Review: The Last Stand (15)

Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t joking when he growled ‘I’ll be back’.

Politics has improved him immeasurably in front of the camera. Delivery of dialogue is softer and less robotic and in the film’s most touching moment, there is a glisten of genuine saltwater in those big, Austrian eyes. Like Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis, Schwarzenegger is acutely aware of his physical limitations as a 65-year-old action man and happily pokes fun at his pensioner status.

In The Last Stand, Schwarzenegger plays Ray Owens, sheriff of the sleepy town of Sommerton Junction, which nestles on the US-Mexico border.

The Last Stand is a rollicking romp enlivened by the same hyperkinetic direction that distinguished Jee-woon’s 2008 western The Good, The Bad, The Weird.

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