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The Last Stand Reviews

Hits, explosions, bullets, and catchphrases to celebrate the welcome return of the great action superhero. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Jul 5, 2023

A movie whose only purpose is to serve as Schwarzenegger’s comeback vehicle. After this, he’ll need another comeback.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 20, 2022

“The Last Stand” has its share of cheesiness but intentionally so. And it’s certainly not stimulating, thought-provoking cinema, but it never pretends to be. It’s a simple, straightforward movie without an ounce of pretension and it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 23, 2022

As usual, Arnold Schwarzenegger is mildly entertaining.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Dec 3, 2020

A far more entertaining film than anyone with a bit of sense likely expected.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Sep 13, 2020

Schwarzenegger is as amazed at what is happening on screen as we are, as if he were saying 'Watch me get away with this.'

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 28, 2020

If Arnold Schwarzenegger makes action acting his own "last stand" in the world, I'm all for it, as long as it remains the caliber of The Last Stand.

Full Review | Nov 27, 2019

This movie doesn't deserve your dollars.

Full Review | Jul 30, 2019

Serves as both an entertaining action film and a sort of exploration of tried and true values still operating in a modern world.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 8, 2019

This is a fun bit of winter fluff, with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Apr 11, 2019

Serves as moderately diverting and totally undemanding old-school Arnie fun, with enough wise cracks and rampant destruction to satisfy audiences.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 8, 2019

It's a good movie for when you just want to turn your brain off and watch some stuff explode.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 6, 2018

The Last Stand is loud, idiotic, violent trash...and bloody great fun!

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 1, 2018

[It's] fun the whole way through. Whether all the laughs are intentional is debatable, but that doesn't mean it isn't.

Full Review | Oct 22, 2018

The refusal to make fun of these kind of Old West tropes is, oddly, what makes The Last Stand most relevant of all.

Full Review | Oct 17, 2018

An outsider's view of western action hero tropes would have been a welcome antidote to standard American product, but Kim's Hollywood debut is perhaps too enamored of American sources to inject much life into them.

Full Review | Aug 30, 2018

It's preposterous and brutal but shamelessly mirthful, stylish and audacious. And Ah-nold? He's still got it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 1, 2017

The Last Stand is not a character study. It's not a dramatic masterpiece. It's a slam-bang action flick-and a good one.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 14, 2016

It's a film of mythic incompetence, the most uproariously ill-conceived studio picture since Nicolas Cage's "Wicker Man" remake.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 15, 2016

Christmas morning. Tiny puppies licking my face. A plate of crispy bacon. The embrace of a loved one. The last forty-five minutes of The Last Stand.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Feb 6, 2014

Hero Glock Dirty: Arnold’s Back, Guns Blazing, in The Last Stand

Schwarzenegger returns in an NRA vision of America the Beautiful that even a pacifist could enjoy — because it's a Movie

“I told you I’d be back,” Arnold Schwarzenegger says in the promo that introduces The Last Stand , the Governator’s first starring role since Terminator 3 a decade ago. Never averse to reusing his trademark catchphrases or characters, the 65-year-old slab of Austrian beef returns to the private sector with the very definition of an all-American action film — guns, cars and a sexy hostage — that happens to be directed by Kim Jee-woon, a South Korean. It’s an enjoyably old-fashioned shoot-out, if you can shake off the current headlines and sink in to a fantasy of hyper-violence that plays like an NRA vision of America the Beautiful.

(READ: Corliss’s 1990 profile of Arnold Schwarzenegger by subscribing to TIME)

At an age when many Americans make do as Walmart greeters, Schwarzenegger nimbly hulks back into the movie spotlight after two terms as California Governor. Through graceful aging and the wonders of medical aesthetics, his face has achieved a granite gravitas suitable for the Mount Rushmore of movie studs where he belongs. From his first big movie, Conan the Barbarian in 1982, he created a dual image of a comic-book superhero and its perfect deadpan parody: muscles on muscles, a grim visage and the Teutonic grunt of a Wagner aria as sampled by Megadeth. The franchises he launched have spun on with other actors for decades, in updates or remakes of Conan , The Terminator , Predator and Total Recall . Yet there’s nothing to match the original Arnold for grand-scale serious silliness, as amply displayed in The Last Stand .

(FIND: Schwarzenegger on TIME’s list of 25 Greatest Movie Villains )

In Andrew Knauer’s script, Schwarzenegger is called Ray Owens — exactly the anonymous heartland name you’d give to the cyborg from another planet — and serves as the “pissant county sheriff” in the sleepy border town of Sommerton Junction. The locals take little heed of this judicious, soft-spoken Golem, leaving their cars in no-parking zones and ignoring his advice to be careful out there. Ray’s apprehension is on target. The Mexican drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Spanish heartthrob Eduardo Noriega) has escaped from maximum security in Las Vegas, taking a sexy FBI agent (Genesis Rodriguez) as hostage, and is headed back home in a souped-up Corvette ZR1 that can speed toward the border at 200 mph. From FBI agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker), Ray learns that Cortez’s route is to pass right through Sommerton, where his gang has constructed a bridge across the narrow ravine separating the U.S. from Mexico. “I’ve seen enough bloodshed and death,” says Ray, who quit his job as an L.A. cop for the serenity of Sommerton. “I know what’s coming.”

(READ: Richard Schickel on Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland )

So do any citizens who’ve seen the movies The Last Stand is based on: the 1959 Howard Hawks Western  Rio Bravo  and John Carpenter’s 1976 sorta-remake  Assault on Precinct 13 . Both films spent their first two acts assembling the team that would stand strong against an infestation of villains. Same here. To stop Cortez, Ray summons a motley posse: his game but untested deputies Mike Figuerola (Luis Guzmán), Jerry Bailey (Zach Gilford) and Sarah Torrance (Jaimie Alexander), plus gun-museum owner Lewis Dinkum ( Jackass’ s Johnny Knoxville) and Frank Martinez (Rodrigo Santoro), Sarah’s erstwhile beau and a current resident of the local jail. Problem is that the small-town camaraderie here is perfunctory, short on dramatic juice. All the Sommerton stalwarts get too much face time, as if the movie were about human beings, not archetypes and artillery.

