The Last Stand

It's good to have Arnold Schwarzenegger back. That is all. Elected Governor of California in 2003, the action star served two terms, putting his film career on hold for the time being. He returned to movies with The Expendables, a slightly bigger part in its sequel and officially took a key supporting role in last year's Escape Plan. But now, it's time for a leading role in a good, old-fashioned shoot 'em up, 2013's The Last Stand.

In the quiet border town of Sommerset Junction in Arizona, Sheriff Ray Towns (Schwarzenegger) enjoys a peaceful, restful life after years of serving in the L.A.P.D. Narcotics and Tactical Division. Well, that idyllic, peaceful life is about to get thrown a curve. With much of the town following the high school football team on a road game, Towns gets a call that someone has been murdered. His deputies stumble upon something in the desert, heavily armed ex-military firing on the deputies. At the same time, Towns gets another call, this time from FBI agent Bannister (Forest Whitaker), with a warning. A highly dangerous leader of a powerful drug cartel, Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega), has led a bloody escape and is making a beeline for Mexico in a modified, souped-up sports car. Bannister believes Cortez is heading right to Sommerset Junction. Towns figures Cortez's plan out, ex-military and all, but can he and his motley crew of deputies stop Cortez?

Ah, action movies, how I love you. This flick didn't do much business last year in theaters -- netting a little over $48 million -- but I remember catching the first trailer for this and being intrigued. This wasn't a movie I was dying to see, that I needed to see, but could it be good? Oh, you bet, and that's what it is in the end. From director Kim Jee-woon, 'Stand' is an entertaining, well-done action movie that's cheesy and goofy, blending some fun characters with one-liners, lots of bloody action and a straightforward good guys vs. bad guys premise. It isn't interested in rewriting the genre, and that's fine. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of last year's 2 Guns, a type of crime action movie that was really popular in the 1970s, especially with the U.S./Mexico border setting. Just enjoy it. Don't overthink it.

Schwarzenegger!!! It's fun to see one of Hollywood's all-time great action stars getting back to business. I got a taste of his return in Escape Plan (his parts in the Expendables are cameos as part of an ensemble, nothing more), but this is where it's at, the Governator in a lead role. Working off a script from Andrew Knauer, Schwarzenegger makes it look easy, even effortless, but he's always got that energy for the action. In other words, there's never a sense that he is phoning it in. Sure, the script has some fun with the 67-year old action star, but it's all in good fun. My favorite? "Sheriff, how are you?" to which Towns answers "Old" having crashed through a window. His backstory is handled in a quick explanatory scene, giving some depth to the small town country sheriff that's pretty familiar in action movies. How does Andy Taylor, um, uh....Arnold Schwarzenegger respond? With a whole lot of shootouts, gunfights and knock-down fist fights, as we've come to expect.

Who else to watch out for? Whitaker does his best as the city boy, the FBI agent who doesn't think a country sheriff could possibly know what he's talking about....even though the polished FBI agent just let a death row prisoner escape. Whitaker disappears in the second half as the action escalates, reappearing late. Johnny Knoxville has the comedic relief as Lewis Dinkum, the town kook with a warehouse full of guns, a part that's just right, not overused or overdone. Jaimie Alexander and Luiz Guzman are Towns' deputies, Rodrigo Santoro playing a town resident who teams up with the crew for the fight. Noriega is a more than worthy villain, his Cortez dripping with intensity and absolutely no fear, Genesis Rodriguez his "unwilling hostage." And because every cartel villain needs an over the top henchman, we get Peter Stormare as Burrell, the leader of the ex-military setting the ground work for Cortez's escape over the border. Also, look for Hollywood veteran and great character actor Harry Dean Stanton in a small uncredited part early.

With a movie that clocks in at 107 minutes, we're never long in between action scenes (and take away 6, 7 minutes for a long credit sequence). Cortez's escape is a good start -- reminding me somewhat of 2003's S.W.A.T. -- as the FBI scrambles to get him back. The highlight comes at the hour-mark, Cortez's advance crew descending on Sommerton where Towns and his deputies are waiting. It's entertaining and bloody and all over the place, bad guys dispatched with a head shot and a cool one-liner. Towns' entrance into the shootout is pretty epic too, Santoro driving a school bus, Schwarzenegger and Knoxville in the back with a seemingly ancient Vickers machine gun. The action is almost non-stop, but it's basically one sequence on top of another over the last hour. The finale between Towns and Cortez at the border is a whopper too, preceded by an epic car chase through a cornfield because....well, because car chases are cool.

Just a fun movie with some familiar touches, even the 1959 classic Rio Bravo. Sit back and enjoy it, welcoming back Aaaahnold.

