LAST ACTION HERO: 4K UHD Blu-ray (Columbia, 1993) Sony Home Entertainment
In the summer of 1993, one of Hollywood’s apparent immortals,
Arnold Schwarzenegger sat white-knuckled and apprehensive at the premiere of his
latest and, then budgeted at a cool $85 million, one of the most expensive
actioners of all time. And why not, since a respectable $15 million of that
offering had been paid directly to him to bring forth another box office titan.
Yet, even before the house lights dimmed, Schwarzenegger, as the picture’s
executive producer, knew he had the biggest blunder of his career to face. Last
Action Hero, with its cavalcade of cameos – everyone from Joan Plowright
(paying a bleak and shockingly grotesque homage to her late husband, Sir Laurence
Olivier, magically to morph into Schwarzenegger as an unreasonable facsimile of
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, ‘taking out the trash’) to Sharon Stone, still
wearing her Basic Instinct (1992) dress, to Tina Turner (as the mayor of
L.A.), to Anthony Quinn (as an oily Mafia chieftain) and Jean-Claude Van Damme,
preening as himself for the cameras in a pseudo movie-land premiere within this
metaphysical would-be hit, seemed to take a whack at Schwarzenegger’s Teflon-coated
screen image as the ultimate action star.
Stone’s appearance proved particularly difficult to secure as she and
Schwarzenegger had not gotten on during the shooting of Total Recall
(1990) – a troubled production that, nevertheless, advanced Stone’s status in
Hollywood. As a result, she agreed to appear in this very brief cameo ‘as a
favor’ to its star. But in the end, it was all just enough to chisel away at the
myth, Arnold could do no wrong…that, plus early word of mouth from a Sony sneak
peak, so awful and ugly, the studio actually destroyed the prevue opinion cards
in a feeble bid to bury the negative publicity. Nearly 30-years removed from
all the marketing hype to have preceded it, Last Action Hero is not all
that much more in a better place than when it came out. If anything, with its
apocalyptic bookends set in a dystopian Manhattan and its crumbling/graffiti-ridden
movie palace, manned by an old coot (played with kindly good sense by Robert
Prosky in a part originally conceived, but mercifully nixed, to be a conjurer
of evil as the character’s name ‘Old Nick’ is British slang for the devil) –
the uber-alter-reality to afflict all the sun-glossed fantasy sandwiched in
between was left as farcical foreplay by director, John McTiernan – no stranger
to the genre. Last Action Hero was meant as a self-effacing send-up to the
clichés found in all action movies. The reality, however, is that it as
McTiernan rushed to meet his deadline, the picture instead played like a bungled
brew of bizarre action/comedy vignettes, strewn about the proscenium without
ever hitting a single bull’s eye as a lightweight candy bon-bon that just
smells like a summer blockbuster. There is, in fact a telling moment early on
when young Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien) complains to Nick that the image up
on the screen has suddenly gone way out of focus. That’s actually a good way to
describe and analyze Last Action Hero – so soft and fuzzy around the
edges, not even Dean Semler’s uber-crisp cinematography can crystalize things
once the plot gets underway.
Overproduced, and self-indulgent to a fault, watching Last
Action Hero after a hiatus of twenty-eight years is like re-inserting a
rusty tack into one’s eyeball after narrowly escaping blindness from performing
the stunt the first time, just to prove the initial experience was not so bad. But
let’s be honest here. Schwarzenegger’s appeal was always as the butch bodybuilder-come-movie
star, ready to kick some serious ass, preferably with his shirt off, his biceps
and pecs bunched together with eye-popping vascularity and glistening in enough
sweat to leave the gals in the audience breathless and the guys at their side
thoroughly envious. But in Last Action Hero, Schwarzenegger stays pretty
much fully clothed, in the same snakeskin boots, tight-fitted blue jeans and
red tee. So, he’s not fashion conscious. Okay. We’ll give him some latitude. Yet,
despite his visage and name plastered in grand lettering all over movie posters
and marquees, Schwarzenegger is not the star of this show. No, that honor falls
to 12-yr.-old Austin O’Brien, force-fed to us as the uber-savvy movie hound who
gets to live out every cinema-lover’s wet dream, suddenly plunged into the
alter-universe of the movies, only to discover its queer Twilight Zone-ish
disconnect when the wave lengths between reality and fiction get crossed. Shane
Black and David Arnott’s screenplay, based on a story by Zak Penn and Adam
Leff, takes an interest premise for a half-hour TV sketch and stretches it to
an interminable 2-hrs. and 10-mins. – stacked with some truly horrendous one-liners
that are supposed to be funny. But not even Schwarzenegger’s Graz-Austrian
accent, the male equivalent to Carmen Miranda, can save them…and that’s saying
quite a lot!
