Last Action Hero (1993)
Rated PG-13 for strong action sequences
Score: 3 out of 5
Back in its day, Last Action Hero was a notorious bomb, a film tainted by well-publicized reports of an utter boondoggle of a production, test screenings so bad that Columbia Pictures destroyed the comment cards, and a woefully misguided marketing campaign whose highlight was paying $500,000 to paint the film's logo on the side of a NASA rocket (whose launch was delayed by months, long after the movie ceased to be relevant). The final cherry on top: Jurassic Park came out just a week prior and proved to be a much bigger hit than anyone expected, sealing this film's fate. Its failure marked the beginning of a career downturn for director John McTiernan (of Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt for Red October fame) that he ultimately never recovered from, and while the blow to Arnold Schwarzenegger's career wasn't as bad, he wasn't quite the star afterwards that he was before, when he'd been riding high on the success of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. All told, reading up on just how many things went wrong with this movie, it's a miracle that anything watchable came out the other end at all.
And yet, a watchable, and even quite good, film did indeed make it out. It may have little in common with the dark, satirical, and very R-rated comedy that Zak Penn and Adam Leff originally wrote, but as an amusing, affectionate sendup of '80s action movies, it's a hidden gem. In fact, I'd venture to say that it was ahead of its time in a lot of ways, as Scream was still a few years away and this film's brand of meta humor satirizing Hollywood cliches would grow much more popular in the coming years. There's a reason why, when placed side by side with Jurassic Park, there was no question of which movie was going to come out on top. And honestly, Hot Fuzz did pretty much everything this film set out to do and did it better. But even so, it's a diamond in the rough.
Our protagonist is Danny Madigan, an adolescent action junkie whose favorite movie star is Arnold Schwarzenegger and whose favorite movies of his are the Lethal Weapon-esque Jack Slater films. In Jack's universe, Danny can escape from his life as a young boy raised by a widowed mom in grimy, crime-infested New York and enter an exotic, sun-drenched vision of Los Angeles in which Jack blows away all the bad guys in spectacularly violent fashion, then gets into a screaming match with the chief over the property damage he caused. He knows all the cliches of the genre, which makes him the perfect recipient of a magic movie ticket given to him by the kindly old projectionist Nick at the theater he frequents, who stages for him a special early-bird screening of Jack Slater IV. The ticket, as it turns out, really is magical, and it sucks him into the universe of a late '80s/early '90s cop thriller where normal reality is swapped out for Hollywood reality -- and he's now Jack's comic sidekick. As Danny, with his knowledge of the series and the action genre as a whole, helps Jack crack the case far more quickly than he might have done normally, the villain's one-eyed henchman Benedict starts to suspect that something is up with this kid -- and eventually discovers his magic ticket.
This is a film where the best parts are concentrated in the first two acts, where it plays up the meta parody of the action genre to great effect. Nearly every frame of the Jack Slater universe is packed with gags, from the desk at the police station where cops are paired up with wacky sidekicks to the fact that every woman is supermodel-gorgeous, to even more minor stuff like the use of 555 phone numbers. The catch phrases and one-liners are so predictable that Danny can call them ahead of time. The explosions are big, and they are gratuitous, happening whenever there is an excuse for them and even at points when there isn't, like when a goon is thrown from a car and into the windshield of an ice cream truck. It's funny that Shane Black wound up leading the rewrites on the script given that it was spoofing his films specifically, as he has a great time taking the piss out of the cliches of his films; the moment we get the Jack Slater III clip where it's explicitly and conspicuously pointed out that the scene takes place around Christmas, you know exactly what you're in for. If you've ever watched those sorts of old-school '80s action flicks, then the jokes will still hold up, as they often go a bit deeper than the easy gag in order to highlight just how much of a wreck someone like Jack Slater must be when he's not on camera -- something that the actual Lethal Weapon did focus quite a bit on with Riggs, but which tends to be forgotten when looking at the genre as a whole. Even outside the Slaterverse, the film offers up a hilarious scene where Danny, bored in class watching the Laurence Olivier adaptation of Hamlet, imagines a version where Schwarzenegger plays the Danish prince in a film that swaps fidelity to the source material with non-stop action.
It must be said that Schwarzenegger is by far the best thing about this film, playing an over-the-top self-parody of his screen persona who takes all the traits associated with his characters and cranks them up yet retains a completely straight face throughout. In his comedies, Schwarzenegger always worked best as the "straight man" reacting to the wacky situations he's been thrust into, and here, even though he's playing a very heightened version thereof, he still carries that same energy. After all, in-universe, these are supposed to be serious action films, and this one has only gone awry because of Danny and his magic ticket. Charles Dance also made a fun villain as Benedict, a parody of Hans Gruber who, upon getting his hands on the ticket, realizes the possibilities it offers him to become far more powerful than just the henchman to the mobster villain of Jack Slater IV. Even when the film started going downhill in the third act, he remained one of the best things about it. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Austin O'Brien, the kid who played Danny. As a self-insert for audience members, especially Schwarzenegger's younger fans, he was alright, but he was often forgettable and kind of annoying. I would've liked to see the original idea for the character, which would've had him becoming drunk with power in the movie world as a satire on how society treats violence and revenge in the media.
