Last Man Standing (1996)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Have just finished watching this. It's basically a Prohibition Era rehash of A Fist Full of Dollars. No twists or change to the story line. Just Christopher Walken using a Thompson machine gun instead of a Gatling Gun. Was enjoyable, but I'm glad I didn't pay to see it. Stick to the original and you won't go wrong.

I like Bruce Willis and I like Walter Hill but this is just horrible. After watching this, I had no idea what this movie was about. Nothing happens at all. Some shoot-outs, some dialogue, more shoot-outs, repeat! Zero tension, zero character development, zero plot.I was hoping for something spectacular to happen and find something to move me but they threw every action cliché in this script. The more I was watching, the more I wanted it to end. It's not the worst movie ever made but it's pretty bad.My parental figure showed it to me at a movie night and I went in with an open mind. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed and felt empty throughout my experience with this film. Try to avoid this one and save two hours of your life!

A skilled killer rides alone into a town dominated by two gangs of thugs. He double crosses both of them, kills some, provokes the rest into killing each other, and rides off into the sunset.Let's see. When Akira Kurosawa wasn't busying himself with Shakespeare, he was styling his samurai movies, of which "Yojimbo" is an example, on the Westerns of John Ford, whom he greatly admired. Enter Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood, and "For a Fist Full of Dollars." Now there is "Last Man Standing," with Bruce Willis as the lone gunslinger. That makes this movie an American Western/Gangster imitation of a spaghetti Western imitation of a Japanese samurai movie that's an imitation of an American Western.But changes have been rung. It's now 1931 and the two rival gangs -- one Italian and one Irish -- are holed up in a deserted little Texas town a few miles from he Mexican border, across which they smuggle truck loads of illegal booze with the complicity of the corrupt Mexican police and the help of Bruce Dern, the indifferent sheriff who has no principles whatever but minds his own business.The photographer's palette is drawn from earthy colors. The tawny dust seems constantly in motion and covers everything. Sure, it's overdone. Every scene, indoors or out, seems shot through an adobe filter. But I kind of liked it. This sort of trashy movie calls for excess. The musical score is undistinguished but not irritating.Performances. Best performance award goes to -- envelope, please -- Ken Jenkins as Captain Pickett of the Texas Rangers. It's a brief scene but he's memorable. Willis seems half asleep most of the time. He belts down enough booze to stun a rhinoceros but it never seems to interfere with his gunplay. He carries two .45s in shoulder holsters. When the heavies shoot at him, they miss. Willis doesn't miss. And he doesn't simply shoot an enemy. He perforates him, sometimes with a dozen bullets, so that the body tumbles along the scrubby desert sand like a rolling pin.Willis doesn't seem to be taking the movie very seriously, a credit to his sensibilities. Neither does Christopher Walken as the Tommy-gun toting heavy hitter. Make up has given him a scar down his face, which perhaps has cut some of the feeder circuits innervating the soft parts of his features, because his expression -- his single expression -- seems borrowed from an Olmec statue. He's used a dry, grating voice that's so evil it's ridiculous.In some ways it's an amazingly innovative movie. In 1952, Shane had a hell of a time disposing of three villains in a saloon and was wounded doing it. By "Unforgiven," Clint Eastwood could outdraw and massacre half a dozen bad guys without being hit. Here, two guns blazing, Willis eliminates a gang of about a dozen scum bags. "A massacre," somebody remarks.There are two women in the story but they aren't seen very often, although the role of one of them is very important.You like menace? You like shooting? You like a noir voice over? It's all here.

Last Man Standing is directed by Walter Hill who also adapts the screenplay from a story written by Ryûzô Kikushima and Akira Kurosawa. It stars Bruce Willis, Bruce Dern, William Sanderson, Christopher Walken, David Patrick Kelly, Karina Lombard and Ned Eisenberg. Music is by Ry Cooder and cinematography by Lloyd Ahern.Walter Hill's variant on Yojimbo, plot basically sees Willis as drifter John Smith, who after arriving in the dusty town of Jericho, promptly sets about making some serious cash by playing the town's two gangs off against each other. Smith is one tough hombre, a deadly pistoleer who has a fear of nothing, which is why the two respective gang leaders want him to work for them. Noses get put out of joint, blood flows, scores settled and a anti-hero is born, complete with permanent scowl and dry narration.The look and sound is terrific, Cooder's pessimistic twangs are all over the plot, while the visuals dovetail between sun-baked landscapes and the misty lensed ghost town of Jericho. Hill brings his trademark stylish violence into play, with slow-mos and rapid fire shoot-outs impressive, while his skill at creating an antique atmosphere is very much in evidence. Unfortunately the narrative isn't up to much, it lacks scope and characters merely exist, making this very much a style over substance exercise. It also means that much of the cast are given only morsels to feed on. A shame when you got Walken and Kelly on overdrive when on screen.It's an odd blend of a Western with Prohibition Noir characters, but it's unmistakably a Walter Hill film. For his fans there's enough to like about it whilst accepting it's a bit of a throwaway on the page. For the casual crime/action film fan, however, it's likely to be much ado about nothing. 7/10