Review: Last Man Standing

Bruce Willis is John Smith, a grim-faced stranger of few words who drifts into the tiny, dusty Texas town of Jericho during the Prohibition era. He just wants to lay low, but finds himself stuck in a turf war between Italian-American (Ned Eisenberg & Michael Imperioli) and Irish-American (David Patrick Kelly, R.D. Call, and Patrick Kilpatrick) gangsters who each want him to help wipe out the other gang. After realising that the local sheriff (Bruce Dern) is on the take and doesn’t give a crap who does what to whom, Smith decides to play both gangs against each other and make a pretty penny for himself. Endless gunfire ensues. Christopher Walken plays Kelly’s scarred, gun-happy henchman named Hickey. Karina Lombard plays the woman Kelly is crazy about, whilst Leslie Mann is a hooker, Alexandra Powers is a hooker connected to Eisenberg, William Sanderson is the local bartender, and Ken Jenkins is a US Marshal.

 

Writer-director Walter Hill (“48HRS”, “Streets of Fire”, “Crossroads”) swings and wildly misses with this dreary, monotonous 1996 re-tread of “Yojimbo” (or if you prefer, “A Fistful of Dollars”). It’s basically 100 minutes of shooting, and Bruce Willis’ attempt at a hard-boiled narration is as miserable and monotonous as his performance as a whole because the narration leaves him with nothing to really act out and Willis doesn’t even try. Why give us narration that gives us insight in the character? That’s what acting is for! He’d fare much better a decade later with “Sin City”, whereas here the narration is badly written and phony. Speaking of monotonous, the cinematography by Lloyd Ahern (Hill’s “Trespass” and “Geronimo: An American Legend”) is brown, dusty, and boring.

 

David Patrick Kelly is OK, but unable to hold up the villainous end of things on his own. Ned Eisenberg and Michael Imperioli are rather unthreatening and clichéd, with even Willis’ character admitting that these guys are a long way from the ‘real thing’. OK, so why should I care? Christopher Walken is a giant disappointment in the kind of much-hyped psycho role you think he’d effortlessly nail. Unfortunately, for some reason he has chosen to adopt a monotonous, sub-Eastwood rasp that robs him of everything that makes him Christopher Walken, and therefore everything that makes him interesting. Everyone talks his character up throughout the film, and it’s just Christopher Walken with a sore throat. It’s a flat, lethargic performance from a usually dynamic, quirky actor. None of the women on show here, meanwhile, make any impression whatsoever, with Leslie Mann basically playing a skinny Jennifer Tilly (Hey, I could’ve called her a skinny whore, I thought I’d be nice).

 

Bruce Dern is the one bright spot in the cast, giving a nice, irritable performance as the only interesting character in the film. Sure, character actor William Sanderson is fine as the bartender, but what can you really do in that clichéd role? More so than any previous version of this story, there’s really very little story here. The shots start firing around the 11 minute mark, and they barely take a breather throughout. Willis fires two guns, of course, being that this is an action film from the mid-90s, when everyone was a lousy shot. The one truly commendable asset is the kick-arse Ry Cooder (“Streets of Fire”, “The Long Riders”) score, and it is truly kick-arse.

 

Aside from the stretch that prohibition-era Italian mobsters and Irish mobsters would both be occupying the same dead-beat wild west town, I have no problems with blending a western with prohibition-era stuff. The problem is that Hill has botched it. It’s drearily one-note, unconvincing, and completely unengaging. Willis gives a bored, wannabe Eastwood performance here, and has mostly been giving this same tedious performance ever since. No fun at all.

 

Rating: D