Movie Review: The Last Stand

The Last Stand
Directed by: Jee-woon Kim.
Written by: Andrew Knauer.
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger (Ray Owens), Forest Whitaker (Agent John Bannister), Peter Stormare (Burrell), Eduardo Noriega (Gabriel Cortez), Luis Guzmán (Mike Figuerola), Sonny Landham (Henry), Jaimie Alexander (Sarah Torrance), Johnny Knoxville (Lewis Dinkum), Zach Gilford (Jerry Bailey), Christiana Leucas (Christie), Harry Dean Stanton (Mr. Parsons), Genesis Rodriguez (Agent Ellen Richards), Daniel Henney (Phil Hayes), Rodrigo Santoro (Frank Martinez).

It’s somewhat reassuring to have Arnold Schwarzenegger back making movies again after far too long as Governor of California. Back when I was a teenager, you could count on a few big, dumb action movies from Arnie a year. Some of these were entertaining big, dumb action movies, and some of them were just big and dumb. But Schwarzenegger was a true movie star – he had his superman, yet funny, screen persona, and more often than not, he delivered the goods. He wasn’t a great actor, but in his wheelhouse, he could at least make entertaining junk. But since 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Arnie has been MIA – showing up in a cameo once in a while, but basically concentrating on being Governor, which I suppose is more important. But with The Last Stand, Arnie is finally back in the saddle – doing what he does best. The Last Stand is not a great movie, hell, it’s not even a very good one, but for someone like me it represents cinematic comfort food.

In the movie, Arnie plays a small town Texas Sheriff, who gave up his “glamorous” life in the LAPD years ago because he had seen too much death. He just wants to ride out his days in a quiet town where nothing much happens. But, of course, that’s not going to happen. A Federal prisoner, Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega), has escaped custody and his making his way down to Mexico, with a Federal agent hostage, in a stolen Mustang, that has been retrofitted to make it the faster vehicle imaginable – the car can even outrun a helicopter. Federal agents, led by Forest Whitaker, are scrambling to catch him, but he is heading right for Arnie’s small town. Can this possibly have anything to do with the strange men he saw in the local greasy spoon? What do you think? So Arnie assembles his ragtag group of deputies – comic relief provided by Luis Guzman and Johnny Knoxville, along with the inexperienced, but gung ho Zach Gilford, and the pretty Jaimie Alexander, who has just broken up with her boyfriend, Rodrigo Santoro, who was once in the Army, so you know, he has some killing skills. All that stands in the way of Cortez and his crew is this band of misfits.

So yes, The Last Stand is a dumb action movie. It makes little to no sense on a logical level, so you’re left with a choice to either role with the movie, or fight it every step of the way. I rolled with it. No, it’s not a good movie – despite being directed by Jee-woon Kim, the Korean who made the excellent, disturbingly graphic chase film I Saw the Devil – but if this is your cup of tea, I have a hard time believing you won’t be entertained by it. This is a movie with zero pretension – it’s not trying to be serious, not trying to make any sort of point, just trying to be a fun way to spend an hour and forty seven minutes, and for the most part it succeeds. Kim is an expert at action direction, and those scenes for the most part are well handled – I particularly enjoyed a ridiculous car chase through a corn field.

Make no mistake no one is going to really believe The Last Stand is a good movie. Yet, Arnie plays the role just right – gets some laughs making fun of his age – and is supported by an equally good supporting cast, none of them taking anything too seriously. The Last Stand is a guilty pleasure – but it is pleasurable.

DVD Review: I Saw the Devil

I Saw the Devil *** ½
Directed by: Jee-woon Kim.
Written by: Hoon-jung Park.
Starring: Byung-hun Lee (Kim Soo-hyeon), Min-sik Choi (Kyung-chul), Gook-hwan Jeon (Squad Chief Jang), Ho-jin Jeon (Section Chief Oh), San-ha Oh (Joo-yeon), Yoon-seo Kim (Se-yeon).

