LAST ACTION HERO [1993 / 2010] [Blu-ray] [UK Release]
Schwarzenegger, Can Be Your Last Action Hero!
Action-adventure superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger bursts through the screen as a larger-than-life movie hero in this nonstop adventure from acclaimed director John McTiernan. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the character Jack Slater, who is an action-film hero.
FILM FACT: Although the film ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ was both a critical and commercial failure during its initial theatrical release, it has since become a cult film among fans and critics. The film also features Art Carney's last appearance in a motion picture. Arnold Schwarzenegger received a salary of $15 million for his role in the film. Finally, the film was declared a financial loss for $26 million.
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, F. Murray Abraham, Art Carney, Charles Dance, Frank McRae, Tom Noonan, Robert Prosky, Anthony Quinn, Mercedes Ruehl, Austin O'Brien, Sir Ian McKellen (Death), Professor Toru Tanaka, Joan Plowright, Keith Barish, Karen Duffy, Larry Ferguson, Leeza Gibbons, M.C. Hammer, Little Richard, Maria Shriver, Melvin Van Peebles, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, Jason Kelly, Noah Emmerich, Sven-Ole Thorsen, Tina Turner, Billy D. Lucas, Ryan Todd, Apollo Dukakis, Patrick Flanagan, Donald C. Llorens, Michael Chieffo, Mike Muscat, John Finnegan, Bobbie Brown-Lane, Angie Everhart, Jeffrey Braer, Anthony Peck, Paul Gonzales, Anna Navarro, Dex Elliott Sanders, Nick Dimitri, Rick Ducommun, Wendle Josepher, Michael V. Gazzo, Lee Reherman, R.C. Bates, Colleen Camp, Donna Borghoff, John McTiernan Sr., Tiffany Puhy, Jim Belushi, Chevy Chase, Robert Patrick, Sharon Stone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Damon Wayans, Kim Anderson (uncredited), Lena Banks (uncredited), Gregory J. Barnett (uncredited), Lindsey Nicole Brooks (uncredited), Chris Connelly (uncredited), Neriah Davis (uncredited), Danny DeVito (uncredited), Bryan Hanna (uncredited), Matt Johnston (uncredited), Peter Kent (uncredited), Henry Kingi (uncredited), Don LaFontaine (uncredited), Al Leong (uncredited), Lou Lollio (uncredited), Marshall Dancing Elk Lucas (uncredited), Jason Menz (uncredited), Johnny Meyer (uncredited), Frank III Patton (uncredited), Nick Pernice (uncredited), Gladys Portugues (uncredited), Paul Vincent Rapisarda (uncredited), Janice Rivera (uncredited), Thomas Rosales Jr. (uncredited), Christopher Sararo (uncredited), Theodore Carl Soderberg (uncredited), Michael Straka (uncredited), Basil Sydney (archive footage) (uncredited), Symba (uncredited), Brenda Tempel (uncredited), Kevin Ula Christie (uncredited), Michael Wehrhahn (uncredited) and Persia White (uncredited)
Director: John McTiernan
Producers: Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McTiernan, Neal Nordlinger, Robert E. Relyea, Robert H. Lemer and Stephen J. Roth
Screenplay: Adam Leff (story), David Arnott (screenplay), Shane Black (screenplay) and Zak Penn (story)
Composer: Michael Kamen
Cinematography: Dean Semler, A.C.S., A.S.C. (Director of Photography)
Image Resolution: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Audio: English: 5. 1 DTS-HD Master Audio
French: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
Português: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
Spanish: 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround
English: 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo Audio
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese
Running Time: 131 minutes
Region: All Regions
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Andrew's Blu-ray Review: Fun fact: In the summer of 1993, ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ opened one week after 'Jurassic Park.' Studio bosses at Columbia Pictures were convinced that Arnold Schwarzenegger would clobber the dinosaurs, and played up this battle of the box office behemoths in their promotion for the film. They were gravely mistaken. Arnold Schwarzenegger got stomped like Bambi under Godzilla's foot. I can recall going to a big multiplex with Steven Spielberg's film on five screens. Even in its second week, lines to see it went through the theatre lobby and out the door. In comparison, 'Last Action Hero' opened there on just a single screen with a half-empty auditorium. After a string of mega-hits including 'Total Recall' and 'Terminator 2,' the actor had his first outright flop. As a potential contender for the big summer blockbuster of the year, 'Last Action Hero' was simply not to be.
