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.
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80There's savvy in Schwarzenegger's understanding of his appeal. Always foreign yet weirdly Americanized in our dreams, the big guy is a craggy monument in need of a countryside. He's back in the place that deserves him.
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Jan 23, 201375The Last Stand marks the American debut of the Korean director Jee-woon Kim, who delivers a half-dozen quality kills that will leave audiences squirming and then laughing at the sheer audacity of it all.
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75Dig just a shade beneath the surface, trade in the text for the subtext, and a more interesting picture emerges – a little richer, sadder, almost poignant. Arnie is back again, yet now, as a storied immigrant nearing the end of his tale, he's become an odd sight to behold.
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75It's a struggle at times, mostly because the action-movie clichés haven't been weeded out of the script, but the film is cheerfully, irresistibly destructive - an old-fashioned, "Rio Bravo" shoot-'em-up with the hicktown spirit of "Tremors," though it isn't as good as either.
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70It's an enjoyably old-fashioned shoot-out, if you can shake off the current headlines and sink in to a fantasy of hyper-violence that plays like an NRA vision of America the Beautiful.
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Jan 18, 201370If that sounds like Schwarzenegger might actually be called on to act this time, you're right. And to his credit, this is the loosest the guy's been in ages. His amiable banter rarely feels forced, and even the obligatory jokes about his age feel genuine.
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70The movie comes up with a couple of tender moments that could pass for human, and a mano-a-mano climax in which the superhero of yore, the glint in his eye dulled but not extinguished, functions as a weirdly touching tyrannosaurus.
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Jan 17, 201370Johnny Knoxville offers comic relief as the goofball proprietor of a back-road gun museum, which conveniently allows for an odd assortment of weapons to be used in the climactic battle. It's that kind of movie.
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Jan 17, 201370Kim 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.
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Jan 16, 201367Despite his acknowledged age, creaking bones, and reduced nerve, Schwarzenegger still delivers quite a performance in this fun, straight-ahead action film.
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63The film, directed by South Korean Jee-woon Kim, hits all the necessary action beats and effectively blends in the humor.
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60Kim Jee-woon's riff on the western is an entertaining frolic back-loaded with gore and guffaws. Arnie's back!
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Jan 24, 201360Arnie'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.
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Jan 21, 201360Is it a coincidence that classic action is making its comeback at the same time Schwarzenegger is making his own? Hey, he warned us he'd be back.
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Jan 18, 201360The director does pull off a pretty magnificent cornfield car chase - two sleek vehicles cut through a thick, shaggy carpet of maize like souped-up harvesters, the movie's way of saying that the simple country life needn't be devoid of thrills. But Jee-woon takes too long to wrap things up, fumbling repeatedly on his way to an ending.
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58The bloodshed speaks volumes enough, though, even if it takes some time getting to the mayhem proper.
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58The Last Stand delivers -- up to a point. Keep those expectations reasonable and try not to be disappointed.
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50If only Kim had a sense of humor to match his visual wit. Instead, we get rusted gags and rubbery acting.
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50Kim doesn't sweat interweaving his story threads in any tightly controlled way. Just when the need-for-speed stuff really starts to gain traction, he'll shift for a surprisingly lengthy stretch to comic relief with the deputies and local wacko Johnny Knoxville.
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50Sure, violence in movies isn't violence in real life. And when you combine it with intelligent dialogue and pointed social commentary (a la "Django Unchained"), it can be cathartic. But The Last Stand, absent either of these things, just seems to want to gin up a lot of high-fiving for a lot of shooting, and right now is the least palatable time I can think of for that.
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50Almost certainly, The Last Stand will not be Schwarzenegger's last. For better or for worse (and this is somewhere right in the middle), he is back.
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50The idea of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a small town sheriff is ludicrous, but then that's the whole point of his new movie: It's dumb fun, emphasis on the dumb.
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50[The Director] is especially good at integrating his New Mexico locations into the action, from a key combat scene on a bridge to a car chase that unfolds, with limited visibility, in a cornfield...Kim's handling of his first English-speaking cast isn't quite as assured, although everyone more or less gets by
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40So to call this a good movie is really a stretch; it's more like 38 percent of a good movie. But it probably has just enough dumb fun and pointless violence and car chases to seem like a highly viable option for large numbers of people this weekend.
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40The script is a mess, built on lazy clichés, stilted jokes and easy payoffs. What the movie does have, though, is enthusiasm.
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40The South Korean director Kim Jee-woon fails to dazzle with the endless speeding-car sequences, but that 60-second flourish during a lengthy firefight is almost worth the tedium.
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40Not the worst but is very far from the best film the star has made in his career.
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38It's a junky, crowd-pleasing movie of sidekicks – Guzman and Knoxville – bad acting, over the top shootouts, and catch phrases.
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38While the cast includes Luis Guzman (as a buffoonish deputy) and Johnny Knoxville (as a local gun nut), there's no sense that these are real people in a real town, and Schwarzenegger's Sheriff Owens has the weakest backstory of all.
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25The movie equivalent of an idiot who, to avoid scorn, starts acting like an even bigger idiot, so as to get in on the joke, too...It takes everything and nothing seriously, depending on what the filmmakers think they can get away with at any given moment, and the result, while not painful to watch, is ridiculous.
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Jan 17, 201325That's the thing about this corpse pileup of an action movie. It persistently tries to drag the audience down to its mindless level.