Moviedrunk: Last Action Hero

One of the most polarizing movies of the 90s, but one that I absolutely adore

I was 11 years old when “Last Action Hero” hit theaters, and it was routine for me, my dad, and my brother to go see the latest Arnold Schwarzenegger flick on opening weekend. We did that all throughout the 90s, from “Terminator 2”, to “True Lies,” even sitting through some of his not-so-great movies like “The 6th Day.” (Although we skipped “Junior.”)

Of all the movies I’ve seen over the years, “Last Action Hero” remains what some folks would refer to as my “guiltiest” pleasure, but I feel no guilt at all. It’s easily the biggest discrepancy between how I enjoyed it versus how it was received. I get why people don’t like it — the 2nd half of the movie barely makes sense, the ending is super obvious (get the other half of the ticket, you dopes!), the kid is whiny and annoying, things get weirdly dark, and after all, humor is completely subjective, so some folks just may not think it’s funny. But, there are few movies that have brought me more joy over the years.

What “Last Action Hero” was going for, in the first half of the movie anyway, was to be a sendup of all the action movie cliches that Arnold himself helped create. To see him in on the joke and absolutely nailing this performance just makes it that much better.

The premise leans heavily into the surreal — an old theater projectionist played by Robert Prosky managed to procure a “magic ticket” given to him by Harry Houdini, and he decides to give it to his friend Danny, played by Austin O’Brien, who comes and watches early screenings with him. Danny is a huge fan of the Jack Slater franchise, Slater of course being played by Arnold, so he shows up to an early screening for the latest Slater movie. As the movie starts, the ticket becomes “activated” somehow, and it sucks Danny into the movie itself, and we go from there.

“Last Action Hero” was directed by John McTiernan, of “Predator” and “Die Hard” fame, so the stunts here are spectacular and still look great to this day. The soundtrack, start to finish, is also tremendous, featuring two kick ass Alice in Chains songs (“What the Hell Have I” and “A Little Bitter”), one of the best 90s Megadeth songs (“Angry Again”), and even a quality AC/DC track (“Big Gun”).

The movie wastes zero time setting the tone: we see hundreds of cops and a sea of police cars surrounding a building where Jack Slater's son is being held hostage. Despite an army the size of a small country, Jack is the one who casually walks into the building, ignoring orders from a screaming police chief. What I didn’t realize at the time is that there were about a gazillion movies with this exact premise, with guys like Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson making an entire career out of the whole “guy who doesn’t play by the rules” gimmick, so it’s even funnier to see this today.

We get our first cheesy one-liner, “Hey, you wanna be a farmer? Here’s a couple of achers,” as he punts a guy in the nuts. Tina Turner of all people shows up to try and stop him, one of the many, many ridiculous (and meaningless) celebrity cameos in this movie. Tom Noonan plays the villain holding Jack’s son hostage, and he’s genuinely creepy in this role.

The first big laugh comes when Jack is asked to disarm himself, and he pulls out like a dozen guns and a couple knives, before rolling out a live grenade. Unfortunately, things go poorly for Jack, as his son gets pulled off the roof by the villain. Cut to Danny watching everything unfold in the theater, as we learn this is actually the ending to “Jack Slater III.”

Next we see Danny at school, but he can’t pay attention because he’s too busy daydreaming about movies. That leads to one of the funniest scenes, as Danny watches a scene from Hamlet, which plays out like this:

Typical 90s movie voiceover guy: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark! And Hamlet is taking out the trash!”

Bad guy: “Stay thy hand, fair prince.”

Arnold: “Who said I’m fair?” (Arnold busts out an uzi and shoots the guy)

Later, Arnold: “To be or not to be… not to be.” (As Arnold lights his cigar, a friggin castle explodes behind him.)

Next we meet Danny’s mom, played by Mercedes Ruehl, and here’s where things get weird. She leaves for work, leaving Danny alone. He leaves to go back to the movie theater, and gets mugged for his trouble. Suddenly everything is really gritty and intense, a total contrast from how the movie started, and we’re only 15 minutes in. Then the movie goes straight back to Danny at the movie theater, where he gets the aforementioned “magic ticket.” He tears it in half to admit him into the theater, a plot point we’ll bring up again later.

We see our first glimpse of “Jack Slater IV,” and suddenly we’ve gone headlong into satire again. We get introduced to the villains, Vivaldi and Benedict, gloriously played by Anthony Quinn and Charles Dance respectively, and man oh man do they ham it up. They’ve kidnapped Jack’s favorite 2nd cousin for some reason.

Things suddenly transition to the favorite 2nd cousin’s house being blown up, two cops getting killed complete with a “Two days from retirement…” gag, followed by a ridiculous car chase with the bad guys swerving around totally unrealistically calm LA traffic (maybe the biggest stretch in the movie), tossing dynamite left and right. Danny’s viewing experience is interrupted when some dynamite actually comes through the screen into the theater. Somehow the magic ticket is “working its magic” and the bomb blows Danny into the movie itself.

