Last Man Standing / The Last Boy Scout Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Last Man Standing / The Last Boy Scout Blu-ray Movie Review

Or, Boyz 2 Men with Bruce Willis

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater July 8, 2010

Bruce Willis is the archetypal action hero. Unlike Schwarzenegger, whose Herculean frame makes him seem like a larger-than-life demigod, Willis is an everyman, a detective, a cop, a dad. Compared to the punch-drunk Stallone, he’s got a smarter onscreen presence, cable of doling out snappy one-liners alongside teeth-shattering beatdowns. His acting chops absolutely eviscerate the Van Dammes, Dolph Lundgrens, and Steven Seagals of the cinematic world, and you get the feeling he could hold his own in a bare-knuckle fight with any of them. In the 1990s, a decade overrun with muscle-bound heroes, Willis began to thematically branch out, giving surprising turns in Pulp Fiction, 12 Monkeys, and The Sixth Sense, but he’s never forsaken his action-inclined audience, who expect him to kick ass with a yippie-kai-yay, wearing that inimitable smirk. As part of their Double Feature series, Warner Bros. has brought two of Willis’ second-tier action flicks to Blu-ray this week: The Last Boy Scout, a Shane Black-penned riff on the Lethal Weapon formula, and Last Man Standing, an official remake of Akira Kurasawa’s Yojimbo.

Last Man Standing (3/5)
Ok, so let’s get this straight: In 1961, Akira Kurasawa cribs—or perhaps coincidentally recreates— the basic plot of Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 gangster novel Red Harvest to make Yojimbo, a samurai film influenced by the westerns of John Ford. Italian director Sergio Leone then sees Yojimbo and decides to remake it as a spaghetti western—1964’s A Fistful of Dollars—without Kurasawa’s permission. Thirty-two years later, Walter Hill—best known for helming 48hrs. and The Warriors—directs an official remake of Yojimbo, and attempts to combine elements of almost every iteration of the story, making Last Man Standing about 1920s-style gangsters vying for territory in a dusty town on the Texas/Mexico border. The only thing that could make it more of a mash-up would be if Toshiro Mifune himself sauntered into town with a piece of straw tucked between his lips.

Bruce Willis takes over the Mifune role, playing John Smith—another “man with no name”—an itinerant Prohibition-era gun-for-hire who’s presumably on the lam from the law. Smith randomly drives into the jerkwater town of Jericho, a nowheresville just north of Mexico that has become a haven for two rival bootlegging clans, the Italian Strozzi family, led by Fredo (Ned Eisenberg), and an Irish outfit ruled by a hothead named Doyle (The Warriors’ David Patrick Kelly). The rest of the townspeople seem to have vanished, with the exception of the corrupt sheriff (Bruce Dern), an undertaker, a brothel-ful of prostitutes, and bartender Joe Monday (William Sanderson), who offers Smith a place to stay. Seeing a chance to make some quick cash, Smith exploits the tension between the two gangs, offering his services to both and playing a long con so dangerous and intricate even Sawyer from Lost would be impressed. In the crossfire are Lucy (Alexandra Powers) and Felina (Karina Lombard), Fredo and Doyle’s respective mistresses, whom Smith—with as much altruism as a cold hard anti-hero can muster—tries to help. His efforts are impeded by Hickey (Christopher Walken), Doyle’s right-hand henchman, a tommy gun-wielding freak who once survived having an ice pick jammed into his throat and now talks in an ominously hoarse whisper.

Last Man Standing is the very definition of a needless remake, so if you’ve seen Yojimbo or A Fistful of Dollars, there aren’t many surprises in store for you here. Director Walter Hill—who also wrote the script—sticks close to the established story, a thrice-told tale that, by this point, has lost some of its luster. Hill’s only innovations are stylistic, as he trades Leone’s tense showdowns for quick-fire semi-auto pistol battles that owe a lot to the John Woo school of blood-ballet gunplay. Smith seems to have entered an infinite ammo cheat code, and his hugely overpowered bullets can seemingly defy the laws of physics, sending bad guys tumbling end over end through plate glass windows and generally launching them backwards like they’ve been hit by an 18-wheeler. (If you’ve haven’t seen the Mythbusters episode where they test how far a body actually moves when hit by a bullet, track it down. It’s fun to see such an over-the- top movie convention get debunked.) The violence is fast and furious, but aside from the gruesome torture of one of the mistresses, it doesn’t have much impact. The film is too coldly calculated for that, and the endless serpentine twists of the plot have a sterilizing effect, making for characters we never really care about.