In hindsight, there was simply no way that any picture in its position could have ever succeeded. Not even the biggest film star in the world, which Arnold Schwarzenegger was at the time, could face off against the defining cultural moment for a generation of moviegoers and survive unscathed. However, bad timing was certainly not the film's only problem. Even if not for its box office competition, the movie's poor screenplay, inconsistent tone, and the irritating performance from one of its lead stars would have likely done it in anyway.
Somewhere during its development, ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ started off as a [supposedly] clever idea, even metaphysical, high-concept pitch. The story works as a sort of reverse spin on Woody Allen's 'The Purple Rose of Cairo.' Life in the big city slums of New York hasn't been easy for young Danny Madigan [Austin O'Brien]. In between home invasions and muggings, the boy's only form of entertainment is to watch films at the run-down old theatre where he's befriended the doddering projectionist Nick [Robert Prosky] who owns his personal Cinema. Like most 12 year-olds, he has an enthusiasm for films but hasn't yet developed taste in them. His favourites are the mindless shoot-'em-ups starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, yes, the actor name-checks himself, as loose cannon cop Jack Slater. After one particularly bad day, his projectionist friend offers Danny Madigan a special advance screening of 'Jack Slater IV', all by himself at midnight. The boy jumps at the chance. When he arrives, he's also given a magic ticket said to be passed down from Harry Houdini. Danny Madigan is in hog heaven as he settles down to watch Jack Slater take revenge on the Mafioso, who killed his second-cousin.
Well, it turns out that the magic ticket really is magical. At a key moment, Danny Madigan is sucked into the theatre screen and passes right through into the world of the film itself. Against his disbelief, he's living in his favourite film, paired up as Jack Slater's newest partner. His attempts to explain the predicament to anyone and everyone in earshot are met with indifference. Now, Danny Madigan must find a way to get back to the real world. In the process, he'll have to help Jack Slater foil the Mob's latest scheme to take over Los Angeles and originally its screenplay scenario was supposedly a neat idea, but when it came to making the film, something did not translate and basically, they should of gone back to the drawing board, as I suspect behind the scene, too many people were involved in the process and probably, that is why we ended up with the film itself and sadly it is a bit of a mess and did not work out as the director and screenwriters imagined with the original idea for the film from outset, which is a shame, as in theory it was a brilliant idea.
Despite how the film turned out, ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ at least has a handful of funny scenes to support it. Early on, bored at school, Danny Madigan fantasises about Arnold Schwarzenegger taking over for Laurence Olivier in 'Hamlet' and blowing the hell out of Denmark. In Jack Slater's crazy celluloid universe, the L.A.P.D. is populated by all sorts of wacko cops in outlandish uniforms. Blink-and-you'll-miss-'em celebrity cameos pop up all over, like Sharon Stone as Catherine Trammel, Robert Patrick as the T-1000, and Danny DeVito as the voice of an animated cat detective, to name but a few. The film takes pot-shots at action film genres, like the crusty old police captain, the hero's bad puns, the overly-talky killer, the cop killed with only two days to retirement, a chase through the often-used L.A. River, and many ridiculous over the top stunts and explosions. Arnold Schwarzenegger is very game to send-up his own personality and career. And the twists and turns go into overdrive when the main villain Benedict [Charles Dance] who is delightfully creepy, escapes into the real world with a plot to disrupt the 'Jack Slater IV' premiere and kill the true Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Towards the end of the film, Arnold Schwarzenegger appears as himself, attending the New York opening of his latest Jack Slater film, accompanied by his wife, Maria Shriver, and blithely unaware that Jack Slater is fighting for his life in another part of the theatre. Instead, Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen hustling the Jack Slater merchandise that, like the ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ T-shirts, caps and poster are being sold to promote the film.