The ongoing chase scene is preposterous and stupid in the best possible way. Cars exploding left and right, a guy somehow getting launched into an ice cream truck which promptly explodes, a guy getting killed from an ensuing ice cream cone getting lodged into his skull, it’s wonderful. “Iced that guy, to cone a phrase.”

The next 30 minutes of the film are Danny pointing out all the movie cliches to Jack, insisting that they’re both in the middle of a movie. It’s at this point that I realize that I do feel kind of bad for Austin O’Brien. The Danny character is given almost nothing but smarmy, know-it-all lines, and nobody likes a smarmy know-it-all, especially when it’s a kid. I think his performance is okay, but the writing doesn’t exactly set him up to be likeable. That’s one criticism about this movie that I completely agree with. But it at least allows Arnold to be a total smartass right back to him. “All I gotta do is drive around and point and say, ‘DA BAD GUYS ARE IN DERE?!?’”

One running gag throughout the movie that I adore is Jack’s comically reckless driving. I remember hearing my brother howling with laughter at that. I need to rewatch this and count how many cars get destroyed. There’s about a million other gags I can rave about (Danny Devito voicing a cartoon cat, cameos from Sharon Stone and the T-1000, F. Murray Abraham showing up as John Practice allowing Danny to get in an “Amadeus” reference) but I should probably move this along.

But not before pointing out Sly Stallone as the Terminator.

The only person who actually entertains the possibility that Danny may be right is Benedict, who tracks him down and steals the ticket. I can’t say enough how enjoyable Charles Dance is in this movie. He’s pitch perfect as an over-the-top smug asshole villain, complete with monologues that quote Sherlock Holmes.

The gag that always gets me: Arnold’s latest skirmish with Benedict gets him kicked out of the police force, so he’s forced to go back to his completely empty apartment… empty except for one thing: there’s a dude strapped with weapons hiding out in his closet. Arnold shoots the closet twice without opening the door.

Danny: Geez, how’d you know there was a guy in there?

Jack: There’s always a guy in there.

There IS always a guy in there. Later, Jack gets betrayed by John Practice, which leads to another one of my favorite exchanges.

Jack: Danny told me not to trust you. He said you killed Mo Zart.

John: Mo who?

Jack, total deadpan: Zart.

That gets a laugh from me every damn time.

One big point I hope to get across is that, this is a movie that doesn’t just poke fun at other action movies, in some cases it outdoes them. Some stunts that are even better than the films it’s making fun of. Combine that with some A+ humor and delivery, and you’ve got a 5-star movie.

…until the story kicks in again.

The second strange, confusing twist in Last Action Hero happens when Benedict is able to successfully use the ticket, goes back into the “real world,” and then he starts… talking to the camera? Wha? I guess it makes sense, since he knows now that he’s part of a movie, but who is he talking to? Who’s the camera person? Why doesn’t anyone else talk to the camera?

90 minutes into the movie, Danny continues to prattle on incessantly, pointing out how ridiculous everything is, only everyone is sick of hearing from him, including the audience. They really needed to trim at least 30 minutes from this.

I won’t re-hash the story in detail here, but Jack eventually finds out that Danny has been right the whole time. He tries to smash a window with his fist, and ends up hurting his hand. Later he sees himself on a billboard, promoting “Jack Slater IV.”

The movie takes a weirdly dark turn when Benedict kills a guy at a NYC gas station, proudly announces it, only to be shouted down by neighbors. I don’t know if the movie’s trying to do some sort of social commentary out of nowhere about movie violence vs. real world violence, but uh, what the hell was that? The drastic shifts of tone throughout watching this are jarring.

The last 45 minutes of this movie (it’s 130 minutes long) might as well just be the audience shouting at the screen, “Use the other half of the ticket!” Nobody in the movie realizes it which is super frustrating. Instead, there’s lots of navel gazing with Jack wondering about his place in the world, and it just falls flat. The movie ends with Danny finally realizing what the audience did eons ago, and after a final showdown with Benedict, Jack uses the ticket to go back to his movie world where he belongs.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of great stuff in the last half of the movie, like Arnold meeting himself, Ian McKellan showing up as the Grim Reaper, and more. But this script badly needed to be trimmed and certain parts re-written. “Last Action Hero” is one movie where I really wouldn’t mind a remake, if it were handled by the right people. With his action movie background, McTiernan was a perfect choice to direct this, making the stunts both look great, and appear egregious as hell. I’m not sure who the modern McTiernan is, but if there’s a remake, it needs to be a director on that level.

So yeah, I completely understand why “Last Action Hero” is polarizing. The criticisms are valid, but I think the good outweighs the bad. It’s one of Arnold’s best performances. The movie still looks and sounds fantastic today. It remains one of my favorite movies ever, and it deserves a chance, if only for Arnold at his best, a few unexpected laughs, and a great soundtrack.

Here’s where you can watch “Last Action Hero” if you want to check it out yourself.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your day!

-Alex