Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Last Man Standing (1996)

Director: Walter Hill

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Hill's remake of Kurosawa's samurai classic Yojimbo places the story in the Prohibition era, with Italian and Irish bootleggers clashing over Mexican liquor supplies in Jericho, Texas. 'John Smith' (Willis) takes one look at the dead horse in the middle of Main Street and gets the full measure of this godforsaken ghost town. Before long both factions are vying for his services as hired gun, and Smith cynically plays one off against the other until, steeped in blood and sickened by what he's seen, he sets about wiping out every last man. The plot will be familiar not only from Yojimbo but from Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. Hill's Tex-Mex version suggests he hasn't got the Western out of his system yet, and this highly stylised film looks like an uncomfortable exercise in cross-breeding, as if a handful of mobsters had wandered on to the wrong studio backlot. Hill goes all out for spiritual fable, with Smith bringing down the walls of Jericho, shooting for his own bloody Calvary. The conceit might have played better in a Western. As a thriller, the film tries to camouflage its lack of suspense with profligate and repetitive gunplay and a deafening barrage of noise (Ry Cooder's score is a plus, however). There's too much voice-over, and not enough for arch-nemesis Walken to do. but at least Willis has the hard-boiled hero down. An honourable failure.

Author: TCh 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Walter Hill

Producer: Walter Hill

Cast: Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, Alexandra Powers, Bruce Dern, David Patrick Kelly, William Sanderson, Karina Lombard, Ned Eisenberg, Michael Imperioli full cast

Genre(s): Thrillers

Duration: 101 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.