(READ: Joel Stein’s profile of Jackass Johnny Knoxville )

Slapdash in its character portraits, the movie is slambang in its action scenes; it springs to life whenever it promises death. Like an old Fred Astaire musical, Top Hat or Swing Time , where the dialogue scenes are feeble but the singing and dancing sublime,  The Last Stand  infuses its production numbers — the big chases, break-outs and face-offs — with a high thrill quotient. Cortez’s escape from Bannister’s FBI cortege in Vegas has the oversize showmanship of a David Copperfield extravaganza, as a giant magnet descends during a stop light and lifts the van to a tall building’s roof, whence the drug lord and three abettors ride wires across Las Vegas Blvd. to another building and vanish.

(SEE: A TIME.com slide show of David Blaine’s Greatest Hits ) 

Even quiet, amiable Sommerton is a place where someone is less likely to say, “Good morning,” than “Get the Glock.” A Cortez enforcer named Burrell ( Fargo’ s Peter Stormare, looking here like Louis C.K. doing a Timothy Carey bared-teeth impression) has come to town, commandeering a farm by blowing ornery Harry Dean Stanton off his tractor and into the next life. When Sarah and Jerry show up to investigate, Burrell douses the field lights and engages them in a firefight with night-vision goggles; it’s  Zero Dark Thirty , Homeland Edition. The Main Street showdown has Ray blasting a bad guy’s brains out as the two men fall from a three-story building, then using the town school bus — fortunately without kids inside — as a barricade.

(READ: Massimo Calabresi on the torture scenes in Zero Dark Thirty )

After the home team fends off the visitors by the simple expedient of shooting straight when the bad guys don’t, Ray borrows an illegally parked car to pursue Cortez in his ZR1 through a mature cornfield. Think of North by Northwest but in hot rods, and with Korean composer Mowg scoring the chase with a Bernard Herrmann Hitchcock-movie theme. (Oddly, it’s from  Psycho .) Eventually, Ray will throw away his weapons to confront Cortez in a WWE slapdown. Last week’s  Gangster Squad  climaxed with the same curious retrenchment to caveman fisticuffs. A man’s gotta prove he’s a man with a gun and then without.

(READ: Corliss’s review of Gangster Squad )

Kim Jee-woon made a bunch of vivid melodramas, including  A Bittersweet Life ,  I Saw the Devil  and  The Good, the Bad, the Weird , back in South Korea, where firearms are hard to come by. (The main character in A Bittersweet Life spends a good part of the film just trying to buy a pistol.) As the first Korean auteur to direct a large-scale American movie, Kim is ready to revel in the notion of a 24-seven gun show in a town with a larger arsenal than the director’s northern neighbor, Kim Jong-un. Everybody in Sommerton is packing, including a granny type who runs the antique shop. Among the cache stocked by Knoxville’s Lewis are all manner of assault rifles and a 1939 Vickers machine gun that he endearingly calls “my crazy little bitch.” When Ray flourishes the Vickers as Cortez’s men rumbles on to Main Street, he snarls, “Welcome to Sommerton.”

(READ: TIME’s brief on Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird )

This is where I’m supposed to tut a liberal tut and blame the movie and its ilk for raising gun love to a theology. But what I’m thinking watching this scene is: An Austrian-born star aiming a British armament at a gang run by a Mexican played by a Spaniard — in a picture directed by a Korean! For good or for ill, you decide,  The Last Stand  demonstrates that the U.S. film industry is more than just a prime exporter of our movie values. In calling on Schwarzenegger, Noriega and Kim (plus two of his compatriots, Mowg and gifted cinematographer Kim Ji-yong) and setting them loose in a Wayne LaPierre wet dream, The Last Stand functions as a global outreach initiative for American values: the United Nations of blowin’ stuff up.

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Movie Review: The Last Stand (2013)

• Greg Eichelberger
• Movie Reviews
• 13 responses
• --> January 19, 2013

Shotgun action.

Arnold is back — and he’s bitter. And so is the script for The Last Stand .

After two terms as governor of “Cally-fornia,” as well as bit parts in a few movies here and there, Arnold Schwarzenegger has finally returned to his above-title billing as the action hero we’ve come to expect: The lone wolf good guy fighting insurmountable odds and blasting villains away while firing off puns as fast as bullets.

The only thing he does not utter in this one is: “I’ll be back.” And, with a film like The Last Stand , why should he be?

Schwarzenegger here plays Ray Owens, a former LAPD undercover agent who has seen enough “blood and death” and has moved to a small berg in Southern Arizona to serve as the town’s laid-back sheriff. With a cast of idiotic and/or incompetent deputies, he can finally relax and put the rest of his career on cruise control. Of course, though, if this were the case, there would be no film, so events transpire to put his semi-vacation life on hold.

For example, in Las Vegas, an FBI team led by John Bannister (Forest Whitaker, “ Street Kings “), is transferring drug cartel head Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega, “ Vantage Point “) to a federal death row facility, but a sophisticated escape plan gums up the works and puts the baddies on a collision course with Owens,who must take a last stand to prevent Cortez from crossing the border into Mexico as he drives a special ZR1 Corvette that can travel at about 200 MPH.

Stumbling upon the body of 150-year old Harry Dean Stanton and observing nighttime construction in the desert, deputies Jerry Bailey (Zach Gilford (“ Friday Night Lights ” TV series) and Sarah Torrance (Jaimie Alexander, “ Thor “) are fired upon by what seems like several hundred heavily armed military-trained mercenaries.

How can a few lawmen, including a drunk Iraq war veteran, Frank (Rodrigo Santoro, “ What to Expect When You’re Expecting “) and chicken-hearted Dep. Mike Figuerola (Luis Guzmán, “ Journey 2: The Mysterious Island “) handle such an array of opponents? Easy, recruit bumbling cretin Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville, who shares comic relief duties with Guzmán, although neither are very funny), who just happens to own a weapons museum with more than enough firepower to match Cortez’s cartel arsenal. How convenient.

The Last Stand now turns into a game of cat-mouse and sledgehammer as Owens and company must stop Cortez and a dirty FBI agent at Sommerton Junction, the last US stop before the freedom of Mexico. Thrill as Arnold shakes off the rust and gets to slaughter an unknown and uncountable number of henchman before taking on the top lieutenant, Burrell (Peter Stormare, “ Lockout “) and then fighting it out with el hefe atop a pontoon bridge that leads across the border. All of this taking place while Bannister and the seemingly helpless feds just sit around watching.

A tired sheriff.

