LAST MAN STANDING
A film review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1996 Chuck Dowling
(1996) * - C:Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, Bruce Dern, David Patrick Kelly, William Sanderson.
"Last Man Standing" is a remake of Akira Kurasawa's classic "Yojimbo" from 1961. It was remade once before in 1964's "A Fistful of Dollars", a fairly entertaining spaghetti western which boosted Clint Eastwood to stardom. It should not have been remade again.
Movies have to have some sort of target audience in order to make money. I have no idea who writer/director Walter Hill was targeting here. "Last Man Standing" has no drama, no humor, no suspense, no romance, and no action (unless you consider action to be short bursts of gunfire every 35 minutes).
Willis stars as John Smith, a gunman for hire during Prohibition times who wanders into the town of Jericho, Texas and is immediately thrown into the middle of a war between two rival gangs. The gang war has caused almost all the people in town to pack up and move and now the two gangs are fighting to control illegal shipments of alcohol from Mexico. That's where all the clarity of the story ends.
As soon as we are introduced to these gangs, 800 different character names are immediately thrown at us and the audience is instantly lost. Then, as you try to catch up with the film, it gets so boring that you just don't care anymore. Also, these two gangs are fighting for control of a town which isn't any bigger than a shopping mall. They have their headquarters two minutes apart from each other. One five-minute gunfight would determine ownership.
Out of all the characters presented in the film, not one is even remotely interesting or likable. The main reason I wanted to see the film was for Christopher Walken, who despite his second billing doesn't show up until almost an hour into the film. He has maybe ten lines of dialogue and no more than fifteen minutes of screen time. He does fine with what he has to do, but it's just not enough. If I had not been there with a friend, I would have been the "First Man Leaving" the theater that was showing "Last Man Standing".
-- Chuck Dowling Visit Chuck's Movie Reviews at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ Over 1,500 movies rated and/or reviewed! Movie news, box office reports, film related links, and reader's polls and reviews.
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