‘I’m the famous comedian Arnold Braunschweiger…’
Arnold Schwarzenegger has made some pretty weird films in his time. Jingle All The Way, Junior and Kindergarten Cop to name but a few. But none of them are quite as odd as Last Action Hero. I think it is a testament to the strangeness of John McTiernan’s film that my own opinion of it varied wildly from one scene to the next. What starts out as a kind of celebratory ribbing of the action genre, and of Arnie himself, eventually winds up being a postmodern, meta comment on Hollywood, as well as a love letter to the coming of age genre. And as I reflect on it now, I’m really not sure if Last Action Hero can be considered a ‘good’ film in the objective sense. Everything points emphatically the other way, and yet I enjoyed Last Action Hero pretty much all the way through, despite the fact that it is inexplicably over two hours long.
Young movie fan Danny (Austin O’Brien) is an annoyingly precocious loner who takes solace in the fictional world of his hero Jack Slater (Schwarzenegger). When a kindly cinema projectionist gives Danny a literal golden ticket that allows him to come face to face with Slater, all kinds of hell breaks loose. Eventually, Death shows up – played by Ian McKellen – and that isn’t even the weirdest part.
Let’s begin with the things that are definitely good. The often overly serious world of action flicks is sent up wonderfully with Arnie’s various nods and winks to camera. It is commonplace now for action films to feel like a parody of themselves but Last Action Hero was ahead of its time in that respect. Charles Dance and Tom Noonan have a lot of fun as unlikely antagonists and McTiernan – the man who brought us both Die Hard and Predator – employs plenty of visual flair, particularly in highlighting the difference between the technicolour world of Jack Slater in comparison to the drab mundanity of the ‘real’ world. The various pop culture references are mostly successful and will appeal to the fanboy in all of us, but it does have a tendency to slip into being a little too knowing, a little too self congratulatory.
And so, to the bad. The jarring shifts in tone between action, comedy and sentimentalism are difficult to process, and there is a nagging feeling that Last Action Hero is never quite sure what type of movie it wants to be. Anarchic parody or saccharine family entertainment. If anything, the whole project is just too ambitious. There is the bare bones of a genuinely great movie here, but it is often overshadowed by celebrity cameos and kitsch flights of fancy.
More than perhaps any other film I have previously reviewed, Last Action Hero is difficult to assign a mark out of ten. I mostly enjoyed myself, but at the same time it would be difficult to pretend that this isn’t simply a bad movie. Much to ponder…
For more on the troubled production of Last Action Hero, read the excellent Empire Magazine account here.