The good things about this picture are its brevity (barely one hour, fifty minutes in length) and how director Jee-woon Kim (“ I Saw the Devil “) keeps things moving along at a nice clip. The film slows down, however, during the moments of unnecessary exposition story development (there’s really no story — the need for development is moot). The violence factor is quite high, with more bullets to the head than Sylvester Stallone’s upcoming flick, “ Bullet to the Head .” The characters are also mostly clichéd and one-dimensional, with little or no empathy for them or their plight.

All of this aside, The Last Stand will neither enhance or diminish Schwarzenegger’s legacy (whatever that may be). It’s nice to see him back in the saddle of a lead role, although it’s a shame it had to be atop this particular horse. Audiences will see an older, creakier, quieter and maybe a bit wiser Arnold do what he has always does — fire big guns and blow up people at will — and then walk away mostly satisfied. Critics like myself are more likely to think back to the heady days of “ Predator ,” “ Commando ” and “ The Terminator ,” among others, when he was synonymous with action, yet fun, pictures. This one is certainly competent and workmanlike enough, but not very memorable, fun — or good for that matter.

Tagged: kingpin , Mexico , sheriff

I have been a movie fan for most of my life and a film critic since 1986 (my first published review was for "Platoon"). Since that time I have written for several news and entertainment publications in California, Utah and Idaho. Big fan of the Academy Awards - but wish it would go back to the five-minute dinner it was in May, 1929. A former member of the San Diego Film Critics Society and current co-host of "The Movie Guys," each Sunday afternoon on KOGO AM 600 in San Diego with Kevin Finnerty.

Movie Review: Despicable Me 3 (2017) Movie Review: Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) Movie Review: All Eyez On Me (2017) Movie Review: The Mummy (2017) Movie Review: Baywatch (2017) Movie Review: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) Movie Review: The Promise (2016)

'Movie Review: The Last Stand (2013)' have 13 comments

January 19, 2013 @ 9:33 am prillit

Schwarzenegger looks like a walking corpse.

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January 19, 2013 @ 9:46 am TheButcher

Car chase here, explosion there, firefight here, witty remark there. It’s almost like this was done like a paint by numbers watercolor, except that all the colors ran together and turned a drab brownish black.

January 19, 2013 @ 10:38 am Reon

The Last Stand is not Arnie’s best but like all his movies it is stupidly entertaining.

January 19, 2013 @ 12:01 pm Odonis

Schwarzenegger flicks are a guilty pleasure.

January 19, 2013 @ 1:16 pm xsbr

Arnold apparently didn’t take any acting lessons during his 10-year hiatus …

January 19, 2013 @ 4:55 pm Fudgemanners

Completely run of the mill, 100% predictable.

January 19, 2013 @ 9:39 pm MarkCopeland

gunna give it a go just to see Arnie back in the biz

January 19, 2013 @ 10:18 pm denoizer

Makes me scared for Bullet to the Head.

January 22, 2013 @ 7:11 pm apollo76

Bullet to the Head is going to be garbage, you think differently?

January 20, 2013 @ 6:27 am Hoff

Movie is rubbish. No fun in watching an old guy hobble around the screen trying to act tough.

January 20, 2013 @ 2:14 pm NeonStorm

Time for Ahhhh-nold to self-terminate.

January 20, 2013 @ 6:06 pm Sam

Its watchable, but Arnies age is definitely showing.

February 7, 2013 @ 2:15 pm Von

Never thought I’d say a Schwarzenegger movie was akin to a Spielberg movie, but when compared to Stallone’s “Bullet to the Head”, “The Last Stand” is “Schindler’s List”.

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The Last Stand

After years away from the film industry, '80s and '90s action icon Arnold Schwarzenegger has been easing his back into the genre that made him an A-lister. Growing roles in The Expendables ' movies have paved the way to his first headlining vehicle since 2003's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines , and The Last Stand is custom-fit for the now paunchy yet still undeniably intimidating star.

Set in the tiny and quiet town of Sommerton Junction, Arizona, which is nestled right on the American-Mexican border, The Last Stand has Schwarzenegger playing Ray Owens, a long-time sheriff who once worked in narcotics for the Los Angeles Police Department. After one particularly grisly drug bust left him the lone survivor, Owens purposely sought out a little town where he wouldn't have to face such carnage ever again. But the downside to being a small-town sheriff with only four policemen under your employ is that people tend to underestimate your capability in times of crisis, like for instance when a vicious drug lord freshly busted out of bonds is blazing toward your town in a specially rigged race car, gunning for the border.

You wouldn't think with his thick Austrian accent and massive bulk that Schwarzenegger would be a believable everyman, but the character of Sheriff Ray Owens is perfectly suited to him. Owens was once a man to be reckoned with, but years away from the deadly urban streets has made him soft. Similarly, this is not the Schwarzenegger from his prime. He's a bit slower, a bit world-weary, but this all adds weight to Owens' character, since after all he is underestimated by everyone, from the local who scoffs at his demand to remove his car from a fire zone, to the FBI agent ( Forest Whitaker ) leading the recapture effort, to the the menacing Mexican cartel leader, Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega).

It's almost sad to watch others scoff at Owens, except that we know Schwarzenegger will have his redemption. And he does, through several jaw-dropping action sequences and numerous one-liners that had the audience in I saw it with cheering and applauding. This builds to a climax where Schwarzenegger faces off against Noriega in a mano-a-mano fight that is utterly exhilarating. In fact, I'll say it: it's the kind of burly and brash violence I was hoping to see in the Bane versus Batman fight in The Dark Knight Rises . Frankly, this climactic battle alone is worth the price of admission.

Still, it's far from a flawless film. For one, surrounded by actors as talented as Whitaker, Peter Stormare, Luis Guzman, and Friday Night Lights ' Zach Gilford, it's clear Schwarzenegger is not so much an actor as he is a screen presence. He is mesmerizing yes, but with those around him displaying fear, anguish and rage, his performance pales in comparison. But who cares, right? It's still his movie. Except that it's not entirely.

The Last Stand marks the English-language debut of South Korean director Jee-woon Kim, who helmed the mind-blowing revenge thriller I Saw the Devil . And while Kim shows an impressive understanding of American culture—from our lust for impossibly fast cars to our conflicted gun culture—he doesn't seem to know to keep the focus on Arnold. Instead, the thriller bounds between the frantic FBI offices where Whitaker sets up one useless roadblock after another to Cortez's hours-long getaway complete with Fast and the Furious -style stunts, to various pockets of Sommerton, from its cantankerous farmer, to its chipper waitress, clumsy cops, and local gun nut ( Johnny Knoxville )…oh, yeah and Arnold.