I’m not sure what the hell is wrong with Korea, but right now they are making some of the most extreme, violent films in the world right now. Chan-wook Park is the obvious poster boy for extreme Korean films – with his trilogy of movies Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, and the violent vampire flick Thrist, and Korea does have its share of more serious filmmakers as well (Lee-Chang Dong and Bong Joon-ho leading the way there). But most of the films we get see over here are like Jee-woon Kim’s I Saw the Devil, a graphically violent, disturbing in the extreme serial killer/horror film. Trust me, you won’t soon forget this one.

The movie opens with an extremely unsettling scene, as we see the beautiful Joo-yeon (San-ha Oh) on the phone with her Special agent fiancée, talking about how her car has broken down in the snow, and she’s waiting for a tow truck. It isn’t long before a strange man, in a school van, shows up to offer help, which she politely refuses. But no sooner has she hung with her fiancée, than the man in the van comes back – breaks her window, beats her to death, and drags her lifeless body across the snow in one of the most haunting shots in recent memory. He will take her back to his house where he will chop up her body and dispose of it. When it’s found, the fiancée, Kim Soo-hyeon (Byung-hun Lee) vows to track down the killer and have his revenge. It doesn’t take him long to discover that the killer is Kyung-chul (Min-sik Choi from Oldboy). But Kim is not interested in simply killing him – he wants to toy and with him for a while, and torture him so that he feels even more pain than his fiancée did. But of course, it isn’t quite as simple as that.

Watching I Saw the Devil, I couldn’t help but think of a movie like Taken from a few years ago. I disliked Taken immensely, but many other people loved it. It is kind of the cookie cutter version of the revenge story we see a lot. I thought of it, because Kim has some of the same very specific abilities that Liam Neesom had in that film – we see them early in the film when he’s trying to figure out who the killer is by torturing a few other candidates first. He is a man with “nothing to lose”, who can inflict pain with the best of them.

But I Saw the Devil is more complex than that. This isn’t just a story of a man seeking vengeance, and it isn’t quite as simple as the fact that the hero has to sink to the level of the killer to catch him. Those questions have been asked and answered in movie many times over, and although often times they can still work (like in No Country for Old Men and The Dark Knight), I Saw the Devil goes further. Kim really does sink to the level of the killer – his torture of him throughout the movie is brutal and unrelenting. The movie toys with our expectations – we saw what the killer did to his fiancé, so we want him to have his vengeance. The movie gives us that, and then goes further and further and further until we are sickened by what is on the screen. You want vengeance and blood – you got it, now deal with it.

One of things that I think works best about I Saw the Devil are the performances. Min-sik Choi truly is one of the most memorable serial killers in recent memory. Yes, to a certain extent, it is a rehash of other serial killers in the movies, but he seems even more remorseless than they do – and is not nearly as charming or intelligent. He kills because he enjoys killing people. No one will leave the theater smiling about him like they do with Hannibal Lector. But Byung-hun Lee is perhaps even better, even though he has the much less showy role. He seems emotionless as he is going about his work, and he doesn’t even seem to care too much that his way of torturing Kyung-chul (he tracks him down, breaks something, and then lets him go to track him down again and break something else), means that there are quite a few innocent people put in harm’s way for his vengeance. It isn’t until Kyung turns the tables that he starts to regret it – and even then, the emotions are not over the top – not even in his tragic final scene.

I have not seen any films by director Jee-woon Kim before – not even his highly regarded Western mash-up The Good, The Bad, The Weird – released here last year. On the basis on I Saw the Devil (and what I know about his previous film), he is obviously a movie brat – a Korean Quentin Tarantino as it were. He references many films here – Oldboy in the first scene (it is not a coincidence that Kyung’s weapon of choice there is a hammer) – but he plays with them a little bit. Watch the segment with the cannibal to see how he takes something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and then twists it.

I Saw the Devil is certainly not a pleasant film to sit through. For genre fans however, it is a must. And what I appreciated about it is that even though it shows quite a bit of torture – of tough to take violence – it never devolves into the level of torture porn. There are real characters at the center of this film, and the violence flows from them. This isn’t a film where torture is shot for torture’s sake – where we see extreme violence simply because the director likes to revel in bloodlust. Instead, the violence in the movie, as strong and off putting as it is, is necessary to the movie. It is possible to make great movies with this level of violence – as this film proves.