The Last Stand

The review by Chiara Spagnoli

The governor is back on the silver screen! Indeed ‘The Terminator’, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had taken time off from film-making to dedicate himself to taking care of the State of California, having concluded his mandate as governor, has returned to his acting career.

The South-Korean director and screenwriter Kim Ji-woon in ‘The Last Stand’ has made his first American feature film, depicting a very violent scene in the name of making justice triumph, but at the cost of a great deal of gun use!

After the massacre that took place in Sandy Hook’s elementary school in Newton (killing 27 people, 20 who were just children) and recent murders from Albuquerque to Texas, it is pretty disquieting to view a movie that tributes the excessive use of weapons. Not that the world of entertainment is responsible for the horrid carnages that have occurred in the US or in the world, nevertheless sheriff Ray Owens (Arnold Schwarzenegger) goes through a bloody river blues before grasping the leader of a drug cartel, who has busted out of a courthouse heading to the Mexican border.

Almost a decade since Arnie last anchored a film, the 65-year-old bodybuilder returns in a mulch of car chases, guns and deadpan one liners and the very man himself said it was great to be back as an action hero “in traditional Schwarzenegger action movies.”

This couldn’t define ‘The Last Stand’ better, where everything is over the top, from car speed to the preposterous use of weapons. The movie is a guilty pleasure for American action movie fans who enjoy this kind of entertainment with a touch of erratic Asian combat.

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