Danny wasn't my main problem with the film, though, even if his arc was at the center of it. Rather, he was a symbol of the main issues I had, nearly all of which concerned the real-world segments of the film. Here, there were shades of the original plot before it was heavily rewritten, with Danny embracing the world of Jack Slater IV as a fantasy in which he can not merely escape from his troubled life but straight-up fight back and take revenge. A good comparison for this would've been Pleasantville, where David initially retreats into a '50s sitcom as his escape from modern life before realizing it's not all it's cracked up to be, or the character of Eddie from the game Silent Hill 2, who serves as a much darker take on the kind of power fantasy I just described. In the finished film, however, Danny's arc never goes anywhere, and as a result, the real-world parts wound up being much less interesting than the parts set in Jack's universe. It's in the third act where the film really falls apart, as it focuses on celebrity cameos and meta references to the real-life Schwarzenegger that were tolerable and even funny in small doses earlier on (the "Sylvester Stallone as the Terminator" gag was a particularly good one), but utterly take over the film here, to its detriment. I'd have put more focus on Benedict's evil plan in the "real world", especially since the film hints at all manner of cool and interesting directions that it could've taken it.
Our protagonist is Danny Madigan, an adolescent action junkie whose favorite movie star is Arnold Schwarzenegger and whose favorite movies of his are the Lethal Weapon-esque Jack Slater films. In Jack's universe, Danny can escape from his life as a young boy raised by a widowed mom in grimy, crime-infested New York and enter an exotic, sun-drenched vision of Los Angeles in which Jack blows away all the bad guys in spectacularly violent fashion, then gets into a screaming match with the chief over the property damage he caused. He knows all the cliches of the genre, which makes him the perfect recipient of a magic movie ticket given to him by the kindly old projectionist Nick at the theater he frequents, who stages for him a special early-bird screening of Jack Slater IV. The ticket, as it turns out, really is magical, and it sucks him into the universe of a late '80s/early '90s cop thriller where normal reality is swapped out for Hollywood reality -- and he's now Jack's comic sidekick. As Danny, with his knowledge of the series and the action genre as a whole, helps Jack crack the case far more quickly than he might have done normally, the villain's one-eyed henchman Benedict starts to suspect that something is up with this kid -- and eventually discovers his magic ticket.
This is a film where the best parts are concentrated in the first two acts, where it plays up the meta parody of the action genre to great effect. Nearly every frame of the Jack Slater universe is packed with gags, from the desk at the police station where cops are paired up with wacky sidekicks to the fact that every woman is supermodel-gorgeous, to even more minor stuff like the use of 555 phone numbers. The catch phrases and one-liners are so predictable that Danny can call them ahead of time. The explosions are big, and they are gratuitous, happening whenever there is an excuse for them and even at points when there isn't, like when a goon is thrown from a car and into the windshield of an ice cream truck. It's funny that Shane Black wound up leading the rewrites on the script given that it was spoofing his films specifically, as he has a great time taking the piss out of the cliches of his films; the moment we get the Jack Slater III clip where it's explicitly and conspicuously pointed out that the scene takes place around Christmas, you know exactly what you're in for. If you've ever watched those sorts of old-school '80s action flicks, then the jokes will still hold up, as they often go a bit deeper than the easy gag in order to highlight just how much of a wreck someone like Jack Slater must be when he's not on camera -- something that the actual Lethal Weapon did focus quite a bit on with Riggs, but which tends to be forgotten when looking at the genre as a whole. Even outside the Slaterverse, the film offers up a hilarious scene where Danny, bored in class watching the Laurence Olivier adaptation of Hamlet, imagines a version where Schwarzenegger plays the Danish prince in a film that swaps fidelity to the source material with non-stop action.
It must be said that Schwarzenegger is by far the best thing about this film, playing an over-the-top self-parody of his screen persona who takes all the traits associated with his characters and cranks them up yet retains a completely straight face throughout. In his comedies, Schwarzenegger always worked best as the "straight man" reacting to the wacky situations he's been thrust into, and here, even though he's playing a very heightened version thereof, he still carries that same energy. After all, in-universe, these are supposed to be serious action films, and this one has only gone awry because of Danny and his magic ticket. Charles Dance also made a fun villain as Benedict, a parody of Hans Gruber who, upon getting his hands on the ticket, realizes the possibilities it offers him to become far more powerful than just the henchman to the mobster villain of Jack Slater IV. Even when the film started going downhill in the third act, he remained one of the best things about it. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for Austin O'Brien, the kid who played Danny. As a self-insert for audience members, especially Schwarzenegger's younger fans, he was alright, but he was often forgettable and kind of annoying. I would've liked to see the original idea for the character, which would've had him becoming drunk with power in the movie world as a satire on how society treats violence and revenge in the media.
Danny wasn't my main problem with the film, though, even if his arc was at the center of it. Rather, he was a symbol of the main issues I had, nearly all of which concerned the real-world segments of the film. Here, there were shades of the original plot before it was heavily rewritten, with Danny embracing the world of Jack Slater IV as a fantasy in which he can not merely escape from his troubled life but straight-up fight back and take revenge. A good comparison for this would've been Pleasantville, where David initially retreats into a '50s sitcom as his escape from modern life before realizing it's not all it's cracked up to be, or the character of Eddie from the game Silent Hill 2, who serves as a much darker take on the kind of power fantasy I just described. In the finished film, however, Danny's arc never goes anywhere, and as a result, the real-world parts wound up being much less interesting than the parts set in Jack's universe. It's in the third act where the film really falls apart, as it focuses on celebrity cameos and meta references to the real-life Schwarzenegger that were tolerable and even funny in small doses earlier on (the "Sylvester Stallone as the Terminator" gag was a particularly good one), but utterly take over the film here, to its detriment. I'd have put more focus on Benedict's evil plan in the "real world", especially since the film hints at all manner of cool and interesting directions that it could've taken it.
The Bottom Line
It's not a great film, and its troubled production is visible in how it doesn't quite come together in the end. The parts that work, however, really work, and in a lot of ways it feels like an early beta prototype for a lot of modern meta comedy about the movies. If you're a fan of '80s action, check it out.
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