Several hundred miles away in Las Vegas, inept FBI agent John Bannister (Forrest Wittaker) is transferring Mexican drug kingpin Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) from one facility to another and (ooops!) loses track of him when the secure van he's riding in is lifted off the road by a huge magnet slung beneath a rouge helicopter that somehow managed to violate Las Vegas airspace undetected. During his escape he (Cortez) manages to kill the FBI's most innocent agent in cold blood thereby verifying his non-humanity. He then hops in a brand new Corvette ZR1 (in many ways the real star of the film) and heads out into the desert night on a path that will inevitably bring him into conflict with Ray and the Immovables. Before he gets there though his advance team is hard at work, killing upstanding citizens (hello Harry Dean Stanton) and building a temporary bridge across the border/gorge that Cortez will use to slip back into Mexico.
Like a lot of action films not everything in "The Last Stand" makes sense. For instance why didn't anyone think to blow out the tires on the runaway Vette? No one hears a helicopter hovering in the air a hundred feet above the ground in the middle of Vegas? Where's the Arizona highway patrol? (Don't tell me they're giving up after one roadblock.) How is it the deputy takes an RPG straight on - one that sends the car he's hiding behind 20 feet into the air - and yet he emerges not only alive, but completely unscathed with a machine gun he didn't have before blazing away ? How can a car doing 200 miles per hour not have to stop for gas every 45 minutes? And why don't they nail him when he does? Why didn't Cortez simply fly the helicopter (that helped him escape federal custody) to freedom in Mexico? That last question is actually addressed. We're told, "The Zero 1 is faster than a helicopter." Cool. Except that piece of information is sandwiched in between numerous shots of a police helicopter nestled comfortably into the airspace above the fleeing ZR1, keeping up just fine thank you. Oops!
But these are all transgressions that can be easily overlooked. This isn't Lawrence of Arabia after all. It's fast cars and big guns. Comic relief exists in the form of one Johnny Knoxville who does his Rob Schneider best to make the big guy look uber macho by comparison. Rodrigo Santoro has a curious supporting role, one where he spends the first half of the movie occupying a jail cell with not much to do and virtually no indication of who he is and the second half being a serious badass. He seems to exist almost completely outside the narrative.
"The Last Stand" is not without its action charms, sports an generally outstanding supporting cast, moves along at a refreshing clip and features the new Corvette ZR1. It's major drawback is it's star who simply isn't up to playing a part which, perhaps surprisingly, calls for some emotional range.
Plain and simple Ahnuld can't act. When the Governator was churning out classic lines like "F--k you ass-hole" his lack of acting chops wasn't an issue. You don't need to be Olivier to play the terminator. However, though he has his share of memorable lines here ("Find da vooond, und apply prezzure!") the fact that his role actually calls for some acting means that more often than not it's cringe-city for the audience when the big guy is front and center.
For example: After half-listening to Wittaker's agent Bannister warn that a dangerous suspect is fleeing toward him across the desert our intrepid hero deduces that a truck he saw at the film's opening, a murdered local (yo Harry Dean) and said dangerous suspect are all somehow connected. He announces his conclusion after hanging up on Wittaker and without hesitating, changing expressions, looking at any particular evidence or giving any physical indication that he'd given the matter a single thought. It's tough to watch, especially when you think of how many real actors there are out there who deserve and would appreciate what should be a relatively easy lead role.
But if you can look past and/or forgive Arnold's incompetence "The Last Stand"is a pretty good high speed collision of good and evil. God knows it's several notches up from the travesty that was the first step in his attempted comeback ("The Expendables 2") and the actual actors in the cast do a decent job of keeping the whole thing afloat. Where Arnold goes from here, though, is anybody's guess and it seems safe to say that if the quality of his return doesn't pick up steam pretty soon it'll be short lived.
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