What is it about Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo that demands that it got numerous remakes in other forms? Well, that’s an easy question to answer: it’s a fucking masterpiece – however, it’s still impressive that it (along with Seven Samurai) got so singled out to be adapted and molded into various different period pieces for our enjoyment. The most famous by a country mile is Sergio Leone’s A Fistful Of Dollars, which saw a superstardom primed Clint Eastwood redefine the Western almost with a single pistol draw, but in the mid-90s, Walter Hill decided to take another crack at it while choosing to set this twisty tale of deception and death in the prohibition era of the 1920s/30s.
And yet, no one really mentions Last Man Standing anymore (assuming that they ever did), and yet while it remains a lesser-know entry into Bruce Willis’ 90s cannon, this story of snappy suits and gun wielding brutes is far better than you probably remember.
It’s prohibition-era Texas, and the mysterious “John Smith” drives into the desolate town of Jericho on his way to cross into Mexico as he flees justice for some unspoken crime he’s committed. You know that saying about desolate settlements that labels them as a one-horse town? Well the one horse in Jericho is literally lying dead and bloated in the middle of the street covered with flies – which is a very in the nose metaphor for just how much of a dusty, godforsaken shithole this place really is. After being in town for literally a minute and a half, a gang of heavies fuck up his automobile for staring at the woman of local bootlegger, Doyle, but after getting the lay of the land, Smith decides to try and make some money from Jericho’s unique situation.
You see, the entire town is trapped between the shaky truce that exists between Doyle and a rival, Italian, bootlegging gang led by Fredo Strozzi and the only other members of the population are the cowardly Sheriff Galt, his mute deputy, the girls at the local whorehouse and local hotel owner Joe Monday, and Smith realises that if he destabilizes one of the gangs, he can profit from playing them off one another. He starts by seeking out Doyle’s best shooter and, using his lightning fast reflexes, out draws the guy and blows him clean out of the doors of Doyle’s headquarters in a hail of bullets.
From here, Smith gets to work, getting a hefty payday while he switches sides and shares info with neither the Irish or Italian gangs being any the wiser. However, matters get a little too complicated when Smith breaks his own code and gets a little too emotionally invested with both Felina, the woman that Doyle obsessively regards as his property, and Lucy, Strozzi’s mistress. Other than that, his ability to play both sides gets severely limited by the arrival of Doyle’s scar faced second in command, Hickey. Can Smith manage to shoot his way out of the noose that’s slowly tightening around his neck?
When I first saw Last Man Standing, waaaay back during it’s time of release, I remember being a mite disappointed with Hill’s sun bleached crime epic. For a start, the plot contains few genuine surprises thanks to its twin sources of material being so familiar to anyone who has more than a passing love of cinema and at the same time, the promise of some blazing gunplay fell a little short when you realise that the influence of John Woo’s Hong Kong bloodbaths was still keenly felt. Compared to both of these insurmountable titans of influence, Walter Hill probably didn’t stand much of a chance, but nearly thirty years later and Last Man Standing seems to be long overdue for some sort of reassessment.
Walter Hill had been responsible for some of the more muscular action/thrillers of the 70s and 80s, so it makes a certain amount of logic that in the slightly more sensitive 90s he would retreat into the hard-bitten world of the 20s to maintain the notion of a cold, calculating, tough guy drifting into town and fucking everything up simply because he wants a random payday. As a result, the bleached, gritty look of the film is absolutely gorgeous in its bleak ugliness as its ramshackle streets are populated by some of the snappiest threads seen in a crime film in decades. Willis in particular looks great clothed in 20s refinery as he whips out a couple of M1911 pistols out of his jacket and squints at his target from under a snap brim.
Similarly, Bruce seems to be reveling in giving us his best Man With No Man shtick and the use of sharp suits, frenzied gunplay, a croaking voice over and Ry Cooder’s blatting brass instruments on the score truly feels like this was the actor’s unofficial audition for Lieutenant Hartigan from Sin City. But while his shift from ruthless gunman to protector of victimized women isn’t as smooth a transition as the other versions, it certainly helps that Hill has surrounded his lead with an absolutely belter of a cast. Hill regular David Patrick Kelly gives good crime boss and Bruce Dern is great as a Sheriff who recoils at responsibility the way some people flinch at the sound of nails down a black board – and there’s even a small, early role for Leslie Mann as a hooker and The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli. However, the bells and whistles are mostly supplied by Christopher Walken’s raspy voiced Hickey, who makes a sizable impact before he even arrives onscreen thanks to a legendary backstory that includes slicing the throat of his own father as a child and burning down an orphanage at the ripe young age of fifteen. Of course, Walken is more than talented enough to live up to this ghoulish hype as he portrays a man prone to throwing tantrums with the business end of a tommy gun in a way that only he can – delivering it with Hollywood’s most curious cadence.
However, possibly the biggest 180° turn from me was in regards to the film’s action as I finally understood what Hill was trying to do – e.g still keep the feeling of a Western quick draw while having its characters blast off more hot lead than than the entirety of Cannon Films’ action catalogue. In fact, the sight of a fullisade of bullets hurling people thirty feet through the air like they’ve just been fist-bumped by a speeding truck gives the violence us the same, exagerated, mythic feel as Steve Buscemi’s opening story in the pre-credits sequence of Desperado.
However, while a lot of Last Man Standing’s elements have come together rather nicely over the last couple of decades, Hill’s macho, stoic style isn’t enough to help with some rather disjointed storytelling that relies a little too heavily on Willis’ gravely voice over to paper over some obvious cracks. However, the movie still manages to engross when it gets down to doing what it does best – awesomely glamorising shitty people killing other shitty people in a shitty town for shitty reasons.
🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 