Trailer Tracking: ‘World War Z,’ ‘Warm Bodies,’ ‘The Last Stand’

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“The Last Stand”

Best Parts of the Trailer: Five words: Luis Guzman with a machine-gun; The glimpse of the crazy Mad Max car; The “old” joke works…

Worst Parts of the Trailer: The underwhelming, overly-familiar action; Watching poor Forest Whitaker having to sell the exposition; Did Johnny Knoxville really work out that well as a redneck sidekick for The Rock in “Walking Tall” that we had to see it again?; Grievous, flagrant, and clichéd use of Big Head Todd And The Monsters’ “Boom Boom,” one of the most most over-used songs in movie trailer history

OUR TAKE: True story – I saw “Skyfall” this weekend and, before the film started, we got to see the new trailer for “The Last Stand,” Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first big solo foray back into the action genre since serving as the governor of California. And, as soon as the trailer was done, a person sitting in the row behind me loudly declared, “That looks like a Steven Seagal movie!” My first thought was “Ouch!” And my second thought was, “He has a point…”

Let’s just say what everyone is thinking – “The Last Stand” looks batshit insane. It does. The premise is RIDICULOUS, but it’s ridiculous in that special way that 1980s and 90s action movies were ridiculous. However, when I watch the trailer for “The Last Stand”, I don’t think about classic action films like “Die Hard” or “True Lies.” I think about movies like “Tango & Cash”, “Cobra”, and “Red Heat.” And, while I’d admit, there are action fans that have INTENSE feelings of nostalgia for those crazy, over-the-top, “what were they thinking” action relics, the sad fact is those were NOT good movies. Not at all. They’re dated, they’re cheap, and they’re the kinds of movies you laugh “at”, not “with.” So, while I’m sure that Arnold and director Kim Jee-Woon were very self-consciously going for a very meta ‘80s action movie feel – to remind you of Arnold’s glory days – for me, the end result of this trailer is that it just reminds me of how laughable and disposable most of those movies were.

A powerful drug kingpin breaks out of jail in Las Vegas, jumps into a specially-designed, impossibly fast sportscar (a Corvette ZR1), and makes a run for the Mexican border. The escaping bad guy also has a cadre of henchmen, outfitted with their own Mad Max-esque vehicles, who are singularly tasked with helping their boss’ car make it over the Rio Grande. The only thing between the bad guy and freedom? Small-town border sheriff Anhuld Schwarzenegger and his raging band of local bumpkin comic relief players (Johnny Knoxville, Luis Guzman, etc). You ALMOST have to give it to “The Last Stand.” If you can deal with the idea of Arnold as a Western sheriff, in theory, you should be able to accept any other insane premise they throw your way. Unfortunately, this trailer can’t seal the deal.

If Kim Jee-Woon wants “The Last Stand” to look like anything other than a self-referential relic, the action in this trailer has to be top-notch. It has to look like it will do for car chase movies what “The Raid” did for apartment building action flicks, a la “Die Hard.” 2011’s “The Raid” took a simple premise – a SWAT team needs to break into an apartment block to arrest a crimelord – and turned its level of insane action up to 11. “The Raid”, for a lack of a better term, “went there,” but this trailer for “The Last Stand” doesn’t suggest anything of the sort. There isn’t a single “wow” moment in the trailer. Not even a cool action beat for mayhem fans to drool over. It looks self-conscious and goofy. The stakes are remarkably low – “Let’s mobilize our whole town to stop this one guy from getting across the border!” – and the car chase footage never really goes beyond “Wow, that car goes fast.” Who cares about a slick car? Paul Greengrass proved that you can put Matt Damon behind the wheel of a beat-to-hell Russian taxicab and deliver one of the most heart-pounding car chase scenes ever, so the fact that “Ooh, they’ve got a new Corvette” doesn’t really sell this as a groundbreaking chase movie. And Arnold… poor sweet Arnold. While, yes, the trailer does take moments to acknowledge that Arnold is both getting older and horribly miscast as a Western sheriff, that sort of meta nod-and-a-wink doesn’t really solve the problem. He’s still seen better days and the Western motif legitimately doesn’t fit him. If the filmmakers were able to take that contrast – the overwhelming wrongness of the premise – and do something interesting with it, I’d be the first in line. But, from this trailer, “The Last Stand” doesn’t look like anything other than a feeble attempt to resurrect Arnold’s box office draw, which, at this point, almost seems as futile as the premise of the movie itself.

TRAILER OUTLOOK: Dire. Unless the filmmakers can deliver the most gonzo action sequences in recent memory, “The Last Stand” will feel dated five seconds into the opening credits.

By Tom Burns
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com