So, zingers like “You want to be a farmer? Here's a
couple of acres!” accompanied by a swift kick in the crotch do more than
make the character on the receiving end of the boot wince. As such, Arnold has
not made good on his trademarked promise, “I’ll be back” so much as to take
the oath and turn it upside down, painfully to remind us Schwarzenegger on the
screen only works when we can buy him as a thinly veiled recreation of that larger-than-life
public persona. Stripped of this pseudo-pretend and forced to confront even
himself – as himself – in the final reel, also to face the fallibility
of a Jack Slater, plucked from his movie-land existence and plunged into a
reality where even cardboard cutout action heroes may perish when real bullets
ricochet off their chests…it’s all just a little too ghoulish. Besides, the
object of Schwarzenegger’s affections here is not a sexy woman, but a prepubescent
boy star-struck in his idol worship. L.A.P.D. officer, Jack Slater is the kind
of guy who would make a great dad, if ever he actually existed. But the last
act of Last Action Hero is where the dream transgresses into a terrific
nightmare. Stripped of his movie-land super powers, Jack discovers the human
body is not indestructible, sticking one’s hand through a car window actually
hurts, and worse, he has transgressed into a world where not only is heroism in
very short supply but otherwise not guaranteed to win against pure evil. Scary
thought.
Last Action Hero is too overwrought to be any
reel/real fun. It’s lavish pyrotechnics aside (everything blows up at the
slightest provocation) the action sequences require only the slightest
provocation and come from nowhere, or rather, are stitched together from the
entrails of a bunch of other movies, any one of which would have made for a
more compelling feature had McTiernan just stuck with it instead of repeatedly
veering off into clever-clever-land. But no - Jack gets rescued by a cartoon
cat and plies his manly sass to a Blockbuster Video sales girl (Angie Everhart),
just one of the fantastic/plastic glamazons populating this backdrop on sexist
overload. There’s also a brief glimpse of steely-faced Robert Patrick as the
T-1000 model from Terminator 2: Judgement Day, but here, strangely gone
legit for the L.A.P.D. So, who needs plot? Such as it is, we get Charles Dance
as Benedict, a paid assassin, wearing all manner of grotesque contact lenses,
meant to resemble glass eyes, and shooting everything and everyone in sight,
even his boss, Tony Vivendi (Anthony Quinn). I suspect high-parody was what McTiernan
was going for here. That he never actually gets to third-base with all this
money and star power is, frankly, more than a little embarrassing. You would
think the director of Die Hard (1988) would have more to say, or better
movies to shoot. Alas, no.
Perhaps some of the blame is owed Black and Arnott, as
well as the small army of script doctors, to include the late Carrie Fisher,
Larry Ferguson and William Goldman, who were then hired to rewrite and rework Penn
and Leff’s leitmotif into a moralizing actioner while greatly to alter its
premise, dividing the movie between the fictional world of Jack Slater and that
pseudo reality he later finds himself, in present day New York. Penn and Leff are
credited with the story, though not the screenplay. That’s part of the mystery
too, and all of the problem with this scenario, because the whole idea of a
magic ticket, to pop young Danny in and out of the movies with all the
superficial ease of a P.L Travers’ nanny visiting chalk pavement sketches,
garbles up this slouchy story and was decidedly not of their offering nor
decidedly to their liking. Interestingly, Last Action Hero’s premise of
having characters transgress from the ‘real’ world into its movie-land facsimile
via a magic ticket is credited to illusionist extraordinaire, Harry Houdini,
who spent his lifetime debunking the existence of the supernatural, the fake
spiritualists and phony mediums who reported to be channeling its powers. It’s
pretty sad when the movie poster generates more thrills than the movie. But in Last
Action Hero’s case, the thrill ride promised by artist, Morgan Weistling begins
to suffer from all that costly bloat almost from the moment the picture opens
on a breathtaking aerial fly-in to a waterfront hacienda in Southern California.
