Joan Plowright | Through the Shattered Lens

Oh, Last Action Hero.

Ever since this film was first released in 1993, it’s usually held up as an example of a Hollywood fiasco. The script was originally written to be a modest satire of action films. The screenwriters wrote the character of Jack Slater, an movie action hero who comes into the real world, for Dolph Lundgren. Instead, the film became an Arnold Schwarzenegger extravaganza and the studio ended up tossing a ton of money at it. When the film was originally released, the reviews were mixed and the box office was considered to be disappointing. (That it went up against the first Jurassic Park was definitely an underrated issue when it came to the box office.) Ever since then, The Last Action Hero has had a reputation for being a bad film.

Well, I don’t care. I like The Last Action Hero. Yes, it’s a bit overproduced for a comedy. (It breaks my own rule about how no comedy should run longer than two hours.) Yes, it gets a bit sentimental with ten year-old Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien) using a magic, golden ticket to enter the film world of his hero, Jack Slater. If you want to argue that the film should have devoted more time to and gone a bit deeper into contrasting the film world with the real world, I won’t disagree with you. But I will also say that Sylvester Stallone starring as The Terminator in Jack’s world was actually a pretty funny sight gag. Danny knowing better than to trust a character played by F. Murray Abraham made me laugh. Danny’s fantasy in which Arnold Schwarzenegger played Hamlet was made all the better by the fact that his teacher was played by Laurence Olivier’s wife, Joan Plowright. Danny DeVito as Whiskers the Cartoon Cat makes me laugh as well, even if it is perhaps a bit too bizarre of a joke for this particular film. (There’s nothing else about the Jack Slater films that would explain the presence of a cartoon cat.)

When you set aside the idea of the Last Action Hero being a symbol of Hollywood bloat and just watch it as a film, it emerges as an enjoyably goofy action movie, one that captures the joy of watching movies (because who hasn’t wanted to enter a movie’s world at some point in their life), and also one that features a rather charming performance from Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Schwarzenegger, I should add, plays both himself and Jack Slater. One of my favorite jokes is when the real Schwarzenegger is at a premiere and he mistakes the evil Ripper for Tom Noonan, the actor who played him in the previous Jack Slater film.) Yeah, the golden ticket is a little bit hokey but who cares? Underneath all of the special effects and action and money spent on star salaries, Last Action Hero is an action movie and comedy with a heart. Danny meets his hero but also gets to become a hero himself. And Jack Slater turns out to be everything you would hope your movie hero would be. In the end, it’s obvious that a lot of the criticism of this film has more to do with the appeal of riding the bandwagon as opposed to what actually happens on screen.

Last Action Hero is a movie that I’ll happily defend.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

1985’s Revolution opens on July 4th, 1776. The Declaration of Independence has just been published. The streets are full of people celebrating. A statue of King George is pulled down. In her carriage, the wealthy Mrs. McConnahay (Joan Plowright) turns up her nose to the enthusiastic rebels, including the fanatical Liberty Woman (Annie Lennox). Mrs. McConnahay’s daughter, Daisy (Nastassja Kinski) is intrigued by this idea of freedom and equality.

Fur trader Tom Dobbs sails his boat into Hudson Harbor. Tom is Scottish, illiterate, and very much a man of the 18th Century. However, he’s played by Al Pacino, who was none of those things. After Revolution was released to desultory reviews, Pacino took four years off from the movies and watching this film, one can see why. Pacino is miscast as Dobbs and, as a result, he gives the type of truly bad performance that can only be given by a great actor. Unable to disguise the fact that he had the accent of a modern-day New Yorker, Pacino resorts to mumbling the majority of his lines. Tasked with playing a character who has no idea how to deal with the history-making events in which he finds himself, Pacino alternates between a blank look and with bulging his eyes like a madman, proving that it’s far more difficult to play an uneducated character than an educated one. Why cast Pacino, who can be one of our most exciting actors, as a character who can barely speak and who has neither the intensity of Michael Corleone or the subversive wit of Tony Montana? Due to Pacino and Kinski having zero chemistry, the scenes where Tom falls in love with Daisy are almost painful to watch.

The film follows Tom as he and his son, Ned (Simon Owen when the film begins, Dexter Fletcher by the time the action moves to Valley Forge), as they find themselves conscripted into the Revolutionary Army. Eventually, Ned is abducted into the British army and serves as a drummer boy under the sadistic watch of Sgt. Major Peasy (Donald Sutherland). The idea behind the film isn’t a bad one. It attempts to portray the American Revolution through the eyes of the average citizen. Instead of focusing on the Founding Fathers, Revolution tries to tell the story of the everyday people who found themselves in the middle of the war. Tom loses his boat and (temporarily) he loses his son. Fortunately, this is one of those films where people are constantly running into each other by chance, regardless of whether it makes any sense or not. Daisy goes from seeing Tom in New York to randomly coming across him in a field to eventually finding him in Valley Forge. It’s not because she’s specifically looking for him. Instead, he just happens to be there.

Why does Revolution fail? A lot of it comes down to Pacino’s performance, though Pacino certainly isn’t the only talented actor to give a not-quite good performance in Revolution. (Donald Sutherland has never been more wasted in a film.) The script is full of dialogue like, “My mouth belongs where I place it.” (Pacino gets stuck with that one.) Hugh Hudson directs in a leaden manner. Towards the end of the film, there is one brilliant sequence where Tom wanders through the streets of New York and, for a few minutes, the film comes to like with a spontaneity that was previously lacking. Unfortunately, it’s just one sequence in a very long movie,

To be honest, we could use some good films about the American Revolution and I’m not talking about elitist nonsense like Hamilton. No taxation without representation. It’s still a good message for us all.

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