Last night I caught THE LAST STAND, Arnold Schwarzenegger's comeback movie after his political career and his tabloid-rich divorce/love child storyline (minus his glorified cameos in the EXPENDABLES film series) which unfortunately lived up to the title on opening weekend, flopping hard.

Pity because I actually kinda enjoyed this. Partly its another throwback to the 1980s action film (which Arnold was King of back in his heyday) with the earned R-rated bloody violence and one-liners, which makes you wonder whether audiences truely want that again or just more post-action sloppy action realist nonsense?

TLS is also another of those pseudo-westerns remade for contemporary times (John Carpenter's B classic ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, the Coen Brothers' NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, and Walter Hill's EXTREME PREJUDICE all came to mind while watching this) because genuine westerns apparently don't make money unless Tarantino or Coens are directing them. A Mexican cartel leader escapes Federal custody and is making a run for the Mexican border in a super-fast gadget-loaded car, and the only thing in his way (including his army of disposable henchmen) is a spot on the map small town and it's police force of sheriff Austrian Oak and two deputies.

Such a plot set-up inevitably depends upon you ignoring the inevitable questions of logic gaps that this begs. (Consider for example how amazing the Feds deploy every device and trick that fail to stop this fast car except a low budget road spike strip. I'm reminded of Clint Eastwood's THE GAUNTLET when the bad guys shoot up that bus, but never once had the brains to, I don't know, put up a concrete barrier in the middle of Clint's way.)

But otherwise I enjoyed the patient build-up, the introduction of Arnold and the motley cast of misfit characters (all nicely casted from Johnny Knoxville to Luis Guzman and so forth) that he recruits and they prepare for the final confrontation and then WW3. We even get the western cliche older than John Wayne's old hats with the drunkard locked up for the weekend freed to help fight the good fight. We "hate" cliches supposedly, but I dunno I seem to always dig a good well-worn cliche when it's done right.

I even liked that after the big finale mano-y-mano fight between the villain and Arnold, he doesn't kill him as I was expecting (or dreading really). No Arnold the policeman (and not the vigilante) arrests him and takes him back into custody by an amusing visual that I dare won't spoil.

If TLS has one problem, its the movie cutting back routinely to the boring by the book police procedural scenes of FBI agent Forest Whittaker (wasted really in this dull part). You know the scenes you always see on TV or Jason Bourne movies where the boss is barking orders at his underlings, frantically typing away on their laptops or working the phones, then cut to the agents in the field/helicopters similarly shouting intel to each other over dispatch. Such scenes you can imagine beat by beat.

But otherwise, I liked this. Reminded me of the recent Tom Cruise vehicle JACK REACHER where it was a good, action matinee escapist time at the movies that you should walk (don't run) to go see. I would give this ***1/2 out of 5.