After a decade’s worth of playing hulking he-men with more brawn than brains, Last
Action Hero pitches us a kinder/gentler Arnold Schwarzenegger, one the
actor was actually instrumental in pressing the studio into accepting to secure
a PG-13 rating for the picture’s release. Problem: Schwarzenegger’s core audience
always skewed towards the testosterone-raging adolescent male on the cusp of
entering manhood or the twenty-something armchair warrior projecting himself onto
this take-charge muscle guy, if only they too had good designer steroids and
the will to lift a barbell more often than the remote control. Unable to settle
on a point of embarkation – or a point of destination for that matter, Last
Action Hero shot almost right up until the week before its pre-scheduled
theatrical debut, with not even McTiernan seeing a first ‘final cut’ fully
assembled before its May sneak peek. Schwarzenegger, who initially thought the
script was the best he had ever read, knew damn well he now had a turkey on his
hands. And Charles Dance, having replaced Alan Rickman when Rickman’s agent
demanded a bigger paycheck for his client, compounded the folly by wearing a
T-shirt that read ‘I’m cheaper than Alan Rickman.’ In their quest to
market the picture all out of proportion, Sony landed sweetheart deals with
Burger King ($20 million), several video game manufacturers, and a $36 million
promo for a Universal theme park ride, as well as a four-story inflatable of
Schwarzenegger to ordain the picture’s premiere at Cannes. Sony also pressed
its star into a heavy spate of interviews – 40 for TV, and another 54 in print,
all in the span of less than 24 hrs. before the June premiere.
Possible blame for Last Action Hero’s utterly
nonsensical evolution may rest with the fact John McTiernan shot under duress
and under one of the tightest timelines to ensure the June 18th, 1993
premiere deadline was met. This, alas, left little to no time for editing, and
certainly, no safety gap to refine the final cut, barely out of the printer’s wet
gate before it was being hauled off to theaters. Sony execs briefly considered
pushing the release back to July or even August, owing to Universal’s decision
to debut their big-budgeted blockbuster, Jurassic Park (1993) on June 11th,
placing it in direct competition with Last Action Hero. It should be
noted, although McTiernan worked under the gun to complete the picture, he did,
in fact, have several opportunities to at least ‘prune’ the picture. Lost in
these edits were a male-bonding moment between Danny and Jack where Danny tenderly
reveals how his father died from cancer, and also, a thoroughly silly moment
when, having entered the real world, Jack gets confused by a pack of street
kids for Schwarzenegger, pleading for his autograph. This, he unquestioningly
signs. Also excised, a more graphic depiction of how Danny found his way into
the Jack Slater movie within this movie, plus, an original ending to reunite Danny
with a tearful Mercedes Ruehl (who plays Danny’s harried/working single mother,
Irene).
McTiernan was so exhausted from the shoot, and so
utterly deflated by the criticism heaped upon his brain child, that after all
the dust settled, he quietly retreated to his home in Wyoming, taking a much-needed
respite from his career. McTiernan had begun the project as a sort of
Cinder-fella fantasy about a young boy living out his childhood fantasy to reside
in the same world as his beloved film-land idol. Alas, the picture gradually
morphed into a more darkly purposed nightmare from which not even its most
exhilarating set pieces could salvage the dwindling excitement and encroaching ennui.
Last Action Hero holds the dubious distinction of being Art Carney’s
final screen appearance. Carney, whose career dated all the way back to the
mid-1930’s and spanned virtually every venue in popular entertainment – radio, the
movies and television – was a beloved comedian. Regrettably, Last Action
Hero casts him in a thoroughly thankless walk-on, playing Jack
Slater’s favorite cousin – Frank, who is tortured by Benedict and blown to bits
in a rigged house bomb. Frank’s last words to Jack, “I'm outta here” thus
proved prophetic for his own career too. Carney retired from the fray and aside
from this role, left an enviable legacy behind, sincerely to outlast his
passing in 2003.
