It stands to reason Schwarzenegger would return for his first starring role since 2003 with a BIG bang — in fact, an entire movie filled with one big bang after another. To call "The Last Stand" gratuitously violent is to pay the movie a compliment. It's sort of the whole point.
If you've got violent-movie fatigue, and you're too exhausted from real-life carnage on the news to enjoy an R-rated blood-fest in which a number of kills are executed as deliberately funny visual punchlines, you do not want to go anywhere near this film. But if you're a fan of stylish, relentlessly loud shootouts, questionable plot developments be damned, this is your ticket to weekend escapism.
Nearly 30 years after the original "Terminator" made him one of the most unlikely and most popular movie stars of our time, Schwarzenegger still has that thick Austrian accent, which somehow makes him more endearing, especially when he's playing a former highly decorated Los Angeles cop named Ray Owens. Really? He was given that name at birth?
At 65, Arnold in some ways resembles a cyborg more than ever. His skin is pulled back so tight, his eyes are mere slits; his shoulders are sloped with age but his arms are still huge. Schwarzenegger is still a formidable albeit self-deprecating presence onscreen. Responding to the deadpan question, "How are you?" after one violent dustup, Ray simply replies, "old." And in an exchange of insults and punches with a bad guy from Mexico, he says, "You give immigrants like us a bad name."
Ray is now in semi-retirement as the sheriff of the sleepy Arizona border town of Sommerton Junction, an outpost so small and inconsequential I'll bet even that the Google car hasn't driven through yet. Ray's three-person force of deputies includes human bowling ball Luis Guzman as Mike, ever ready with the comic relief; Jaimie Alexander as the tough and lovely Sarah, and Zach Gilford from "Friday Night Lights" as the earnest but bumbling Jerry.
With the high school football team playing a big game out of town, Sommerton Junction is conveniently deserted, save for a few stalwarts at the diner and maybe a farmer or two on the edge of town. Looks like a quiet weekend!
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