Unfortunately, these things take up maybe 15 to 20 minutes of screen time in a 131 minute film. Whatever good ideas the original script may have held were eventually watered down through countless rewrites, studio interference, test screening feedback, and last-minute reshoots. Danny Madigan is an incredibly whiny and annoying lead character that engenders no audience sympathy at all. I can't blame poor Austin O'Brien too much; I'm sure the kid did exactly what everyone asked of him. The hiring of John McTiernan as the director, especially where he made his mark with films like 'Predator' and 'Die Hard,' also turned out to be a much bigger mistake than anyone realised. The director may be deft with the action stuff, but has no sense of comedy whatsoever. Far too many of the gags in the film are not very funny. For long stretches of the film, everyone seems to forget that they're making a spoof of dumb action film, and instead just proceeds to make a dumb action film.
‘LAST ACTION HERO’ is slightly overlong, and not nearly as funny, smart, or entertaining as it thinks it is. Sadly, everyone realised it. At $85 million, the film was quite expensive for its day and it cost more than 'Jurassic Park' did, and yet grossed a paltry $50 million domestically. It did better overseas, and I'm sure turned a profit eventually. But the vanity project is still remembered as a black mark in its star's career. On the other hand, ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ is not quite the worthless disaster that it was made out to be at the time either. If you can go into it with low expectations, the picture is just moderately clever enough to be watchable. Just barely, though and set those expectations really low.
With his lantern jaw and square-cut comic-book looks, Arnold Schwarzenegger handles his various roles with good humour, where it is fun being the boss. Young Austin O'Brien is also a very slick performer. Note should be made of the contributions of Dean Semler, the director of photography; Eugenio Zanetti, the production designer, and Richard Greenberg, the visual effects consultant.
LAST ACTION HERO MUCIC TRACK LIST
A LITTLE BITTER (Written by Layne Staley, Jerry Cantrell, Mike Inez and Sean Kinney) (Produced by Alice in Chains) [Performed by Alice in Chains]
ANGRY AGAIN (Written by Dave Mustaine) (Produced by Max Norman for On Yer Bike, Ltd. and Dave Mustaine) [Performed by Megadeth]
WHAT THE HELL HAVE I (Written by Jerry Cantrell) (Produced by Alice in Chains) [Performed by Alice in Chains]
TWO STEPS BEHIND (Written by Joe Elliott) (Produced by Pete Woodroffe, Phil Collen, Joe Elliott, Rick Savage and Vivian Campbell) [Performed by Def Leppard]
LAST ACTION HERO (Written by Frank Hannon, Jeff Keith, Tommy Skeoch and Brian Wheat) (Produced by Tesla) [Performed by Tesla]
BIG GUN (Written by Angus Young and Malcolm Young) (Produced by Rick Rubin) [Performed by AC/DC]
DREAM ON (Written by Steven Tyler) (Orchestra Arranged and Conducted by Michael Kamen) (Taken from MTV's 10th Anniversary Special in 1991) [Performed by Aerosmith]
REAL WORLD (Written by Queensrÿche and Michael Kamen) (Produced by Queensrÿche and James Barton (aka James "Jimbo" Barton) with Michael Kamen) [Performed by Queensrÿche]
SWIM (Written by John Bigham) (Produced by Terry Date and Fishbone) [Performed by Fishbone]
COCK THE HAMMER (Written by B-Real (aka Louis Freese), Senen Reyes and Larry Muggerud) (Produced by Larry Muggerud (aka D.J. Muggs) for Soul Assassins) [Performed by Cypress Hill]
HAMLET (Written by William Walton) (Courtesy of Rank Film Distributors Ltd.)