Retrospectively, Schwarzenegger would consider Last
Action Hero his first reel/real failure, effectively to mark the beginning
of the end of his movie career. Indeed, and apart from the star’s next picture,
the uber-suave and action-packed comedy/adventure, True Lies (1994), the
remaining films in Arnold’s canon were a mixed bag with Schwarzenegger eyeing
the next big – and then, wholly unexpected – transition in his life; becoming
the Governor of California in 2003. As a bit of an in-joke, Schwarzenegger
insisted on including the words, ‘A Franco Columbo Film’ in the opening
faux credit sequence – a tribute to his dear friend and fellow bodybuilder, who
also appeared alongside him in the breakout bodybuilding classic, Pumping
Iron (1977), Conan the Barbarian (1982), The Terminator
(1984), The Running Man (1987), and Beretta's Island (1993). Last
Action Hero is also noteworthy for the first big-screen appearance of
blonde sex bomb, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, cast as the fictional Jack Slater’s
ridiculously bubbly and bubble-headed daughter, Whitney. It ought to be noted, immediately following
her appearance here, this former Miss Teen USA continued to fill her repertoire
with steady work in the movies and on TV, although in largely forgettable roles
in as much undistinguished C-grade fodder. In one regard, Last Action Hero
may be considered a progressive movie. It actually began a cycle of ‘spoof’
orientated picture-making in Hollywood. While Schwarzenegger lampooning himself
and the action genre to have made him famous, was then perceived as badly done,
True Lies continued this trend more successfully on a subtler strain, as
did Arnold’s later ensemble actioners, The Expendables (2010), The
Expendables 2 (2012), and The Expendables 3 (2014). The trickle-down
effect of such in-joke movies also took dead aim at the horror genre in Scream
(1996) and its sequels, as well as Disney’s animated actioner, The
Incredibles (2004).
Immediately following the Columbia Pictures logo (incidentally,
Last Action Hero being the first movie to use the newly branded ‘lady
liberty’, although the older Columbia logo, set against a blue background, does
appear in the movie within this one), we are introduced to the fictional Jack
Slater, in a prolonged action sequence involving Jack’s attempted rescue of his
nine-year-old son (John Duda) from the psychotic serial killer, ‘The Ripper’
(Tom Noonan). Seated in the audience of a nearly abandoned old-time movie
palace on Broadway is twelve-year-old Danny Madigan, thoroughly enamored with
Jack. Danny’s seen all of the Jack Slater movies – some more than once. His
worship teeters on obsession. So, when the picture suddenly goes out of focus,
Danny hurries upstairs to inform the projectionist, Nick who has fallen asleep
on the job. Afterward, Danny hurries to class. But his mind is decidedly not on
his studies. While being shown a film clip of Olivier’s Hamlet, Danny
envisions Arnold Schwarzenegger in the title role instead, with a movie trailer
announcer’s voice over declaring, “Something’s rotten in the state of
Denmark and Hamlet is taking out the trash!” This is followed by a moment’s
glimpse of Arnold, in vintage garb, lighting a stogy and muttering the play’s
immortal line, “To be or not to be…” before adlibbing, “Not to be”,
then, blowing up Elsinore Castle in a hellish pyrotechnic display.
Returning home, Danny is gingerly confronted by Irene
who has been alerted by the school to the fact her son cut all his morning
classes to go to the movies yet again. Annoyed, but understanding, Irene makes
Danny promise to go to school the next day. She also insists he double-bolt the
door after she goes to work as they live in a rather unsafe building, populated
by the hoodlum class. Temptation, in the
form of Nick inviting Danny to pre-screen the latest Jack Slater movie a full
week before it actually debuts, causes Danny to venture outside. He is promptly
assaulted by a petty thief, later to appear at the police precinct to fill out
a report regarding the incident. Instead, Danny hurries off to the movies where
he is given a golden ‘magic ticket’ of admission by Nick, presumably a gift
from Harry Houdini. Alone in the grand movie palace, Danny watches the opening
scenes of the new Slater actioner, involving the kidnapping of Jack’s favorite
cousin, Frank by Tony Vivaldi and his brutal henchman, Benedict. This extended
sequence concludes when Vivaldi orders Benedict to plant Frank as a decoy for Slater
to find – bound and jerry-rigged with a bomb. Slater and two armed police officers
do discover Frank but are too late to save him. The bomb goes off, with only
Slater surviving the blast. Now, Slater is pursued by a small army of Vivaldi’s
goons driving a vintage pick-up. In the wild chase that ensues, Slater takes
dead aim with his gun at a bundle of dynamite lobbed at his car, shooting it through
the movie screen. It lands only a few feet away from Danny inside the darkened
theater; the bomb blast sending Danny into the screen where he awakens in the
back of Slater’s convertible to experience the rest of the chase first-hand.
Discovering Danny in his backseat, Slater is understandably
confused as is Danny. The two escape Vivaldi’s men and return to the LAPD
headquarters (actually, Sony’s front offices) where Slater’s supervisor, Lt.
