WALTER HILL’S LAST MAN STANDING — A REVIEW BY NICK CLEMENT

I’ve written about this film in the past, and yet I find myself consistently turning to it throughout the years because it’s so damn stylish and watchable. I don’t think Last Man Standing is Walter Hill’s best film, but that doesn’t stop it from being a fabulously entertaining, two-fisted shoot-em-up with Bruce Willis glowering his way through one phenomenally photogenic action sequence after another, emptying clip after clip into faceless bad guys who go crashing through walls and down the stairs and through lots and lots of windows, most of the time in Peckinpah-esque slow-motion. This was Hill’s rather knowing updating of Yojimbo with nods to A Fistful of Dollars thrown in for loving measure. I love the three-piece suits, the vintage cars, and the assorted fire-arms. I’m also a big fan of Hill’s tough and terse and surprisingly witty dialogue. Bruce Dern rules every single time he appears on screen, and Christopher Walken is extra-nasty as one of the numerous heavies that figures into the back-and-forth plot, while Michael Imperioli scored big-time in a funny, colorful supporting role. There’s a bit of extremely bloody gun play at the film’s mid-section that’s as explosive as almost anything else Hill has orchestrated from an action stand point, and in general, the film seems totally in love with it’s milieu and macho sense of purpose. The way Willis plays both sides in that dusty town is always enjoyable to revisit, and I loved how the film was really a western in gangster dress with Italians and Irish killing each other in Texas. The entire cast clearly had a blast, as the film is filled with a wide variety of character actors and familiar faces from the late 90’s. Unpretentious, sometimes excessively violent, and shot with golden-hued panache by Lloyd Ahern, this is one of Hill’s more underrated actioners, and it benefits greatly from Ry Cooder’s jazzy musical score. Last Man Standing got roasted by critics and died a quick death at the box-office, and that’s a shame, because I can almost guarantee that for fans of this sort of stuff, It’s more fun than you remember it being.