One of the best criticisms I've heard of John McTiernan's Last Action Hero was that it felt like a 2+ hour Saturday Night Live sketch. And that's only partially true. The first 30-40 minutes feel like an extended SNL sketch. And quite frankly, they are the weakest. They rely on approximately one joke: action movies are CRAZY, yo! But once the second act gets rolling it develops its own identity and becomes a surprisingly well-crafted action movie. The scene involving Schwarzenegger and a corpse, a nerve gas bomb, a funeral, and a crane holds up to this day. But what really shocked me was how cynical and intense the film could get. Charles Dance gives an astounding performance and his "experiment" to see if the real world works like the movie one is legitimately chilling. The line where Schwarzenegger admits that he's never really talked to a woman before does more to deconstruct the action movie protagonist stereotype than anything else in the movie. Is Last Action Hero perfect? No. But there are enough good things about it for me to consider it a quality movie.
7/10
I like this one too! The Hamlet scene always makes me laugh.
ReplyDeleteLast Action Hero got buried by being released too close to Jurassic Park. It also got a lot of backlash at the time for it's huge advertising campaign which included the movie's logo being painted on a NASA rocket!
Also, what's up with 90s movies geared towards kids/teens referencing The Seventh Seal? Both Last Action Hero and Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey feature the Death character. Not that I'm complaining, start the kiddies on Bergman early!
ANYTHING to get the kiddies introduced to the inescapable, existential horror that is the inevitability of death!
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