Sometimes, all you want is a knock-down, guns-blazing approximation of an old-style western, even if it’s set in contemporary times. As a modern oater, “The Last Stand” is shamelessly entertaining.
As guilty pleasures go, this one is relatively defensible. Directed by Korean émigré Kim Jee-woon, it’s a 21st-century take on a story that was old hat when it was new hat 60 years ago, when they called it “High Noon.”
Not that you would want to see Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Old West. The global society we live in is all the explanation you need for how he winds up with that accent while working as a small-town New Mexico sheriff in 2013. If it was 1893, that would take far more exposition than any normal movie has time for.
(And really, Arnold, about that accent: Somehow Rutger Hauer, Ulrich Thomsen, Julie Delpy and Peter Stormare have managed to sand the edges off their accents, until they speak like middle Americans. The fact that none of them have been in the U.S. as long as you have leads me to the conclusion that you’re just not trying. Don’t you worry that the accent will lead directors to pigeonhole you in roles as an Austrian-American?)
This review continues on my website.