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!

For Your Consideration #2: The Purge: Anarchy (dir by James DeMonaco)

Posted on December 14, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yes, I know what you’re saying.

“Seriously, Lisa!? We should give awards consideration to The Purge: Anarchy!? Are you serious!?”

Yes, actually I am quite serious. Notice that I didn’t say that we should necessarily give The Purge: Anarchy any awards or that we should even nominate it. I just said consideration. For whatever flaws that The Purge: Anarchy may have, it’s actually one of the better and, in its way, one of the more thought-provoking mainstream American films released this year. Working within the guise of being a simple genre film, The Purge: Anarchy is one of the few films to give serious consideration to the politics and culture that could both lead to and result from dystopia.

What I’m saying is that — despite what the critics may have said last summer — The Purge: Anarchy is actually one of the most subversive and intellectually curious films released this year. You just have to be willing to look past all of the action conventions and instead focus on the film’s subtext.

The Purge: Anarchy takes place one year after the end of the first Purge film. America is still led by the New Founding Fathers and every year, for one night, all crime is legal. As the national media constantly assures everyone, the Purge is responsible for every good thing about America. And even though there are a few rebels who claim that the Purge is not necessarily a good thing, most people chose to believe that — as long as it’s government-sanctioned — it’s for the best.

Whereas the first Purge film took place solely inside one family’s house and focused on the domestic melodrama within, The Purge: Anarchy focuses on what goes on outside of the gated sanctuaries of the rich. As quickly becomes apparent, the Purge is less about purging negative feelings and more about keeping the non-rich, non-white population under control. While the poor kill each other in the streets, the rich pay for the privilege to kill poverty-stricken “volunteers” in the safety of their own homes. (Some of the volunteers agree to die out of the hope that their family will be sent some money. Most are just rounded up on the streets, killed, and forgotten.)

Perhaps even more so than the first film, The Purge: Anarchy works because it feels so plausible. We live in a society where we are continually told that moral rights and wrongs can be determined by man-made laws. When a man is filmed being literally choked to death by a pack of police officers, we’re told that it was the man’s fault because he was failing to respect authority and many choose to believe it because “the law is the law.” (Never mind, of course, whether the law is being fairly applied or makes any sense to begin with.) If a man in uniform is murdered, it’s rightfully called a crime. If a man in uniform commits a murder, we’re told it’s simply a part of the job.

And so, that’s why I suggest that The Purge: Anarchy deserves greater consideration than it’s been given. Yes, it is a genre film and yes, it is an installment in an action franchise. However, it’s also far closer to the truth than many people are willing to acknowledge.

The Purge: Anarchy Trailer #2: Grillo Strikes back

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Arleigh

Last summer’s surprise hit, The Purge, was something that ended up being better than it should’ve been. Using a premise that the United States of America has a yearly 12-hour event where all crimes are legal in order for the population to vent their frustrations was an interesting one. The fact that this event was cooked up by what the film calls America’s Second Founding Fathers was a nice touch.

The film itself started well enough but ended up becoming another take on the home invasion trope. At least, the box office success of the film meant a sequel was quickly greenlit. What we have with The Purge: Anarchy takes the original film’s premise and goes much wider in scope and scale. Instead of the film using a home invasion premise we now go the “Most Dangerous Game” route. If we’re to believe what the latest trailer is showing it’s that the Purge Event might be something cooked up by those rich and powerful.

We also have the very awesome Frank Grillo channeling his inner Frank Castle and using the Purge event to find those who killed his son in the year’s previous Purge.

This sequel has me more excited for it than I probably should, but if the film pulls off half of what this trailer promises then I’ll be satisfied.

Oh, if The Purge was real then people better not be trying to give me a visit because I’m ready.

“Devil’s Due” — (Hopefully) What Not To Expect When You’re Expecting

Posted on January 25, 2014 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

So, it’s January, and you know what that means — “found footage” horror is back.