In the end, the movie is a bit overstuffed, and the pacing suffers because of it. But within its 107 minutes, The Last Stand offers insane action, solidly funny sight gags—courtesy of Knoxville and Guzman—and a welcome amount of Schwarzenegger swagger.

Staff writer at CinemaBlend.

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X-men: the last stand.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 15 Reviews
• Kids Say 58 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

By Cynthia Fuchs , based on child development research. How do we rate?

X-Men battle for their lives yet again. Tweens OK.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that X-Men: The Last Stand includes comic-bookish violence: characters are repeatedly stabbed, shot, smashed, and variously injured (bloody gashes on faces or bodies, some -- on Wolverine -- healing themselves immediately), thrown against or through walls, exploded, burned, and frozen…

Why Age 13+?

Tie-in to vast quantities of related merchandise.

Fairly mild: "bitch," "hell," "ass," "dick," etc.

Passionate kissing; one becomes an all-body (legs included) embrace; Rogue is vi

Comic-booky explosions, stabbings, shootouts, and fist/kick fights; brief scene

Wolverine smokes a cigar.

Any Positive Content?

Good mutants encourage difference and individuality, bad mutants try to kill tho

Themes of friendship and group unity, as well as the celebration of difference.

Products & Purchases

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Passionate kissing; one becomes an all-body (legs included) embrace; Rogue is visibly jealous of boyfriend's flirtation with another girl. One mutant uses her powers to undo a man's pants. Mystique is more or less naked (in a non-sexual way) at all times, though she's usually covered in blue, scaly skin. One scene shows her naked without that covering, but the crucial bits are covered.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Comic-booky explosions, stabbings, shootouts, and fist/kick fights; brief scene of self-mutilation and upset as young boy tries to remove his "mutant" wings; Mystique assaults her police interrogators; police/military use guns with cure-carrying darts; characters explode into bits (including paternal Professor X, which might worry young viewers who are fond of him); Magneto breaks up the Golden Gate Bridge.; showdown at film's end includes fire, walls collapsing, electrocution; Jean sucks Wolverine's skin off him in patches; up-close stabbing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Good mutants encourage difference and individuality, bad mutants try to kill those who don't agree with them.

Positive Messages

Parents need to know that X-Men: The Last Stand includes comic-bookish violence: characters are repeatedly stabbed, shot, smashed, and variously injured (bloody gashes on faces or bodies, some -- on Wolverine -- healing themselves immediately), thrown against or through walls, exploded, burned, and frozen. Vehicles and buildings explode with fiery booms, the Golden Gate Bridge is lifted and crashed into Alcatraz Island, with violent shaking of humans driving on it. Human military units shoot weapons loaded with cure-bearing darts. In a flashback, a young boy tries to cut his wings off, causing bloody wounds. A passionate kiss leads to one character's death (off-screen), another passionate embrace leads to a violent clash. Mystique's blue suit looks painted on. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (15)
• Kids say (58)

Based on 15 parent reviews

Skip it if you can.

What's the story.

In X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, the third film of the series, Warren Worthington II ( Michael Murphy ), whose son is the magnificently bewinged Angel ( Ben Foster ), develops a genetic "cure" for mutantism. Pressured by his father to take the injection that will make him "fit in," Angel resists. While Professor Xavier ( Patrick Stewart ) and the X-Men only want to be accepted for who they are, the grand Magneto ( Ian McKellen ) declares his opposition to the humans' puny plan. He gathers together an army of angry mutants, including "the Beast" ( Kelsey Grammer ), pin-bodied Kid Omega ( Ken Leung) and punky speed-demon Callisto (Dania Ramirez), who agree to fight not only the U.S. government, but also the X-Men, who now number six. The struggle between the two bands of mutants is laid out in the story of Jean Grey ( Famke Janssen) , who returns as Phoenix, a Class Five mutant capable of all kinds of destruction. Phoenix's love interests, Cyclops ( James Marsden ) and Logan/Wolverine ( Hugh Jackman ), battle over her, as do Professor X and Magneto, because whoever controls this most powerful "creature" will run the world. Soon, Homeland Security is worrying about the mutants' threat and Magneto is making underground videotapes to disseminate dire warnings against his opponents.

Is It Any Good?

Full of comic book action, rudimentary passion, and fiery tragedy, this third entry in the film franchise is also unfocused. Tying together a number of dangling plot strands, dropping in a couple of additional themes, and introducing new X-Men, X-Men: The Last Stand isn't as quirky and endearing as the first two, though it does deliver the usual family melodrama and sensational finale.

The plot has never been this franchise's strong suit. Rather, the X-Men films delight in quirky, complicated, flamboyant characters, sometimes subversively funny, sometimes outrageously desirous. As Mystique ( Rebecca Romijn) goes missing in the early part of the film, the next closest fun freaks are the thudding Juggernaut ( Vinnie Jones ) and the charming, coming-into-her-own Kitty Pryde ( Elliot Page ). But their appearances are brief, as the film is crowded with other characters and plots, such that its end -- yet another celebration of diversity that remains at risk -- only seems like more of the same.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the theme of friendship and group unity in X-Men: The Last Stand , as well as the celebration of difference. The X-Men look after one another even when they are accused of being afflicted with a "disease" and offered a "cure." How do the X-Men challenge conformity and encourage creativity, even as they learn discipline and good manners at school?

How do the several generations of X-Men come together to form an alternative, supportive family?

How does this movie compare to other X-Men stories ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 26, 2006
• On DVD or streaming : October 3, 2006
• Cast : Famke Janssen , Hugh Jackman , Ian McKellen
• Director : Brett Ratner
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Gay actors
• Studio : Twentieth Century Fox
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Superheroes
• Run time : 104 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : intense sequences of action violence, some sexual content and language.
• Last updated : July 21, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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What to watch next.

X-Men: First Class

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X2: X-Men United

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Movie review: ‘the last stand’.

The ’80s are back. At the multiplex, anyway.