Dekker (Frank McRae) proceeds to cut Jack ‘a new one’ for disregarding basic
police protocol yet again. Danny intrudes on their conversation, trying to
inform these characters of the artifice in which they all now preside. He gives
away plot points from the previous Jack Slater movies and further attests to
knowing Vivaldi had Frank killed, having already seen it in the prologue of this
current movie. Naturally, Slater and Dekker do not believe him. But Dekker is
intrigued, enough to assign Danny as Jack’s new partner. Now, we are introduced
to John Practice (F. Murray Abraham) whom Danny suggests cannot be trusted as
he ‘killed Mozart’ – a reference to Abraham’s Oscar-winning turn as Salieri in Amadeus
(1984). Again, Slater disregards Danny’s forewarning. Rather boldly, Danny
takes Jack to Vivaldi’s posh mansion where the pair are almost immediately
confronted by Benedict. Returning to Slater’s plush bungalow, Danny is
introduced to Jack’s sexy but decidedly simple daughter, Whitney. Together,
this triumvirate thwart an attack by Benedict who, having figured out the magical
properties of Danny’s movie stub, steals it to transport himself back into
reality.
Slater construes Vivaldi's plan to wipe out virtually
all of L.A.’s crime syndicate by releasing a lethal nerve gas during a funeral
for one of their own. With Danny in tow, Slater arrives at the high-rise but is
ambushed by Practice who now reveals Danny was right all along. He is on
Vivaldi’s payroll. Whiskers, the animated cat detective (voiced by Danny
DeVito) intercepts Practice, allowing Slater and Danny to take the Mafia
chieftain’s corpse, loaded with chemical warfare explosives, and dump it into
the La Brea Tar Pits where it can do no harm. As Vivaldi's plan has miserably
failed, Benedict instead murders his boss, using the magic ticket stub to
escape into the real world. He is pursued on foot into the bleak and decaying
cityscape by Slater and Danny. Coming to terms with his own mortality in the
real world, Slater becomes despondent. However, his outlook improves after
meeting Irene. Now, Benedict devises a devilish plan to wipe Slater out once
and for all. He need not actually kill Slater…only the actor portraying him. To
aid in his sinister scheme, Benedict resurrects the Ripper to murder Arnold Schwarzenegger
at the gala premiere of Jack Slater IV. Much to the Ripper’s chagrin, Slater
saves Schwarzenegger, but is bitter to see he truly has no life beyond the screen
except what his alter ego provides. Now, Slater pursues the Ripper to the
rooftops where he is holding Danny as his hostage.
The Ripper tries to do away with Danny just as he did
with Jack’s son in Slater III. Instead, Slater cleaves a live utility wire with
his knife, applying it to a puddle of rain where the Ripper stands, and rather
effectively, electrocuting him. Benedict suddenly appears, draws his gun and
critically shooting Slater in the chest. But Danny now manages to wrestle
Benedict’s gun away from him. In the resulting struggle, Slater gains control
of the weapon and fatally shoots Benedict in his glass eye, which is explosive.
Regrettably, the ticket stub to allow Slater his return to the fictional world
of the movies is lost. It lands at the foot of a marquee advertising a revival
of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957). Inside the theater,
audiences are terrorized when the fictional figure of Death (Ian McKellen) suddenly
leaves the screen to stalk Jack and Danny as they make their way back to Nick’s
dilapidated movie palace. Danny protects his ailing hero, who is hemorrhaging a
lot of blood, from the reaper’s hand. Death, however, has only been aroused in
its curiosity at not being able to find any references to Jack Slater. After
praising Danny’s heroism, Death suggests he search for the other half of the
magic ticket Nick originally collected during his private midnight screening of
Slater IV. As Jack gasps for air and weakens, Danny breaks open the ticket box,
finds the other half and produces it for Jack, whom he returns through the
portal back into Slater IV. Shouting for help, Danny gets the entire precinct
to come to Jack’s aid, only to discover the wound – in movie-land – is
superficial and has completely healed up. Appalled by all this hullabaloo,
Dekker tries to teach Jack a lesson. Instead, Jack explains the criteria of an
action movie to his boss, telling him to shut up and play the part he has been
given: the curmudgeonly – though loveable – conscience of the hero. Jack then
turns toward the screen, offering Danny a smile. The two worlds reconciled; Danny
departs the theater with Nick who explains how the magic was really only ever
his to behold.
