The Arnold Schwarzenegger Action Film Flop That Took Over Netflix's Top 10
Once again, the caprices of the Netflix algorithm have somehow unearthed a little talked-about near-bomb from a decade ago and pushed it right to the top of the streaming service's popularity charts. In mid-April of 2023, the Kim Jee-woon action flick "The Last Stand" with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Johnny Knoxville was Netflix's #1 movie. In this case, it is a minor work of justice, as "The Last Stand" was actually a pretty good movie. It was bright, upbeat, enjoyably violent, and boasted a fun cast of notable supporting players, including the inimitable Luis Guzmán, Jaime Alexander, and Rodrigo Santoro. Forest Whitaker played an FBI guy. The film was a modest critical success (it boasts a 61% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes), but only made $43 million at the worldwide box office. It passed from the public consciousness pretty quickly after that.
"The Last Stand" was, of course, meant to be something of a comeback for Schwarzenegger. Once a box office king, the actor had started to churn out a few notable flops in the early 2000s, including "The 6th Day," "Collateral Damage," and a not-very-well-liked sequel, "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines." After that, Schwarzenegger turned to politics and was the governor of California from 2003 until 2011. When he did return to acting, it was in the gimmicky "Expendables" movies, which only existed to get 1980s action heroes on the screen together. The plotting and action were lackluster.
"The Last Stand," then, was Schwarzenegger declaring a new act in his film career. He acknowledged that he was older, and appeared in this new film as a small-town sheriff who was openly past his prime. After being thrown through a window, someone asks Schwarzenegger's character how he feels. "Old," he replies.
The awesome B-movie premise
The premise of "The Last Stand" is B-movie gold. A dangerous criminal named Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) has slipped out of FBI custody in Las Vegas and goes on the run to the Mexican border in a fast, sexy sports car. In order to get to Mexico, however, he will have to pass through a small Arizona town called Somteron, a real city on Highway 95. Somerton, in the movie, is overseen by Sheriff Ray Owens (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a disgraced L.A. cop who was transferred to the boonies as penance for a bungled operation back in the city.
Altered by the FBI, Sheriff Owens will have to assemble a makeshift blockade in Somerton and stop Noriega from getting through. The bulk of "The Last Stand" is devoted to how Owens secures the town and arms his deputies (Luis Guzmán, Jaime Alexander, and Rodrigo Santoro). Thanks to an eccentric local weapons collector named Lewis (Johnny Knoxville), they have access to ancient WWII weapons and non-police-issue machine guns. The film's climax will indeed be a last stand between Somerton, and Cortez's goons. This is a premise that would feel at home in a 1960s Western, or a 1970s grindhouse flick. Walter Hill might have been comfortable with this material, although in 2013 he was busy giving Sylvester Stallone his own "old guys still got it" action movie in the form of "Bullet to the Head."
Director Kim Jee-woon ("The Good, the Bad, the Weird," "I Saw the Devil"), making his first English-language feature, seems to have remembered that he was making a down-to-earth B-Western, keeping the pace brisk, the action exciting, and the characters fun. It might be the lightest film in the director's oeuvre, a résumé otherwise replete with moody noir and dank horror movies.
A '90s movie in 2013
It's possible "The Last Stand" didn't resonate with a broad audience for several reasons. For one thing, it was released in January, a time when audiences aren't typically flocking to theaters to see new fare. January is more often the time when the previous December's awards-bait movies are finally opening wide, and most of the United States is busying themselves with Oscar prognostication. A "kinda fun" action film won't be much recognized at this time.
Also, it seemed that the world was pretty much done with accepting Arnold Schwarzenegger as a movie star by 2013. His heyday of the 1980s and 1990s was long over, and his political career seemingly robbed him of his movie star status. For the record, Schwarzenegger was a Republican, but ran his cabinet with a lot of Democrats, making him more centrist than a lot of self-declared centrist politicians. He, perhaps astonishingly, wasn't a political failure. By 2013, though, the superstar was 66 years old and the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in full swing. Audiences didn't care to see a violent mid-budget retro-action film when slick, expensive, effects-based fantasies were more in vogue. "The Last Stand" was seemingly a "dad movie" that the kids didn't much care to see. It came and went with no fanfare.
But that was a decade ago. In 2023, audiences seem to be once again developing a taste for novel, mid-budget genre fare, and are seemingly in the process of finally letting go of the MCU. As such, some of the lost genre films that the MCU overshadowed throughout the 2010s are now finally coming out into the sun and getting a little bit of recognition on home video. "The Last Stand" is no classic, but it is an enjoyable afternoon at home.