Over the next month, moviegoers will be treated to an array of ’80s-action throwbacks: a new Sylvester Stallone flick, a new “Die Hard” movie, and — kicking things off this weekend — the return of Reagan-era action icon Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first major role since ending his stint as governor of California. He always promised he’d be back, and with “The Last Stand” he dutifully delivers.

Dutifully, of course, does not necessarily mean imaginatively. “The Last Stand” is an exercise in both setting and meeting low expectations: This is an R-rated action movie with fast cars, big guns, bloody shootouts, attractive women, good guys, bad guys, and just enough of the former governor’s squinty-eyed tough guy shtick to keep nostalgic fans satisfied.

For better or for worse, then, it’s as close to an old school Arnold Schwarzenegger movie as one could hope for. The movie mindfully acknowledges Mr. Schwarzenegger’s legend but does not attempt to substantially embellish it. Instead, it sticks with the tried and true tropes of the sort of plodding, muscle-bound shoot ’em ups that Mr. Schwarzenegger helped popularize.

At this point, Mr. Schwarzenegger has begun to plod somewhat himself. The former bodybuilder is still built like a bridge pylon, with arms the size of monster truck axles, but he’s aged since he last starred in a movie, and it shows.

Sure, he’s still got the best macho smirk in the business, but now it comes across more as an elderly affectation than a serious threat. He’s still big, but he’s also slower. At this point, Mr. Schwarzenegger is the great old granddaddy of action stars, with spiky hair that looks like unmowed grass, tiny eyes, and tanned, leathery skin that give him the appearance of a battle-weathered dinosaur. It’s a fitting look for another ancient giant trudging slowly through his old feeding grounds.

It’s familiar territory for all: Mr. Schwarzenegger plays border-town sheriff Ray Owens, a former big-city cop who left for quieter pastures. They don’t stay quiet for long, for a Mexican drug boss named Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) is hurtling toward his city in a super-powered Corvette. When the FBI’s efforts to stop him fail, Owens and his team must make a final stand.

Director Jee-woon Kim smartly surrounds Mr. Schwarzenegger with clever character actors: Prankster Johnny Knoxville gets second billing, but it’s Forest Whitaker, as the FBI agent in charge of tracking down Cortez, who seems to be the real No. 2. Luis Guzman provides some comic relief as one of Owens’ dopey deputies, and Peter Stormare offers many of the movie’s best moments as a senior henchman. (Indeed, Mr. Stormare’s brand of self-satisfied villainy is so bizarrely compelling that it’s easy to wish that the movie simply pitted him against Mr. Schwarzenegger, and skipped Cortez, who is something of a dud.)

Mr. Kim displays a surprisingly light touch at times, and his direction and editing are also noticeably less spastic than many recent action movies. The middle of the movie drags a bit, but in some ways the relative slowness fits the aging star nicely: Mr. Schwarzenegger is practically an old man now, and he’s made an old man’s action movie.

TITLE: “The Last Stand”

CREDITS: Directed by Jee-woon Kim, story by Andrew Knauer

RATING: R for bloody shoot-outs, language

RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes

MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS

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Ebiri on The Last Stand : One of Schwarzenegger’s Least ‘Ahnuld’-ian Action Films

Arnold Schwarzenegger may be back, as he likes to say, and he’s apparently decided to become Clint Eastwood. The Last Stand , the actor’s first actual starring role since 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (cameos in The Rundown and supporting parts in The Expendables don’t count), is one of the least Ahnuld-ian action films he’s made. It’s got none of the steely, robotic ethos of stuff like The Terminator or Predator or Commando or Conan — movies that felt like sci-fi even when they weren’t sci-fi. In other words, he’s not a killing machine this time. Far from it. Instead, The Last Stand starts off as a pleasant ramble, in which Schwarzenegger plays an aging small-town sheriff who, along with his raggedy deputies, has to contend with the ruthless killers who’ve invaded his town.

At first, the film is as interested in charting the offbeat relationships between Schwarzenegger and his crew as it is in setting up (and, eventually, delivering on) the good-guy-bad-guy stuff. This is what Quentin Tarantino likes to call a “hangout” movie, à la Rio Bravo, or Eastwood’s A Perfect World or Bronco Billy . If that sounds like Schwarzenegger might actually be called on to act this time, you’re right. And to his credit, this is the loosest the guy’s been in ages. His amiable banter rarely feels forced, and even the obligatory jokes about his age feel genuine. It also helps that Schwarzenegger has fine support from folks like Luis Guzmán, Jaimie Alexander, and Rodrigo Santoro — not to mention Johnny Knoxville as a local gun nut (ahem) who winds up being a big help when it comes time to build up an arsenal against the bad guys.

Said bad guys, by the way, are mostly an afterthought, which is a bit of a shame since they’ve got the great Peter Stormare and Eduardo Noriega leading them. The former plays the leader of a group of thugs who’ve come to Sommertown Junction, the sleepy village of Sheriff Ray Owens (Schwarzenegger). They’re lying in wait for the world’s most dangerous drug lord (Noriega), who has just spectacularly busted out of FBI custody and is racing toward them in an experimental Corvette that can go at blinding speeds (I am not making this up). So you can basically chart the collision course, as this ruthless madman zooms along, headed straight for Arnold’s dusty border town. The movie’s affable demeanor, we understand, is about to turn murderous — and it does.

The Last Stand was directed by Korean auteur Kim Jee-woon, who specializes in surreal genre freak-outs like the epic The Good, the Bad, the Weird and the grisly I Saw the Devil. He can be a bit long-winded (and this one sags at many points), but he’s also a technical master up for a logistical and/or tonal challenge. He’s smart enough to not try to make Schwarzenegger an imposing presence; instead, this is one film where you realize how ordinary -size the muscleman turned actor really is. And when Kim shoots a gunfight or car chase, no matter how intricate, you always know where everybody is. This talent comes in handy especially during the film’s final act, as an elaborate, extended face-off between Ray, his deputies, and a clown car’s worth of baddies turns into a cavalcade of exploding heads and flying bodies. But even as the movie leaves its ambling early acts behind, there’s still enough goofy, offhand humor to distinguish it from the rest of the Schwarzenegger oeuvre. At one point during the violent final standoff, Ray busts through the door to a diner and the bewildered townsfolk inside ask how he is. “Old,” he sighs — and, to everyone’s credit, we believe it.