The Last Stand (2013): ***/****

Blackthorn

If you were an outlaw/gunslinger/bank robber in the old west, a certain notoriety came along with that infamy. Dime novels, newspaper stories, and good, old-fashioned rumors put these people on the map. What about when they died -- be it violently or peacefully -- and the rumors persisted? Everyone from Davy Crockett to Billy the Kid was believed to have been seen after their rumored deaths. The list includes wild west outlaw Butch Cassidy as shown in 2011's Blackthorn.

It's 1928 in the Bolivian mountains and famed bank robber Butch Cassidy is living in peace under the name of James Blackthorn (Sam Shepard). Many believed he died in a shootout with the Bolivian army in 1908, but Cassidy survived. Now a much older man, Butch/James is planning to travel back to the United States to meet his nephew who he's never met. But coming home with the money he's earned from selling a string of prize horses, he loses the money thanks to a run-in with a man on the run, a Spaniard named Eduardo (Eduardo Noriega), who's robbed a mine of $50,000. With a promise of getting a cut of the money, James more than unwillingly helps Eduardo escape. All he wants is to get home, but James may have stepped into more than he figured.

Westerns are few and far between being released in theaters or even on straight to DVD recently, and this one from director Mateo Gil didn't exactly get a huge release. Check that, there aren't many good westerns released at all. In that familiar sub-genre of the dying and changing times in the western, Gil has made a low-key, underplayed film that has some fun with the "what if?" aspect of history. 'Blackthorn' was filmed in Bolivia, a beautiful country featuring lush, green mountains, harsh, barren deserts and apocalyptic salt flats. Even 100 years since the story actually happened, Bolivia looks like 1908, a time capsule of an era long since past. Tiny, rustic towns carved into hillsides in a brutal land. Some uses of folk songs are a little too much, even obvious and heavy-handed, but it's not a deal-killer. The visual is so gorgeous you'll be able to block out the songs. Okay, I was able to.

Most viewer's familiarity with the real-life person Butch Cassidy is through Paul Newman's performance in the classic 1969 western. It's years later though, and this is not the happy-go-lucky tone of that movie. Who better to play a weathered, world-weary outlaw than weathered, world-weary Sam Shepard? The casting is beyond perfect. Shepard looks and feels like he is right at home in a western...even 1928 Bolivia. His Butch has led a hidden life for 20 years, not quite wasting away in Bolivia but not exactly living a full-life either. The unofficial last of the outlaws, Butch has outlived the time he thrived in, and he feels some guilt over having done so. Inner demons? Not quite, but he's clearly struggling to come to terms with his life hidden away in Bolivia. It is a great performance, one Shepard really brings to life.

Fans of either the real-life exploits of Butch or of the 1969 film -- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- will no doubt get a ton of enjoyment from Gil's decision to tell the story with a handful of flashbacks peppered into the movie. With a handful of flashbacks, we see Butch (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), the Sundance Kid (Padraic Delaney), and Sundance's girlfriend, Etta Place (Dominique McElligott), over a 10-year span or so as they decide to leave the American west and head to South America. These scenes are both well-written, well-acted and help flesh out the 1928 version of Butch. The one I looked forward to the most was the depiction of the San Vicente shootout where Butch and Sundance were rumored to have been killed. Shot in the aftermath of the shootout, it is simple and effective. That's all the scenes, to the point and surprisingly emotional, especially Butch's last scene with Sundance in the snow-covered Bolivian mountains.

With Shepard, two roles in the 1928 storyline rise to the occasion, the first coming from Eduardo Noriega as the Spaniard on the run, Eduardo. The character is appropriately mysterious, a good counter to Shepard's Blackthorn who is holding onto some obvious secrets of his own. Noriega isn't great in the part, but next to Shepard he's just got to be good, and he is just that...fine. In another key part, Stephen Rea plays MacKinlay, a former Pinkerton agent who hunted Butch and Sundance who always believed the two outlaws survived their rumored death. Still in Bolivia years later, he believes he's found Butch. Also look for Magaly Solier as Yana, a native Bolivian woman who has a relationship with Blackthorn. 

In an odd connection to the 1969 movie, much of the 2011's movie's story has Blackthorn and Eduardo on the run from a Bolivian posse similar to Butch and Sundance running from a Pinkerton posse. The duo on the run is the movie at its best, but some parts of the final act slow down and lose the momentum that had been built up. The twist delivered in the last 30 minutes disappoints in a way, but it does allow Butch to redeem himself in a way, leading up to an ending that allows viewers to come to their own conclusions. All told, it's an above average western with gorgeous photography and a great lead performance from Sam Shepard.

Blackthorn <---trailer (2011): ***/****