c/o the-void.co.uk

It’s very rare nowadays to come across a well-balanced action film—a movie that manages to engage an audience with captivating stakes without taking itself too seriously. In the post-9/11 landscape of overly emphasized cinema grit, the action genre seems to have forsaken any interest in actual fun, instead relying on darkness and paranoia to construct an appealing movie-going experience. Gone is the kinetic absurdity of the action cinema of the ’80s, in which realism and relevance were forgotten in favor of camp and simple energy, and everyone had to look like they had just ’roided up and rolled around in the mud.

Now obviously, there’s something to be said in favor of this decade’s darker breed of action films. They reflect a very present set of cultural truths and a currently definitive tone. At their best, they can serve as a mirror for our modern compulsions and fears. But at their worst, they’re “Dredd.” Sometimes, you just need an action movie that allows you to settle down and tune out the terrors of the real world in favor of a much more cartoonish sense of antagonism, a film that is truly interested in entertainment, and deeply committed to the brazen sense of colorful chaos on which the fundamentals of the action genre are based.

And so we come to “The Last Stand.”

Reuniting the Reagan era’s favorite all-American Austrian with his adrenaline-hungry public, “The Last Stand” brings Arnold Schwarzenegger back to the big screen in a starring role as Ray Owens, a small-town sheriff (and possible part-time Brigitte Nielsen impersonator) faced with protecting his town from an escaped fugitive—sadistic cartel boss Gabriel Cortez—played with a smoldering flamboyance by Eduardo Noriega.

In choreographing its action, the film cuts back and forth between bumbling federal officers attempting to halt Cortez’s race for the border, and Owens and his deputies, who discover a local farmer murdered by Cortez’s associates as they attempted to build a bridge to Mexico on the victim’s land. This back and forth rhythm, combined with the film’s relatively short runtime, give the film a brisk pace and a sense of defined purpose. Director Kim Ji-woon rarely wastes time in scenes, moving efficiently to convey plot information, sprinkled amongst some token character development (which, as per the usual in films such as these, falls flat but doesn’t really detract from the overall experience of the picture).

“The Last Stand” is also quite adept in the orchestration of its action sequences, which range from a large-scale chase and escape at the beginning of the movie (involving a gigantic magnet crane) to the film’s climactic mano-a-mano showdown between Owens and Cortez on the bridge over which the latter hopes to make his escape from American soil. All of these set-pieces, both large and small, are filmed almost entirely devoid of shaky cam, allowing viewers a constant awareness of what’s actually happening. This is a film that is deeply engaged in its energy and the transmission of that energy in a crisp, fun manner. It’s a picture that wants the audience to see what’s going on and to become engrossed in the events on the screen.

This commitment to fun is only amplified by the film’s supporting cast, which includes Johnny Knoxville and Luis Guzman among others. As with most Schwarzenegger films, these characters exist to bring levity to the bedlam, to spout off platitudes of fear and confusion, while the stoic leading man plows forward toward his purpose. Here, however, it’s far easier to care about these token talismans of comic relief, less so because of any scripting miracle and more by virtue of the charisma that the actors carry with them onscreen. Everyone here seems consistently excited to participate in the film, to revitalize and roll around in the various tropes and truisms of the genre’s violent wackiness.

In all fairness, “The Last Stand” might not actually be worthy of being called a “good” film. It’s pretty much substanceless and lacking in any real will to cultivate a sense of humanity among its characters. But it’s wildly entertaining, shamelessly unpretentious, and so manically generous in its kinetic mischievousness that it makes itself very difficult not to love.

This is of course, the season of cinema trash, so I may just be a victim of my own low expectations. But, whether or not that’s the case, I had a wonderful time with this movie. Welcome back, Arnie. We’ve missed you.