Brad reviews THE LAST STAND (2013), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger!

Posted on August 10, 2025 by Bradley Crain

After eight years of serving as Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger made his big comeback as an action movie star in director Kim Jee-woon’s THE LAST STAND (2013). Sure, he put in a little work on the first two EXPENDABLES movies, but those were really just glorified cameos. Here, Arnold was front and center for the film’s 107 minute running time. This was an exciting time for me, because like most action movie fans, I loved him and had truly missed seeing him consistently kicking butt and taking names on the big screen. I gladly made my way to the movie theater in January of 2013 for a large tub of ‘corn, a big Mr. Pibb, and the true return of an action megastar!!

In THE LAST STAND, Schwarzenegger plays Ray Owens, a former LAPD narcotics officer who chose to leave the big city and take a job as the sheriff of the quiet, southern border town of Sommerton, Arizona. It won’t be quiet for long after notorious drug kingpin Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) makes a daring escape from FBI custody. Cortez immediately heads towards the border in a souped up Corvette where an advanced group of highly trained gunmen, led by Burrell (Peter Stormare), are waiting to help him cross. Cortez and his small army of mercenaries appear to be on a collision course with Sheriff Owens and his ragtag group of deputies, including Mike (Luis Guzman), Jerry (Zach Gilford), and Sarah (Jaimie Alexander). Knowing they’re outgunned and outmanned, Sheriff Owens asks for additional help from ex-military man and current drunk Frank Martinez (Rodrigo Santoro), as well as the crazy local gun nut Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville). Add to this mixture, FBI agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker) and his team’s attempts to try to stop Cortez before he gets to Sommerton, and the stage is set for lots of action!

I really liked THE LAST STAND when I saw it at the movie theater in 2013, and I really liked it again when I revisited the film this week. I made it a habit many years ago to not read reviews of a film before I go see it at the theater. I had found that reading potential negative comments could affect my viewing of a film, so I cut that out. As such, after totally enjoying myself with THE LAST STAND, I was surprised that the film wasn’t received very strongly by the audience or critical community, and I was even more surprised that it completely flopped at the box office, only bringing in a total of $12 million in the United States during its run. For me, the film delivered what I was looking for… Arnold Schwarzenegger kicking ass, spouting off some good one-liners, and outsmarting and outmuscling his much younger adversaries! No critic or keyboard warrior can take that away from me, as THE LAST STAND is an entertaining movie with a good cast. Heck, even the great Harry Dean Stanton pops in for a surprise cameo at the beginning of the action.

I also appreciate the fact that THE LAST STAND is the American directorial debut of the great South Korean director Kim Jee-woon, who has directed some of my favorite South Korean films, including A BITTERSWEET LIFE (2005) and I SAW THE DEVIL (2010). His direction brings some Asian flair that results in stronger, more graphic violence, as well a penchant for jarring changes in tone between humorous character interplay and sometimes violent tragedy. In a movie designed primarily as a piece of entertainment, I appreciate those more over-the-top touches that lift it above the norm.

Overall, I easily recommend THE LAST STAND to fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger and old-school action movies. It’s not a Schwarzenegger classic in the same way as movies like PREDATOR (1987), TERMINATOR 2 (1991), and TRUE LIES (1994), but it’s still a fun ride!

Guilty Pleasure No. 78: Armageddon (dir by Michael Bay)

Posted on March 20, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Remember that time that Bruce Willis and a team of oil drillers saved all of humanity from a giant asteroid that was apparently the size of Texas?

Sure, you do! Everyone remembers Armageddon!