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The Last Stand

After leaving his LAPD narcotics post following a bungled operation that left him wracked with remorse and regret, Sheriff Ray Owens (Schwarzenegger) moved out of Los Angeles and settled into a life fighting what little crime takes place in sleepy border town Sommerton Junction. But that peaceful existence is shattered when Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega), the most notorious, wanted drug kingpin in the western hemisphere, makes a deadly yet spectacular escape from an FBI prisoner convoy. With the help of a fierce band of lawless mercenaries led by the icy Burrell (Peter Stormare), Cortez begins racing towards the US-Mexico border at 250 mph in a specially-outfitted Corvette ZR1 with a hostage in tow. Cortez’ path: straight through Summerton Junction, where the whole of the U.S. law enforcement, including Agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker) will have their final opportunity to intercept him before the violent fugitive slips across the border forever. At first reluctant to become involved, and then counted out because of the perceived ineptitude of his small town force, Owens ultimately rallies his team and takes the matter into his own hands, setting the stage for a classic showdown.

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Movie Reviews

Arnold's lackadaisical 'last stand'.

Stephanie Zacharek

Sheriff Ray Owens (Arnold Schwarzenegger) faces off with vicious drug smugglers in The Last Stand . Merrick Morton/Lionsgate hide caption

The Last Stand

• Director: Jee-Woon Kim
• Genre: Action, Thriller
• Running time: 107 minutes

Rated R for strong bloody violence throughout and language

With: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Forest Whitaker, Johnny Knoxville

Watch Clips

'Where's the Fire Coming From?'

Credit: Lionsgate

He has repeated the catchphrase over and over again, though he really had to say it only once: No one ever doubted for a minute that Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't be back.

How you feel about the hit-or-miss neo-spaghetti-Western The Last Stand may depend on how much you really missed Schwarzenegger while he was taking time off from acting to serve two terms as governor of California.

As Ray Owens, the sheriff of tiny, sleepy Sommerton Junction, Schwarzenegger looks kind of OK, with a deep Coppertone tan and hedgehog hairdo. Owens used to be a Los Angeles police narcotics guy, but a botched operation left him yearning for a quieter life, which is why he's retreated to this dusty little border town some 200 miles outside Las Vegas.

Now, as he learns from a know-it-all FBI agent played by Forest Whitaker, an escaped fugitive named Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) is headed his way. At first, Owens is mildly indifferent; then he realizes he must protect the townspeople, particularly since Cortez has sent an advance team of baddies, led by a dyspeptic-looking Peter Stormare, to clear the path for his arrival.

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Schwarzenegger's 'total recall' of his life, so far.

When Owens finally leaps into action, he has help from, among others, a lackadaisical deputy (played with laid-back elan by Luis Guzman) and the half-witted proprietor of a makeshift firearms museum (Johnny Knoxville, who, clad in pajamas and a pointed medieval warrior's helmet, resembles a maniacal militant elf).

Schwarzenegger still looks robust, but he isn't as efficient in the ass-kicking department as he was 30 years ago, and the script — written by Andrew Knauer, Jeffrey Nachmanoff and George Nolfi — reflects that.

"How are you, Sheriff?" one guy asks after seeing Owens take a particularly jarring tumble. "Old," Owens replies, with more than a hint of resignation. Hey, it happens to the best of us.

Sheriff's deputy Mike Figuerola (Luis Guzman) is Schwarzenegger's laid-back comrade in arms in the sleepy border town of Sommerton Junction. Tony Rivetti Jr./Lionsgate hide caption

Sheriff's deputy Mike Figuerola (Luis Guzman) is Schwarzenegger's laid-back comrade in arms in the sleepy border town of Sommerton Junction.

Schwarzenegger is the big draw here, and he seems to be having a reasonably good time, getting roughed up here and there and putting his trademark "What, me worry?" line delivery to use. (His scenes with the eternal goofball Knoxville are the nuttiest and perhaps the best.)

The Last Stand was directed by Korean cult-favorite filmmaker Kim Jee-woon, whose previous pictures include the rambunctious 2008 noodle Western The Good, the Bad, the Weird and, from 2003, A Tale of Two Sisters, a dreamy, enigmatic bit of free-verse horror.

The Last Stand isn't as effective as either of those movies. Its attempts at violent humor are scattershot, though occasionally Jee-woon and his actors hit the mark. (The sight of crazy old Knoxville using a flare gun as an assault weapon works like a charm, for instance.) But most of the action sequences are indistinctly shot and choppily edited; they flip by in a blur of noise.

The director does pull off a pretty magnificent cornfield car chase — two sleek vehicles cut through a thick, shaggy carpet of maize like souped-up harvesters, the movie's way of saying that the simple country life needn't be devoid of thrills. But Jee-woon takes too long to wrap things up, fumbling repeatedly on his way to an ending. By the end, even Schwarzenegger looks worn out. Maybe being governor wasn't such a hard job after all.

The Last Stand Review

25 Jan 2013

107 minutes

Last Stand, The

And… he’s back. With The Last Stand, precisely one decade on from his last star vehicle (Terminator 3), Arnold Schwarzenegger is finally reset to Action Man mode. But with less swagger than you might expect. Rather than being triumphantly Arnie-centric, large swathes of the movie are entirely Governor-free, as diabolical Mexican gangster Martinez (Eduardo Noriega) runs rings around Forest Whitaker and his FBI manhunters. Even in the border town of Sommerton, where Martinez is heading in a ludicrously zippy Corvette ZR1, Schwarzenegger is just one cog in a sprawling ensemble that includes Luis Guzmán as deputy ‘Figgy’, Johnny Knoxville as samurai-helmeted gun-nut ‘Dinkum’ (the movie’s Radagast, and less annoying than promo materials threatened), and Harry Dean Stanton as an ornery farmer.

It’s corny, lowbrow fun — High Noon rebooted in Hasta-La-VistaVision. But the first hour’s toggling between the villain’s Fast Five-ish vehicular machinations and events in Sommerton only highlights the yawniness of the latter. For a long time, Schwarzenegger’s stiff-necked sheriff Ray Owens saunters around saying things like, “Should be a quiet weekend,” and putting on reading glasses to signify that he’s old (in case you miss this, he also has the line, “I’m old”). The star, always most natural when thrust into unnatural scenarios, is creaky in these prosaic scenes. And it doesn’t help that he’s interacting with characters thinner than Taylor Swift: a war-veteran boozer in need of redemption, a tenderfoot deputy, a perky diner waitress.