OVERTURE, THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO (Written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) (Performed by The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields) (Conducted by Sir Neville Marriner)
POISON MY EYES (Written by Charlie Benante (aka Charles Benante), Scott Ian, John Bush and Frank Bello) (Produced by Dave Jerden and Anthrax) [Performed by Anthrax]
SPEEDY (Written by Carl W. Stalling)
BIRD SEED (Written by Carl W. Stalling)
HANGIN’ TREE (Written and Produced by Jamal-Ski) [Performed by Jamal-Ski]
TWILIGHT ZONE THEME (Written by Marius Constant) [Performed by Marius Constant]
Blu-ray Image Quality – The ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ film and considering its history with its original release on the very inferior DVD, ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ looks surprisingly respectable on this Blu-ray release. The 1080p transfer is presented in the films correct 2.40:1 theatrical aspect ratio. The image is at least reasonably sharp enough that the small engraving on Arnold Schwarzenegger's belt buckle is legible. Black levels are solid and the contrast range appears to be properly rendered without artificial boosting. Colours are well saturated and sometimes striking. In another pleasant surprise, I didn't spot any edge enhancement artefacts. My initial expectation was that Sony would merely recycle their DVD master from 2001, and the studio's DVDs of the era were almost all plagued with edge ringing problems. Countering that, however, is some moderate but noticeable Digital Noise Reduction filtering that does give the transfer a dated appearance. This causes occasional smearing during motion, and frozen grain patterns. Grain representation in general is a problem with the disc. The movie's photography is fairly grainy in spots, especially during special effects shots. The high-definition transfer doesn't handle the grain very well. It looks very noisy and even blocky at times, which suggests either poor digitalisation during the telecine transfer or poor compression during the disc encoding.
Blu-ray Audio Quality – In similar respects, the 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio experience is decent all around, but not quite exceptional. ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ had the distinction of being the first movie released theatrically in the SDDS 7.1 audio format, Sony's competition for Dolby Digital and DTS. The latter debuted a week earlier with 'Jurassic Park' and stole most of Sony's thunder. Many of the theatres equipped with SDDS experienced technical problems; for several years, and the format was referred to as a complete failure. In order to show off their 7.1 channels, the film's mixers loaded up the soundtrack with lots of zinging directional and surround activity. Bullets whiz all through the soundstage repeatedly. Even as mixed down to 5.1 channels here, the track is still very aggressive. It also matrixes well into 7.1 configuration with Dolby ProLogic IIx processing. Overall fidelity is pretty good. The rockin' score and songs on the soundtrack are satisfyingly broad across the front channels. Sound effects such as knives are quite sharp and piercing. Gun fire has a nice kick. Dynamic range is a little on the shallow side. The movie has plenty of explosions, but few of them dig particularly deep. In baseball terms, this would be a solid double.
Blu-ray Special Features and Extras: With this Blu-ray release of ‘LAST ACTION HERO,’ just like the earlier inferior DVD editions release of this film, the Blu-ray has no bonus features. Unless you count a bunch of trailers that are not very relevant, which is to my mind, a complete waste of a Blu-ray disc?
Finally, film for film and despite a few misfires in an otherwise exemplary, ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ tried at one point to try and be a better Action film for John McTiernan, and after a string of cranking out three of the most successful Action films of all time, the Director proved himself abundantly capable of delivering what was and still arguably is the quintessential Action spoof film in ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ and starring history's biggest Action hero and delivering a fun and magical plot that perfectly intermixes general parody of the Action film business, ‘LAST ACTION HERO’ makes for an infinitely re-watchable Action film and Arnold Schwarzenegger looks to me as he had a great deal fun performing in it. Sony's Blu-ray release, however, features a fairly decent 1080p picture quality, a booming soundtrack, and next to no extras. Recommended for diehard fans of the film, but for more casual viewers should wait for, hopefully a special edition at some point in the future will be released, I hope so. Despite it being slightly a disappointing film, that should have been so much better, still I am still glad I have got this in my Blu-ray Collection.
Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado
Le Cinema Paradiso
United Kingdom