1998’s Armageddon is a film that doesn’t get a lot of respect but which everyone remembers. There’s been a lot of movies made about giant asteroids on a collision path with the Earth. Ever since scientists announced that a collision with a comet or an asteroid probably killed the dinosaurs, there’s been a somewhat irrational fear that the same thing could happen to us. Back in 1978, Sean Connery and Karl Malden tried to stop a Meteor (and failed). In 1998, the same year that Armageddon came out, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, and Elijah Wood tried to stop an asteroid from causing a Deep Impact (and failed). Adam McKay made an entire film about everyone saying, “Don’t Look Up,” in an attempt to promote increased panic about climate change (and failed). (“I’m so scared!” Leonardo DiCaprio shouted and audiences responded, “Oh, calm down.”) And yet, it’s Armageddon — ridiculed by critics, endlessly parodied by other movies — that people use as their go-to source for commenting on the prospect of a mass extinction event. Mostly because, in Armageddon, humanity didn’t fail. Bruce Willis showed that asteroid who was boss!

Why do we love Armageddon? A lot of it has to do with the cast. Not only do you have Bruce Willis battling an asteroid but you’ve also got Steve Buscemi, Owen Wilson, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Michael Clarke Duncan, Peter Stormare, William Fichtner, and a host of others working with him. You’ve got Billy Bob Thornton working ground control. You’ve got Liv Tyler, somehow managing to give a decent performance even while Ben Affleck attacks her with animal crackers. It’s not just the cast is full of familiar and likable actors. It’s that the members of the cast know exactly what type of film that they’re appearing in and they all give exactly the right type of performance for that film. They deliver their lines with conviction while not making the mistake of taking themselves too seriously. Bruce Willis announces that his crew will destroy that asteroid in return for never having to pay taxes again and he announces with just the slightest hint of a smirk, knowing that the audience is going to cheer that moment.

But really, the real reason why Armageddon has survived that test of time is because it’s just so utterly shameless. Director Michael Bay will never be accused of being a subtle director but Bay instinctively understood that Armageddon was not a film that demanded subtlety. Armageddon is a film that demands that constantly moving camera and all of those carefully composed scenes that were clearly made so they could be included in the trailer. It’s a film about big moments and big emotions. Unlike something like Deep Impact, it doesn’t get bogged down in trying to be better than it actually is. Unlike Don’t Look Now, it doesn’t degenerate into a bunch of histrionic speeches. Armageddon exists to make the audience cheer and it succeeds. It takes guts to include a slow motion scene of a bunch of kids celebrating in front of a faded Kennedy For President poster but Bay is exactly the type of director who can pull that off. Michael Bay’s style is not right for a lot of films. But it was perfect for Armageddon.

As I sit here typing this, there are some people panicking because there’s speculation that a meteor is going approach the Earth in the 2030s. It’ll probably miss us but who knows? But you know what? I’m not worried at all. I’ve seen Armageddon. So, on this International Earth Day, let’s remember the courageous men who saved this planet back in 1998.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Fargo (dir by the Coen Brothers)

Posted on January 9, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Photograph by Erin Nicole

I am currently sitting in my bedroom, wrapped in several blankets and watching the snow fall on the other side of my window. I love snow, mostly because I live in Texas and therefore, I don’t get to see it that often. The most snow we’ve gotten down here, at least in my lifetime, was in 2021. That was when we got hit by that blizzard and had to deal with rolling blackouts for a week straight. That’s not a good memory but still, I love to watch the snow fall. Even during that blizzard, I still loved the fact that I could use the snow as a nightlight as I read a Mickey Spillane book and waited for the power to come back on.

Down here in North Texas, snow is exotic. In other parts of the country, it’s just a part of everyday life.

Like in the Dakotas for instance….

First released in 1996 and directed by the Coen Brothers, Fargo is a film that is full of arresting images. As soon as you hear (or read) the title, those images and the sounds associated with them immediately pop into your head. You immediately visualize the desperate car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) trying to trick a customer into paying extra for the trucoat and insisting that “I’m not getting snippy here!” You see the film’s two kidnappers, Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsud (Peter Stomare), getting on each other’s nerves as they drive from one frozen location to another. You remember heavily pregnant Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) investigating a snowy crime scene and gently correcting another officer’s “police work.” You flash back to the moment when Mike Yanagita (Steve Park) suddenly breaks down in tears and tells Marge that she’s a super lady. “And it’s a beautiful day,” Marge says at one point, wondering how so many terrible things could have happened on such a lovely day. And she’s right. It was a beautiful day. It was far too beautiful a day to discover one man stuffing another into a woodchipper.