The main draw at this point is Peter Stormare, who provides much-needed pepper and some of his most diabolical beard-work to date, as a merc up to no good in Sommerton. But his barmy grandstanding aside, there’s little evidence that the man behind the lens is Korean director Jee-woon Kim, whose back catalogue crackles with dark wit. Then, finally, The Last Stand bursts into a final stretch of jubilantly chaotic, cartoonishly violent edge-of-the-border disorder, and everyone seems to wake up. There’s a tool-up sequence that sees Guzmán wielding a sword. Kim flings the camera about with the feverish abandon he brought to The Good, The Bad And The Weird. And several kills are "ouch!"-inducingly harsh, including an Arnie roof-dive that results in a henchman demise worthy of Commando. So, while the big man’s return to the big screen may lack the impact of a car through a police-station wall, it’s a serviceable start.

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Last Stand

Film:   The Last Stand Director:  Kim Ji-woon Writer:  Andrew Knauer Studio:  di Bonaventura Pictures

Remember Arnold Schwarzenegger? No, not the Governor of California, I mean the real Arnold. The one that kicked a lot of ass and blew tons of stuff up. The Arnold that shot a helicopter through a building with a missile that had a guy on it after saying “You’re fired.”. The Arnold that travelled in time as a robot to kill (and then to save) the human race. That Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well guess what? He’s back.

The Last Stand  has old sheriff Schwarzenegger taking care of a rural Arizona town on the border of Mexico. Very soon everything starts to get crazy when an escaped cartel boss steals a super fast car in Las Vegas and plans to head to the border with Arnold’s town right in the path. It’s up to Arnold to get his inexperienced deputies ready for the battle in time to stop the drug lord and come up with some great one liners for all the cartel dirtbags that are bound to die.

The biggest draw of The Last Stand  is its cast. This film has a lot of big names other than Schwarzenegger. It has Johnny Knoxville playing a small town gun nut, Luis Guzman as a deputy, Forest Whitaker as an FBI agent and Peter Stormare as one of the bad guys. A lot of these actors are playing types they are well known for (especially Guzman and Stomare) and it enhances the movie perfectly. The elephant in the room, however, is Arnold and he plays his role like he never took a break from acting to pursue politics. His action sequences are executed with precision and drama. You never feel like he is just an old man clinging to his glory days to get a paycheck (I’m looking at you The Expendables 2 ).

As an action movie The Last Stand  succeeds at bringing the car chases, explosions, shootouts, and fist fights. The escaped cartel boss is driving a supercar across the desert while the FBI are trying to take him down so there are plenty of good car chase scenes. The standoff in the town later in the film has more bullets than a war zone so those craving some stylized gun play will be plenty satisfied. There is even a fist fight that turns in to a MMA style brawl that has Arnold  looking like an Austrian Brock Lesnar.

The Last Stand  is not going to be winning any awards or going down as a beloved movie for the rest of time but it is a very fitting return for a legendary action star. It has plenty of violence, some great one liners, and there is even an attractive girl or two. This film breaks the notion that all January releases are total garbage and really is worth your time and money. Action fans rejoice, our accented giant has returned to kick some ass and kill some bad guys!

Review written by: Justin Proper

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X-men: the last stand.

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The Last Stand Parent Guide

One can't help but question why we need yet another movie about an evil dude to justifying gratuitous portrayals of explicit violence.

When an aging sheriff (Arnold Schwarzenegger) gets word that his small town may expect a visit from an escaping leader of a drug cartel, the law man prepares to stop him by force. Expect a lot of bullets to fly in this stand off.

Release date January 17, 2013

Run Time: 107 minutes

Official Movie Site

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by rod gustafson.

Now that he’s finished playing the role of governor of the state of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger is “bach” in a movie that uses an impossibly bad “bad guy” to justify blood laden violence.

The catalyst to all this mayhem is Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega), a convicted drug lord that must be transferred to another prison. In charge of the move is FBI agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker). Perhaps I’m still harboring painful memories of Whitaker in Our Family Wedding , but I immediately sense this guy isn’t the man for the job. My instincts prove correct when, not less than a few blocks from the prison, a big electromagnet straight out of a comic book script lifts Cortez’s armored car out of the convey. A couple hundred rounds of bullets later, the fugitive is free and picking up his rental car—a customized Corvette capable of insane speeds and precise product placement. For optional equipment he even manages to kidnap one of Bannister’s agents for a hostage (Jaimie Alexander) before racing to the Mexican border (this ‘Vette must also have a massive fuel tank).

Viewers can expect a strange mix of blood-basted action and comedic goofiness (especially thanks to a character played by Jackass star Johnny Knoxville) that will likely propel this film to box office success, as well as add high teen (and adult) appeal. Thankfully sex is limited to a passionate kiss between a driver and passenger in a car doing 120-plus MPH. Violence however is everything you would expect in a R-rated movie with Arnie on the marquee. Countless people are shot with gratuitous blood effects and one character’s torso is dismembered from his legs. Expect many other punches, neck breakings, beatings, and other forms of human cruelty too. And the language is coarse, with well over a dozen sexual expletives, many scatological curses and terms of Christian deity.

Schwarzenegger recently commented that his term as governor has made him a better actor . He does have a tender moment in this film where he brings true emotion to the screen, but otherwise he’s beginning to take on the aging Eastwood look as he peppers the streets with bullets in an attempt to eradicate the drive-through criminals. While we might admire his determination to protect the fictitious citizens of Sommerton Junction, one can’t help but question why we need yet another movie about an evil dude to justifying gratuitous portrayals of explicit violence.

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Rod Gustafson

The last stand rating & content info.

Why is The Last Stand rated R? The Last Stand is rated R by the MPAA for strong bloody violence throughout, and language.

Violence: Many scenes depict people being shot (including bullets in the head) with explicit blood effects. Others are blasted with large guns that cause massive damage. One character’s body is separated at the waist. Other scenes depict people fighting with knives (including explicit stab wounds) and other implements. People are punched, kicked, beaten and thrown. A woman is kidnapped by a man and held hostage in a car: He later throws her out of the vehicle while it’s moving at high speed.

Sexual Content: A woman being held hostage in a fast moving car sensuously kisses the driver.

Language: The script includes over a dozen sexual expletives, many scatological slangs, crude anatomical terms and other profanities, as well as two uses of Christian deity as expletives.

