In a sentenceArnold plays Hamlet for ninety seconds, and it is the only part of the film that knows how long to be
Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien) is eleven, skips school and spends his afternoons in a crumbling New York cinema watching Jack Slater films. The projectionist, Nick (Robert Prosky), gives him a private midnight screening of Jack Slater IV and a golden ticket he says once belonged to Houdini. A stick of dynamite comes through the screen and Danny lands in the back of Slater’s car. Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a Los Angeles policeman with a daughter, Whitney (Bridgette Wilson), a dead son and a superior, Lieutenant Dekker (Frank McRae), who communicates by shouting. Danny knows he is inside a film; Slater does not believe a word of it. Across town, mob boss Tony Vivaldi (Anthony Quinn) and his glass-eyed enforcer Benedict (Charles Dance) are planning a killing.
John McTiernan’s joke about his own films is clever, generous and an hour too long. For a while it is a good comedy about a bad genre; after that it keeps blowing things up to prove a point Schwarzenegger has already made with his face.
Last Action Hero was directed by John McTiernan, who made Die Hard and Predator, from a screenplay by Shane Black, who wrote Lethal Weapon, and it is 131 minutes of those men making fun of the thing they are good at. Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a Los Angeles policeman whose gun never empties, whose car never dents and whose lieutenant (Frank McRae) exists to shout at him. An eleven-year-old called Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien) is dropped into his world by a magic ticket and spends the film pointing out the rules. Every telephone number begins 555. There is a cartoon cat on the homicide squad. The idea is sound and the film knows it, which is part of the trouble; it is so pleased with the idea that it keeps repeating it.
The opening half hour, in a wet grey New York, is the best of it. Dean Semler shoots Danny’s city in dirty winter light, a dark cinema and a flat a burglar gets into without effort, then floods the Slater world with California sun so that the switch registers before anyone says a word. The Hamlet sequence, in which a school screening of Olivier is replaced in Danny’s head by Schwarzenegger stalking Elsinore with a cigar and a machine gun, lasts about ninety seconds and is exactly the right length. We laughed at it harder than at anything else in the film, and then we noticed it had just shown us how short the jokes ought to be.
Schwarzenegger is the surprise. He plays Slater straight, which is right, and slightly tired, which is better; a man who has done this before and would rather be at home. Then, in a quiet moment between chases, Danny tells him his son died only because a writer wanted him sad, and Schwarzenegger’s face stops working for a second. We were moved, in a film about exploding cars, by a man realising his grief is a plot device, and we had not expected to be. Charles Dance, as the glass-eyed Benedict, is the other one who understands the job. He is dry, precise and quietly delighted by his own wickedness, and Gloria Gresham puts him in pale suits that look wrong among the leather and the vests, which is the point. Anthony Quinn, as the mob boss Vivaldi, mangles proverbs and has little else to do.
The boy is the problem most critics named, and they were not wrong. O’Brien is asked to be thrilled, then smug, then frightened, often inside a single scene, and the script gives him lines that explain the joke after the joke has landed. The action is the other problem. For a film that mocks explosions, it has a great many of them, and McTiernan stages them with less care than he brought to Die Hard. John Wright and Richard A. Harris cut the chases into short, loud pieces that do not build, and each one runs past the point where we had taken the joke. Michael Kamen’s score is big and brassy and does exactly what it would do in a film that meant it, and we could not always tell whether that was intended.
The second half takes a turn we will not describe, except to say that it is the cleverest idea in the film and arrives with an hour already spent. Eugenio Zanetti’s production design does its best work around it: the Slater world is pink skies, glass and chrome, a police station as bright as a shopping centre, and the other is peeling paint and radiators. Ian McKellen appears late, briefly, in a part we will not spoil, and for two minutes the film is as strange and as good as it meant to be.
Against McTiernan’s own films this is the loose one. Die Hard ran on one building and a clock; this runs on a notion, and a notion does not tighten as it goes. Against the genre it is mocking, it is a more interesting failure than most of the straight successes. Most critics found it too long and too pleased with itself, and we agree with both complaints; we only like it more than they did, because the jokes that work are ones nobody else was telling.
Watch it with someone who has seen a lot of Schwarzenegger, because the jokes are for them. The 15 certificate is for the body count rather than for anything you would have to explain, and by the hour mark you will know whether the second hour is worth staying for.
Most critics find Last Action Hero a muddle, and the consensus settles on mixed. Where there is praise, it clusters on the idea rather than the execution: the critics enjoy the film’s jokes about Schwarzenegger’s heroic image and about action-film conventions, and several name individual gags, the Hamlet parody among them, as the best thing in it. Radio Times is the one outright admirer, calling it a smart and funny send-up and crediting McTiernan’s genre satire.
The reservations gather round the same complaint: the film mocks loud, overblown action while serving up exactly that, and the mixture of satire and spectacle never settles. Several critics find it too long and the plot hokey, and the child lead is a recurring irritant. The spread is wide. Variety is the harshest, finding it joyless and without a story, while Eye for Film, writing twenty years on, decides the flaws are survivable and the buddy-cop pairing works.
Ferguson calls it a smart, funny blockbuster that cleverly sends up Schwarzenegger’s heroic image and the action genre. He singles out director John McTiernan’s genre satire for praise.
Read the full review →The review text is unavailable, so its verdict cannot be determined. No specific praise or complaint can be verified from the accessible page.
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Read the full review →Lane calls the film an honorable but confused failure, too long and garish yet full of invention. He praises its playful self-awareness and singles out Charles Dance’s moment of discovering real-world violence as a standout scene.
Read the full review →Hibbert finds the film an awkward blend of action spectacle and satire, with a hokey plot and only occasional amusing moments. He singles out the film’s contradictions: it mocks action movies while indulging in their glossy, numbing explosions and weaponry.
Read the full review →Turan finds the film an awkward, ponderous mix of action and comedy that fails to realize its premise. He praises occasional humor, especially the Schwarzenegger-as-Hamlet parody, but says the film lacks fun and magic.
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Sherlock Jr.Keaton walks into the screen first, and does it in forty-five minutes.
The Purple Rose of CairoThe same trick played for sorrow rather than gunfire, and it lands.
Kiss Kiss Bang BangShane Black mocking his own genre again, this time with the length under control.
Hot FuzzA village police comedy that loves the action film it is laughing at.
Pleasantville · not reviewed yetTwo teenagers inside a television programme, and the rules start to bend.
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