Seriously, just when you think this cinematic trend has breathed its last gasp, it’s back — usually during the post-holiday period, when studios are eager to dump off material that they think is going to play to a limited (at best) audience. And then something funny happens — one of these “hand-held horrors, ” sometimes even a pretty lousy one at that, ends up ruling the roost at the box office for a week or two (The Devil Inside, anyone?), easily recouping its meager production costs, and the Hollywood suits decide to green-light a few more similar productions figuring that, hey, there’s life in this old horse yet.

And so there seems to be. But you do have to wonder — again! — if this persistent sub-genre has finally run its course, now that we’ve had found-footage zombie flicks, found-footage monster flicks, found-footage exorcism flicks, found-footage ghost flicks, and, in the case of the movie we’re here to discuss today, Devil’s Due, found footage Antichrist flicks.

Arriving as this movie did hot on the heels of Paranormal Activity : The Marked Ones, my initial thought was that this co-directed effort from Matt Betinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (who also collaborated on a less-than-stellar segment in the less-than-stellar horror anthology V/H/S) looked like another spin-off from the PA franchise, by way of Polanski’s classic Rosemary’s Baby, and while that’s generally not too far off the mark, it also doesn’t mean this isn’t actually a pretty good film. In point of fact, it is — even if it doesn’t sound like it could, or perhaps even should, be.

Lisa Marie’s nice little write-up on these digital “pages” a week or so back got me sufficiently intrigued to go out and see this thing, and I have to say I’m glad that I did, for while its premise — not to mention its stylistic trappings — are miles away from being original, it was at the very least a deftly-handled, well-constructed, reasonably-well-acted affair that, while utterly predictable, still offered enough of a unique take on its subject matter to seem modestly refreshing and “new.”

Even though it’s not. But hey, cinema relies on at least temporary suspension of disbelief, right?

The set-up is as basic as they come (and as you’d probably expect) : mysterious orphan girl Samantha (Allison Miller) grows up and marries semi-annoying yuppie scumbag Zach (Zach Gilford), they honeymoon in the Dominican Republic, a night of debauchery and excess in a mysterious underground club ends with, we find out later, her getting pregnant, and said pregnancy is beset by weird health complications, mysterious super-powers being bestowed upon the expectant mother, strangers watching their house (one of whom bears an uncanny resemblance to the cab driver who escorted them to their night-to-remember-that-they-don’t-remember in the DR), and whaddya know? A few dead deer feasts, mysterious home invasions, and psychic attacks on priests later, Samantha’s all set to give birth to Satan’s own flesh n’ blood.

On a purely personal level, I have to confess that Antichrist stories usually fall pretty flat with me since one usually needs to believe in Christ first in order to believe in his evil counterpart — since I don’t, then, I’m kind of hobbled when it comes to buying into the whole central premise here, but what the heck? Devil’s Due is paced so as not to give even viewers like myself too much time to dwell on the details, and hey, at least their “let’s record every moment of our lives for posterity” is a better pretext for all the “home movie” footage we’re getting here than some of the limp set-ups we’ve been served by other entries in this admittedly over-crowded field.

In the “minus” column, our intrepid young (I’m assuming, at any rate) directors do come a bit too close to over-playing their hand at the end — they needn’t go nearly as OTT in the effects department as they do in order to drive home their climax — but on the whole, and against all odds, their finished product by and large actually works. And on a cold January afternoon, that’s enough for me.

Devil’s Due may not be a new horror classic by any stretch of the imagination, but it does go some way towards showing that a “hand-held horror” movie can still be effective — provided, of course, that it’s in the right hands.

Film Review: Devil’s Due (dir by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet)

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Devil’s Due is a lot better than you may think.

Yes, it’s tempting to judge Devil’s Due without giving it fair a chance. January is traditionally the time of year when the studios dump all of their most hopeless films into theaters, hoping to make a quick buck while more discriminating audiences are distracted by the Oscar nominees. Found footage horror movies usually suck. The commercials make Devil’s Due look like little more than just the latest film to rip-off Paranormal Activity and The Last Exorcism. On top of all that, Devil’s Due wasn’t screened for critics and we know that’s usually a bad sign.