Drugs/Alcohol: None noted.

Page last updated July 17, 2017

The Last Stand Parents' Guide

Why kinds of criminals are popular in action movies today? Have you noticed a change in who the “bad guys” are now versus a decade (or longer) ago?

How do movies like The Last Stand justify the use of violence? With current debates about the regulation of guns in the United States, how might a movie like this influence people’s opinions? Do you think it would make them more supportive of restrictive gun laws or less so? How do our own experiences color how we interpret a movie?

Even though none of the scenes in this movie take place in Mexico, how is that country depicted? How would you feel about this movie if you were a Mexican citizen?

Find out how politics has affected Arnold Schwarzenegger’s acting career here: http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/15/arnold-schwarzenegger-im-a-better-actor-now/

The most recent home video release of The Last Stand movie is May 21, 2013. Here are some details…

Home Video Notes: The Last Stand

The Last Stand releases to home video on May 21, 2013.

Related home video titles:

He’s “bach!” After a short recess from his Hollywood career so he could be the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has returned. You can also see this body-builder-turned-actor in The Terminator franchise (playing his usual tough-guy character) and Jingle All The Way (taking on a surprisingly fatherly role). For a classic film featuring a lone sheriff against a criminal, check out High Noon .

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, the last front.

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"The Last Front" is a first-rate calling-card movie—a medium-budget project that feels much bigger because it puts all the money on the screen, as studio executives like to say, and that will make people want to trust first-time director Julien Hayet-Kerknawi with bigger budgets moving forward. But it seems more likely that it'll be a Dwayne Johnson action thriller than a historical drama, which is troubling considering the subject matter of the film: the attempts to liberate a small Belgian farming community from German troops who've occupied it during World War I, and the unrelenting cruelty that invading soldiers inflict on civilian populations under the guise of carrying out orders.

The two main characters are Leonard Lambert ( Iain Glen )—a soft-spoken widower who lives on a farm with his daughter Johanna ( Emma Dupont ) and his son Adrien ( James Downie )—and a German army officer, Lt. Laurentz ( Joe Anderson ). On top of his obvious psychological problems (including psychosis, a hair-trigger temper, and alcoholism), Laurentz is a world-class scumbag villain, the kind you spend an entire movie rooting for somebody to murder as gruesomely as possible.

This is not a shades-of-grey kind of movie. Nor is it one where the characters have more than two dimensions or the hint of a personal life beyond their immediate plot function. Lambert is, it appears, a committed pacifist who would rather avoid confrontation than participate in it (his last name begins with "Lamb" after all). At the same time, Laurentz is so detestable and chaotic that his superior officer and actual dad, Commander Maximilian ( Philippe Brenninkmeyer ), calls him a monster and briefly ends up having the lad's pistol pointed at his forehead. The rest of the characters—including Adrien's girlfriend Louise ( Sasha Luss ) and her father, Dr. Janssen ( Koen De Bouw ), and the parish priest Father Michael ( David Calder )—are mainly there to create suspense as to whether they'll be tormented or murdered by Laurentz, whose solution to every problem is to reach for his gun. (Gotta hand it to the guy: he's not big on delegating. He personally kills so many people in this movie that you start to wonder why he brought those other folks with him.) 

The violence is circumscribed, usually showing you just enough gore and/or pain to get across the idea that war is indeed hell (though the goopy sound effects and screams fill in the blanks as far as horrors-of-war). But the more "The Last Front" seems to want to speak seriously to the inhumanity of wartime, the less I was inclined to trust it because it traffics in the visual and aural language of the red-meat revenge thriller. At many points, connoisseurs of action cinema may be reminded of films starring and/or directed by Mel Gibson, such as " The Patriot ," " Braveheart ," and " Hacksaw Ridge " that genuflect toward some kind of larger statement about a certain historical period but end up being functionally indistinguishable from a 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone picture where one man can become an army. 

Considering that other villagers almost immediately start suggesting that Lambert is the perfect guy to lead a rebellion against the Germans—plus the fact that Glen is best known for spending eight seasons on "Game of Thrones" playing the only thoughtful guy in a room full of petty, bloodthirsty maniacs, then dutifully kicking butt, often on horseback—it's mystifying that the film spends so much time letting us watch the poor man do the "to be or not to be" thing. Why not skip to the part where he takes up arms against a sea of troubles? This is not a psychodrama--there's not a whole lot of "psych" to dramatize--so there's no reason to delay the inevitable scenes of Lambert going full John Wayne on the Huns. 

There are compensatory pleasures. The supporting performances are above and beyond, and Glen is so likable and so believable as a decent man pushed too far that if this film does well, he might be in line to have a late-in-life career renaissance in another of the senior action flicks that have become ubiquitous. The cinematography by Xavier Van D'huynslager puts the widescreen format to excellent use in presenting information and blocking large numbers of people, something many contemporary filmmakers no longer seem to know how to do. The action sequences are lean and clean; you know what's happening, what's at stake, and why things turned out as they did. Frederik Van de Moortel's score is fundamentally honest in that it's more "'80s action thriller" than "Oh, the humanity!" It's superb at escalating tension in the lead-up to violence, and there's a brilliant moment in the second half where he introduces what sounds like distorted and truncated feedback loops, as if to suggest that the character the scene is focused on is losing his grip on reality. 

If Liam Neeson ever wants to get back into the " Taken " business, he could save time by hiring this entire team, including Glen as the hero's previously unmentioned cousin Nigel, who used to work for MI-6. I don't know if that's the impression the filmmakers wanted to leave, but that's what comes across.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film Credits

The Last Front (2024)

Iain Glen as Leonard

Sasha Luss as Louise

Joe Anderson as Laurentz

David Calder as Father Michael

James Downie as Adrien

Koen De Bouw as Dr. Janssen

• Julien Hayet-Kerknawi

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The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan, and his people to make a daring last ... Read all A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan, and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg. A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan, and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg.

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• Phoebe Gittins
• Arty Papageorgiou
• Jeffrey Addiss
• Miranda Otto
• Shaun Dooley

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• Helm Hammerhand

• Fréaláf Hildeson
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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia Set 183 years before the events of "The Lord of the Rings".
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• December 13, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Burbank, California, USA (Studio)
• Middle-earth Enterprises
• New Line Cinema
• Sola Digital Arts
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 10 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Digital
• IMAX 6-Track

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