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Last Man Standing Stars: Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken Director: Walter Hill BBFC Certificate: 18 Opened: September 1996 |
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"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" - so the saying goes, and it is one that stands up to
examination if movie remakes are anything to go by. Point of No Return was
a diverting actioner, but a pale imitation of the French original, La Femme
Nikita. Hollywood can even wreck its own films, as shown with the recent,
average rehash of Sabrina Fair, starring Harrison Ford. Another way to
remake a film in a less obvious way is to take the guts of the film (plot, characters,
etc.) and dump them in an entirely new setting. Sergio Leone's A Fistful of
Dollars succeeded in this way, taking its 'inspiration' from Akira Kurosawa's
classic, Yojimbo (you won't have seen it at your local multiplex!) and now
Walter Hill has tried to repeat Leone's success in his new contemporary Western.
Bruce Willis plays John Smith (not because the writer couldn't think of a better name but because, hey!, it means something), an average guy lacking direction who drifts into the run-down town of Jericho, a typical Western-esque town loaded with tumble-weeds, brothels and saloons. However, the cowboys that populate this derelict desert town are two groups of automatic-weapon packing mobsters, 30s-style. The low-grade Mafia types and a local Irish gang divide the town (despite the fact that barely anyone else lives there). Both are in the business of bootlegging and teetering on the edge of an uneasy truce. The arrival of Smith is enough to push both gangs off that edge and into a bloody war, with our hero making a killing from working for both sides. If Hill's intention was to make the film like Willis' character, then he has succeeded. It is boring, lacking direction, violent and devoid of any morals. Almost all of the story is told via a desperately dull voice over (which is neither funny or interesting, qualities which enabled Casino to get away with nearly an hour of it). The characters are totally one-dimensional and the story is abysmally slow. Whilst a film such as Desperado shared the same faults, it was loaded with fantastic action set-pieces. Although the previews would have you believe that this does too, the shoot-outs are short-lived, spread thinly through the film and, frankly, fairly dull. Bruce Willis loses all of the credibility that he may have gained from Pulp Fiction and 12 Monkeys (this part being more on a par with his voicing of a baby in the Look Who's Talking series) hiding behind his trade-mark smirk throughout the film. However, without the witty one-liners and excitement of Die Hard, he stops looking cool and ends up plain annoying. Aside from about two good lines of dialogue and one, five-second bit of action that looks like something out of Desperado or a John Woo movie, there is absolutely nothing to recommend about this. It fails totally on the story-line or character development, and the only sections that could have saved it (i.e. action) are a major disappointment. Even Christopher Walken can not save this, possibly the longest hour and a half I have ever spent. Reviewed by: Tom Whitaker
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