Still, Last Man Standing is a polished, well-made film, and it would probably fare a lot better if it could somehow avoid being compared to its infinitely superior predecessors. Though it works in some ways—Ry Cooder’s slide guitar score is perfect, Christopher Walken is bugnuts insane as usual, and the gangsters out west setting is just odd enough to keep us on our toes —the film is ultimately redundant, and comparisons to Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars are unavoidable. Bruce Willis isn’t exactly out of his element here—he gets to shoot guys and sleep with sexy women, sometimes both at once—but let’s face it, he’s no Eastwood or Mifune, two strong, stoic actors who can command an audience’s attention without even saying anything. In such a silent role, Willis seems slightly miscast, restrained, like he really wants to crack more one-liners—and there are a few here—but the script simply won’t let him.

The Last Boy Scout (3.5/5)
On the other hand, Shane Black’s script for The Last Boy Scout—which netted the Lethal Weapon scribe a cool, record-breaking $1.75 million—seems custom written for Willis’ wisecracking, nothing left to lose persona. Here, he plays Joe Hallenback, a former secret service agent who once saved Jimmy Carter from certain death, but now slums through a stupor of an existence as a worn-out private investigator. And nothing is going right for Joe. His career is in the toilet, his daughter (Danielle Harris) hates his guts, and he just found out that his wife (Chelsea Field) is sleeping around with his business partner (Bruce McGill). At one point, he looks in the mirror: “Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You’re gonna lose.” It only gets worse. Joe gets hired to protect a stripper (a young Halle Berry, in ass-less cowboy chaps), and when she gets gunned down by some thugs, he teams up to crack the case with her boyfriend Jimmy (Damon Wayons), a one-time pro quarterback who got the sack after gambling and drug allegations. The trail of clues leads to Sheldon Marcone (Noble Willingham), a wealthy football team owner who wants to legalize sports gambling and needs to “dispose” of a U.S. senator (Chelcie Ross) who has the power to shoot down the bill.

Nothing in the film can top the opening sequence, in which a high-on-PCP pro football player (Billy Blanks, oddly enough) runs toward the end zone, pulls a gun out of his waistband, caps several defensive backs who stand in his way, and then, when he’s surrounded by cops, shoots himself in the head. Burly! (Ok, I take that back, there’s an equally WTF-type scene at the end—once again, at the football stadium—where a dude gets shredded in the blades of a helicopter. For some reason, the crowd stands up and cheers.) In Black’s script, the NFL has become a freak show where there are “no more heroes,” but this is more of a plot device than legitimate social commentary. And you’ll recognize plenty of plot devices you’ve seen before. Essentially a “buddy” film, like the Lethal Weapon movies, Joe and Jimmy start off as mutually suspicious, and by the end they’ve learned to respect and value one another’s friendship. The movie is constructed almost entirely out of recycled action genre chestnuts and conventions. There are no less than three instances when a bad guy has a chance to off our heroes, but wastes time in exposition, telling us every single detail of his master scheme, and ends up getting wasted himself. Just pull the trigger, dammit, and be done with it!

As formulaic as it is, The Last Boy Scout is unstoppably entertaining, and frequently very funny. Willis’ Joe—basically a more depressed version of his John McClane character from Die Hard—is a hard-living sumbitch who may not play by the book, but hot damn does he ever get results. Though Willis and Wayons may not be as memorable of a team as Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, or even—dare I say it—Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, they play off of one another well, capable of bringing big laughs to the film without turning it into an outright comedy. It should also go without saying that the film is exceptionally violent. A cop gets shot at point blank range, a thug gets crushed between two cars, there are brutal stabbings and beatings, plenty of blood-squirting squibs, and right before the finale, Joe and Jimmy find a box of “shredders”—shotgun shells that “kill everything within a 10’ radius." Awesome. Director Tony Scott (True Romance, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3) handles the material with his usual action movie aptness, so that even if you do guess what’s going to happen next—and you probably will—you’ll at least have a fun time getting there. The Last Boy Scout and Last Man Standing might not be inarguable action classics, but they deliver the goods, and they’re certainly worth revisiting.