Myself, I always think of the scene where Carl attempts to find a place to hide a briefcase full of money. It’s night. Carl’s been shot in the face but he has the money that he’s gone through so much trouble to collect. He runs into a field, looking for a place to hide it. The field is covered in snow. Every inch of the ground glows a bright white. Everything looks the same. But Carl still runs around desperately before picking a place to bury the suitcase. It doesn’t seem to occur to Carl that there’s no visible landmarks or anything that would ever help him to find the money again. He’s blinded, by the snow, by the pain of the bullet, and, like most of the characters in this movie, by his own greed.

Of course, Fargo is not a film about people behaving in intelligent ways. Greed, loneliness, and desperation all lead to people doing some pretty stupid things. Jerry thinks that the best way to pay off his debts and raise the money for a real estate deal is to arrange for his wife to be kidnapped so his wealthy father-in-law (Harve Presnell) will pay the ransom. His father-in-law, who obviously despises Jerry and would be happy for him to just go away, is convinced that he’ll be able to both get back his daughter and recover his money. (If Jerry had just spent a moment really thinking about his plan before going through with it, he would have realized his father-in-law would never just part with his money.) Carl thinks that it’s a good idea to partner up with the obviously sociopathic Grimsud. When a cop pulls over Carl and Grimsud’s car, Grimsud ignores the fact that Carl was talking his way out of the ticket and instead kills the policeman and then kills several eyewitnesses. (“I told you not to stop.”) Marge figures out what is going on but even she puts her life in danger by investigating a cabin without proper backup. The characters in Fargo frequently behave in ludicrous ways and almost all of them speak with an exaggerated regional dialect (All together now: “Oh yeah,”) but they also feel incredibly real. The sad truth of the matter is that there are people as greedy, dumb, and hapless in the world as Jerry. There are people like Carl and Grimsud. Even Jerry’s fearsome father-in-law is a very familiar type of character. People do thing without thinking and inevitably, they make things worse the more overwhelmed they become. Common sense (not to mention decency) is frequently the last thing that anyone considers. Fortunately, Marge is believable too. Marge at times almost seems so gentle and polite (“No, why don’t you sit over there?” she sweetly tells Mike when he attempts to get too close to her.) that the viewer worries about what’s going to happen to her when she gets closer and closer to figuring out what’s going on. Fortunately, Marge turns out to be much stronger than anyone, even the viewer, expected. The world of Fargo can be a terrible place but there’s moments of kindness and hope as well.

Fargo is both a comedy and a drama. The opening title card says that the film is based on a true story, which is a typical Coen Brothers joke. (The film was loosely inspired by several similar crimes but the story itself is fictional.) Carter Burwell’s dramatic score is both appropriately grand and also gently satiric. Jerry does some terrible things but William H. Macy plays him as being so naive and desperate and ultimately overwhelmed that it’s hard not to have a little sympathy for him. Jerry truly thought it would be so simple to pull off a complicated crime. (The poor guy can’t even get the ice off of his windshield.) As played by Steve Buscemi, Carl Showalter talks nonstop and he makes you laugh despite yourself. His shock at how poorly everything goes is one of the film’s highlights. It’s a funny film but it’s also a sad one. I always worry about what’s going to happen to Jerry’s son. Ultimately, of course, the film belongs to Frances McDormand, who gives a wonderful performance as Marge. She’s the heart of the film, the one who reminds the viewer that there are good people in the world.

Considering the film’s cultural impact, it’s always somewhat shocking to remember that Fargo did not win the Oscar for Best Picture. It lost to The English Patient, a film about a homewrecker who helps the Nazis. Personally, I prefer Fargo.