ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, September 21, 1996 TAG: 9609230120
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B12 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
It's not just that lots of people get shot in "Last Man Standing." It's that lots of people get shot lots of times, go flying through glass and are left to bleed all over the place.
Then the people who did the shooting walk away, mumbling, get into their cars and go home, where they sit around waiting for the next time they get to go out and shoot lots of people lots of times.
Half the people are Italian, of course (isn't there some kind of Italian-American Anti-Defamation League out there somewhere? Hello?). The other half are Irish. In the middle is a guy who calls himself John Smith (Bruce Willis) and provides narration straight out of one of those salsa commercials.
Smith has no loyalty. He also admits freely that his weakness is that he has no conscience. His wisdom - the entirety of this film's wisdom, in fact - is that "They all deserve to die." And then, later, when "they" are all dead: "They all deserved to die."
And we all deserved to sleep, straight through this absurdly bad, laughably pretentious Walter Hill movie.
Hill is no stranger to shoot-'em-ups. He was the brains behind ``48 Hours" and "Another 48 Hours." Plus, he did "Brewster's Millions."
So, just guessing here, what he did was just picture lots of violent scenes. Bet he even drew pictures on cocktail napkins. Then he strung them together with some bad dialogue, stuck his overqualified cast in '20s attire and dragged them out to the desert. This is one of those rare instances where you actually hope the actors got paid a lot to suffer the shame of being in such an ill-conceived movie.
People like Christopher Walken, for example, who gets to wear a big, nasty scar on his face as he creates the unmemorable character Hickey, an Irish hit man who still boasts of burning down his reform school as a teen-ager. (``You shoulda' seen those kiddies burn.'') And Bruce Dern as the corrupt sheriff. (What a project to pick as part of a comeback effort.)
Willis has made more than his share of witless action flicks. But in recent years, there has been a glimmer of hope on the horizon for The Poutmaster. He's busted out into other facial expressions and done a little acting in such movies as "Twelve Monkeys" and "Pulp Fiction."
Let's hope "Last Man Standing" isn't a sign that Bruce has lost his single lick of sense. Let's pray that this movie dies at the box office and is gone quickly, a greater mercy than it shows its unfortunate audiences.
Last Man Standing *
A New Line Cinema release showing at Valley View Mall 6 and Salem Valley 8. Rated R for excessive, graphic violence. 105 minutes
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Bruce Willis plays John Smith in "Last Man Standing."by CNBcolor