Last Action Hero was shot mostly on location,
dividing its time between California and New York. Thanks to Dean Sempler’s cinematography, the picture
looks utterly gorgeous with every last penny in Eugenio Zanetti’s production
design showing up on the screen. Alas,
reputation is a curious thing, sealed during Last Action Hero’s sneak
peak, and to derail even the slightest hope of Sony overriding all the pre-release
negativity; the studio, further chagrined when nearly 47% of its opening weekend
audience elected to go see Sleepless in Seattle instead. So, one of the
costliest, flashiest and most effects-laden actioners in decades hit the charts
as the #2 movie in the land. Not bad. Yet, for this conspicuous debut, Last
Action Hero had nowhere to go but down – and did: fast! Showing a truly
epic loss of $26 million on the ledgers, Last Action Hero put a sudden
and permanent crimp in Schwarzenegger’s seemingly indestructible bankability. To
say Sony had bet everything on Last Action Hero is an understatement. It
was even the first movie to be released in their newly patented ‘Dynamic Digital
Sound’ – a 7.1 Dolby precursor, alas, plagued with its own technical
problems. Clearly, McTiernan and company were looking to reignite the giddy and
heart-pounding excitement audiences felt for all those heavy-duty Bruckheimer/Simpson
megaton hits of yore. Regrettably, the gruel being served up this time was more
gumbo than grits. Despite some good ideas seemingly tossed into the mix,
stirred with a creative stick until all potency had been either distilled or
thoroughly emasculated, far from being a complete bomb, Last Action Hero
remains a movie too curiously odd and fascinating to relegate to the discount
bin of one’s local Wal-Mart. So, instead, Last Action Hero quickly
became the brunt of bad jokes about everything the big-budgeted actioner had
become, bloated with star-driven conceit and top-heavy in its show of self-destructing
spectacle, judged negatively as a heavy-handed and thoroughly unprepossessing
clunker with more pyrotechnics than pluses to recommend it.
Curiously, the picture’s afterlife on home video has
been far more forgiving. Hence, Sony’s decision to remaster it in 4K. The results
are, predictably solid, as Sony continues to lead the charge and remain at the
forefront of virtually every home video revolution since the advent of Laserdisc.
That said, Last Action Hero has always been one of those catalog titles
never afforded much love…until now. Derived from a native 4K scan of original
camera negatives, Last Action Hero in UHD 4K Blu-ray sparkles with an
extraordinary luster. HDR color grading has given this one a genuine
eye-popping festival of hues; Sempler’s glorious palette of contrasting colors –
rich and full saturated for the California movie-within-a-movie stuff, and chiaroscuro-lit
darkly saturated blues and blacks, backlit by the gaudy neon of Manhattan’s
seedy red-light district, everything here looks the part in spades. Flesh tones
are particularly satisfying. Fine detail is thoroughly achieved, down to the
finite details in background information. Viewed in projection, one can
actually read the video show boxes during the Blockbuster sequence, or the
spines of books adorning the shelves in Slater’s fashionable bungalow. Close-ups
reveal minute skin imperfections in the actor’s faces and hair so precise you
can practically count the follicles. This is one absolutely gorgeous, reference
quality remaster and is sure to please. Contrast is exceptional and grain has a
totally organic film-like feel. Most impressive of all is the new Dolby Atmos
7.1 – a quantum upgrade from the original Blu-ray release. Aside: interesting
to note Sony, after releasing its own standard Blu back in 2009, farmed out Last
Action Hero for another hi-def reissue from Mill Creek where everything
that could go wrong in video mastering absolutely did, yielding a muddy, grainy,
softly focused mess with whacky colors and black crush. On that outing, the
third-party distributor, Mill Creek, offered a pathetic Dolby Digital 2.0
stereo track that in no way approximated the theatrical soundtrack. Well, the
new 7.1 Atmos is a total revelation. Prepare to be dazzled by this totally
immersive sonic experience. Sony has included all of the extra features on the
4K disc with the best of the lot, a new commentary from McTiernan who, while a
veritable storehouse of knowledge and trivia, is also quick to point out with humility
that Last Action Hero is far from his best movie. Also, included, the original
behind-the-scenes junket Sony used to market the picture, running just under 7-minutes,
9-minutes of deleted scenes, the AC/DC ‘Big Gun’ music video, and, an
original theatrical trailer. Bottom
line: Last Action Hero, long-since considered Schwarzenegger’s colossus
of a dud, is, at least in hindsight, far from being his worst movie. It’s a hot
mess, for sure, with too many good things given short-shrift to make any of it
stick as it should. But the intent for a roller coaster ride is there, and,
occasionally, is enough to distract us momentarily from the fact not much about
the picture makes a whole lot of sense. I can’t say I’m a fan. Then again, I’m
not altogether certain it deserves the moniker of a ‘turkey’. The UHD 4K
Blu-ray is perfection itself. Judge and buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
2.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS
3
Comments