Last Man Standing / The Last Boy Scout Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Warner typically puts many of their lower-profile catalog titles on 25 GB discs, so it's completely in keeping that both Last Man Standing and The Last Boy Scout fit neatly on a single dual-layer 50 GB Blu-ray platter. Presented in 1080p, with VC-1 encodes, and roughly adherent to their original aspect ratios, both films benefit substantially from the upgrade to high definition. Last Man Standing is sourced from an exceptionally clean print—I noticed maybe five or six white flecks, total—and the movie's dusty, golden brown color palette looks better than ever, complete with warm skin tones and the occasional burst of strong color, like the flames that leap from the burning roadhouse. Black levels are strong, if slightly crushing at times, although this seems to be an intentional part of the film's western/noir hybrid aesthetic. Overall clarity is a hair soft compared to sharpness of more modern films, but once again, this is most likely due to the original print elements. (Some scenes have a kind of hazy "glow," as if shot through a diffusion filter.) It does seem that a slight amount of DNR has been used to clean up the image— some fine textures seem glossed over, and the grain structure looks somewhat diminished—but this is nowhere near the catastrophe that was the recent Predator re-release. In fact, Last Man Standing looks quite strong, and I'm sure fans of the film will be pleased.

Ditto for The Last Boy Scout, which looked fairly terrible on DVD if I remember correctly. The image is much improved here. Clarity is resolved enough to give definition to Willis' ever-present three-day stubble, and the film's more realistic look—as opposed to Land Man Standing's mythic 1930s stylization—means there are more opportunities for vivid color, like police lights, aquamarine pool tones, and the super-saturated neon lights inside the strip club. The picture even has some surprising depth and dimensional presence during the scenes outside in the rain. Contrast is sometimes overbearing, with detail-crushing blacks, but skin tones are natural and film grain seems entirely untouched. To quell any fears about two films sharing a single disc, neither movie suffers from any adverse compression-related issues. The films are close enough to their original appearance to warrant straight 4/5's.

Last Man Standing / The Last Boy Scout Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Last Man Standing and The Last Boy Scout arrive on Blu-ray with solid DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround tracks, but it's the former that impresses most. With dustups and shootouts galore, Last Man Standing gives this multi-channel presentation plenty of opportunity to indulge in immersive—and frequently explosive—audio action. Christopher Walken's tommy gun tears holes through the fabric of the soundfield, and dual-wielded pistol fire rips between channels from every direction. The shots are loud, crisp, and pack some serious punch. When not in the heat of battle, the track stays occupied with quiet, but near constant ambience, from rain drizzling and thunder clapping in the rears to airy, windy sounds and flies buzzing around dead bodies at the mortician's office. Filling out the track further is Ry Cooder's fantastic slide guitar score, which sounds clean and full.

In comparison, The Last Boy Scout seems a bit flat—at least initially—with a slightly squashed dynamic range and less engaging surround sound usage. Take the opening scene, out in the rain on the football field. You'd expect to hear the rain in the rear speakers, and perhaps the sounds of players running, dodging, and blocking, but the surround channels are oddly quiet. Things pick up during the more frantic action sequences, fortunately—gunshots pinging cross-channel, explosions with potent LFE output, cars zipping from one speaker to another—but the output isn't as beefy or engaging as is in Last Man Standing. (Although, we should consider that Boy Scout is five years older than Last Man.) In both films, dialogue is clear, well-balanced, and easily understood. English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are available in clean white lettering.

Last Man Standing / The Last Boy Scout Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unfortunately—but unsurprisingly—there are no bonus features whatsoever included on the disc.

Last Man Standing / The Last Boy Scout Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's hard to beat two films for the price of one, and if you're an action buff, the combination of Last Man Standing and The Last Boy Scout will be hard to resist, even if both movies are really only second-tier 1990s shoot-em-ups. This disc makes for a great weekend double feature, and the films have been treated well, with strong high definition transfers and immersive, gunfire-peppered audio tracks. Sure, there aren't any special features on the disc, but really, how much entertainment value would you get out of a couple of brief, talking head-style vintage EPK featurettes? You're not missing much. Recommended for the action-inclined.