So yes, there’s a lot of reasons to be skeptical about Devil’s Due but I’m here to tell you to put your skeptism aside. Devil’s Due is a surpisingly intelligent horror film, one that totally defied my expectations.

If you’ve seen any of the commercials then you already know the basic plot. Zach (Zach Gilford) and Sam (Allison Miller) are newlyweds. While on their honeymoon in the Dominican Republic, they have both a frightening encounter with a fortune teller (who repeatedly tells Sam that “They’ve been waiting for you,”) and a seemingly more pleasant encounter with a friendly taxi driver who takes them to an underground nightclub. Though Sam and Zach wake up the next morning with no memory of when they left the club, we know (via Zach’s still-running camera) that a ritual was performed while Sam was passed out drunk.

Returning home to New Orleans, Sam is shocked to discover that, despite being on the pill, she is now pregnant. Zach and his family are so excited about the idea of Zach becoming a father that nobody seems to notice that Sam is far less enthusiastic. Not only does this mean that she might have to put her education and career on hold, but she also soon starts waking up with bruises on her stomach and having nosebleeds. She flies into unexplained rages, at one point smashing the windows of a van that pulled out in front of her. Despite being a vegetarian, Sam starts to crave raw meat. While everyone else just assumes that she’s having a difficult pregnancy, Sam becomes convinced that something is wrong with the baby.

Meanwhile, Zach grows increasingly paranoid about the strange men who always seem to be following Sam and him around. When he spots the cab driver sitting in church, watching as Zach’s neice takes communion for the first time, Zach realizes what the rest of us already know.

Devil’s Due won’t necessarily win any points for originality but it’s still an effectively creepy and genuinely frightening horror film. By letting us know, early on, that Sam is carrying the antichrist, the filmmakers are allowed to spend their time developing atmosphere and character (as opposed to building up to a twist that the audience would have seen coming from a mile away). Zach Gilford and Allison Miller are both very likable and have a lot of chemistry and, as a result, you care about their characters and you continue to hope for the best even when it becomes obvious that they’re destined to experience the worst.

(One need only look at the bland and forgettable lead characters in January’s other found footage film — Paranormal Activty: The Marked Ones — to understand just how important Gilford and Miller are to making Devil’s Due into an effective and memorable film.)

My most common complaint about found footage horror films is that they require you to believe that someone would actually continue to artfully film everything around him even while literally running for his life. Director Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet manage to avoid that problem by using a variety of different methods to create the illusion of “found footage.” While a good deal of the film is presented as having been filmed by Zach, the directors also make good use of store security footage (one of the film’s best scenes features Sam eating raw meat in a supermarket while a small child looks on in shock and the store’s employees fail to notice) and several stationary cameras that, about halfway through the film, are secretly installed in Zach and Sam’s house. The use of different cameras not only keeps the film from getting monotonous but it also helps the film to avoid the nausea-inducing shaky cam effect that almost made it impossible for me to watch The Marked Ones.

Finally, Devil’s Due works because it manages to get at the root of a very real and primal fear. Though it’s not something that we’re encouraged to admit, just the very idea of pregnancy is a very scary thing for a lot of women (this reviewer included). Beyond the physical changes, there’s the knowledge that, once you’ve given birth, nothing will ever be the same. There’s a great moment in Devil’s Due in which Sam and Zach argue about whether or not Sam should continue to pursue her career while she’s pregnant. This is followed, a bit later, by a scene where it’s casually mentioned that Sam’s office has now been transformed into a nursery. These are very human moments and ones that are full of very real emotions that any woman will be able to relate to. It’s moments like these that elevante Devil’s Due and make it into a surprisingly effective and intelligent horror film.

Give Devil’s Due a chance.