It is shocking to hear that Arnold's return film is a commerical failure and a critical failure. However, after watching the film it is evident as to why. 'The Last Stand' attempts to create some humor and excitement but overall fails with such bland action sequences, a story that takes far too long to set up and by the end, simply isn't satisfying.
This is not Arnold's Terminator 2. Obviously, this is simply a big dumb action film or so it was supposed to be. The Last Stand suffers greatly by having a story that is too heavily focused on the FBI and Forrest Whitaker's side of the story that the Arnold aspect of the film is heavily reduced. Even the scenes that he is in aren't particularly interesting, he is clearly unable to show much physical agility right now. This is most evident towards the film's climax, where he fights the escaped fugitive on a bridge in a fist fight. This scene looks totally laughable, even if his character is supposed to play an aging sheriff. Arnold's inexperience in physical combat clearly pays off in this one on one fight scene.
The story deals with an escaped fugitive who escapes from the FBI. As the FBI continue to pursue this man, the fugitive must pass the Owen's town, where he and a group of friends are ready for action! Definitely a repetitive storyline but the issue isn't the premise. We Arnold fans simply wanted to see him kicking ass in this film but the film attempts to be extremely realistic and so suffers. The best sequences in the film are actually not containing Arnold but instead, the escaped fugitive, the FBI and the fugitive's Ferrari. That is such a pity.
Whilst the Ferrari scenes involving the fugitive eluding the FBI is exciting, none of the action sequences containing Arnold interested me. Most of his story frustrated me as I expected so much more action. All the best action sequences in the film do not contain him, and for a majority of the film, he does not play much of a part. The action sequences are not necessarily over the top and exciting, they aren't inventive and aren't eye grabbing in any way. To sum up the action in a word would be: BLAND
Arnold Schwarzenegger is by no means a fantastic actor and we know that. He gives good enough performances in some of his films but never has his acting being worse. I would never use this criticism against one of his films but the fact that the story was long and boring, the characters were uninteresting and the fact that most of the action scenes aren't appealing, is when I would criticize his acting. It is truly terrible in the film, making for some of his action sequences hard to watch. The cinematography for these action scenes are also uninteresting and the overuse of digital blood is often distracting. Even then, The Expendable 2 used plenty of digital blood but had extremely engaging action sequences.
Now, Arnold's performance by no means ruins the movie and I am able to get past that fauly, but the rest of the film I cannot get past. The story is poorly structured, spending far too much time away from Arnold that this may well be called a Forrest Whitaker film, the characters aren't very interesting, even Arnold's character and the action sequences are extremely uninteresting and bland. This is definitely not the big over the top action film I was looking for and definitely not a great Arnold return film. He simply doesn't seem to have the same charisma that he once had, something which Sylvester Stallone has yet to lose.
Grade- 3.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment