Last Man Standing

1996 gangsta flick

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Yojimbo but with guns and fedoras and Bruce Willis instead of swords and kimonos and Toshiro Mifune.

This gangster film, apparently shot on a used but abandoned B-Western set, is a convoluted rehash of the "Man with No Name" idea, most recently rehashed in Sukiyaki Western Django and Lucky Number Slevin with none other than Bruce Willis, stolen thirty years ago with Clint and Leone for A Fistful of Dollars, and first used in Kurosawa's excellent Yojimbo even though he borrowed imagery from the American Wild West and a central character from Dashiell Hammett. So as the kids are saying today: It's all good. This nearly works but I kind of got lost in the plot, probably because there are far too many gangsters and none that I really cared all that much about. By the time Christopher Walken rolled in, I had already gotten to the point where I was checking my watch, the same point where I realized I didn't even have a watch on. It was probably shot off my wrist by one of the characters in this movie during one of the gangster's dozen (same amount as a baker's dozen for you squares out there) scenes where there's nothing but a flurry of gun fire mayhem and thick dust. There are a few times when characters are shot and fly backward fifty feet, some of them disappearing onto the set of Yojimbo where Kuwabatake Sanjuro looks at him in confusion before trying on his shoes. I know even less about physics and guns, especially firearms from the Prohibition Era, than I do about movies, but it seemed a bit ridiculous. Good thing they didn't have their backs to me because I'm not sure my trash guys will take dead bodies. They won't take old furniture! I like movies with beat-up, dusty towns like this and Bruce Willis, although he looked a little fatigued, was just the right guy for this, but this doesn't have nearly the character and voice that Kurosawa and Leone had. And unfortunately, it's just begging to be compared to those films.

I bought this for fifty cents early in the "man" movie challenge. It was probably worth that much.