Last Man Standing (1996)

Last Man Standing (1996) ** (out of 4)John Smith (Bruce Willis) pulls into a small Texas town and soon realizes that it is being held by two rival gangs who are currently in a truce. Smith realizes that this here is a chance to make some money so he decides to play both sides against one another.Walter Hill's LAST MAN STANDING is without a doubt the director's most disappointing film up to this point in his career. He's basically taken Akira Kurosawa's YOJIMBO and updated it to a Western setting with a lot of loud guns. The film was another major flop at the box office for the director and even the critics turned their back on it. Hill was certainly a great action director but there's no question that this film went wrong on many levels.The biggest problem with this film is the fact that it's just not very fun. The movie has a very ugly and dry look to it and there's just nothing fun that happens throughout. You've got two annoying sets of gangsters who are constantly screaming and getting shot up by Willis. You've got Willis who turns in a very bland performance, which is another problem with the picture. I usually love the actor but his laid back approach here just doesn't work and it makes this character very boring.In fact, I had a very hard time believing that these two sides would be as stupid as they are here. Both sides would have been much better off putting a bullet in Willis' character's head yet they never do that, which just goes to show how stupid and unbelievable the film is. Even the likes of Christpher Walken and Bruce Dern can't spice up the film. The film contains a lot of graphic and bloody violence but even this just has a "been there, done that" feel to it.LAST MAN STANDING isn't a horrible movie but at the same time it's rather pointless all around. If you want to see a better version of this check out the Kurosawa original. If you don't want to watch that then both Hill and Willis have much better action pictures out there.

Hard to believe no one reviewer made the connection between this movie, and the 2 I believe this to be remakes of sorts, 1] A Fistful Of Dollars -1964 & 2] For A Few Dollars More -1965., both from Clint's classic Man With No Name Collection.If you liked this then you should watch the 2 originals along with The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly as well as Hang' Em High - 1968.Looking forward to the thoughts of those reviewers and other after they watch the aforementioned Clint Eastwood movies and compare them to Bruce Willis' entry of Last Man Standing.

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.

This film doesn't do much wrong except not really doing much right. The mood and feel of a small American western town in Prohibition is nicely put across, borrowing something from films like Eastwood's 'Unforgiven'. The acting is fine, particularly from the always-reliable Christopher Walken who once again lights up more of his role than is asked of him.But the story adaption is a little tired and Willis's "It was a dirty town but all towns were" voice-over feels dated rather than nostalgic. The bad guys are all a bit too thick to seem like adversaries so it feels like any successes of Willis's are inevitable. That makes it hard for the film to keep you wondering as the story appears to just play itself out.