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Why was this movie so bad? I don't know. It just was. It had violence, and plenty of it. It had fairly hot girls, and even Leslie Mann from the Cable Guy naked. Hell, it had Bruce Willis as the wisecracking good guy and Christopher Walken as the crazy bad guy!
So why didn't it work? I don't know. Critics seemed to either love it or hate it. Entertainment Weekly gave it a D, while my local newspaper gave it Four Stars. I'd have to side with Entertainment Weekly.
First of all, when you remake a movie, you try to do a little more than just redo it scene for scene in a new setting. That's all this is. Fistfull of Dollars in the 30's. (or 20's, or whatever) Practically every scene is there, just with Tommy Guns instead of rifles. The hero in both films are morally dubious, but I bought Eastwood more as the rugged loner than Willis. And am I the only one who noticed that this is Willis' fourth turn playing a drunk loner? (After Striking Distance, The Last Boy Scout, and Die Hard 3) I'm getting a little sick of scenes where he wakes up drunk and drinks whiskey.
The action sequences were pretty bad. I don't know why either. They should have been exciting, since they're basically John Woo shootouts minus the slow-mo, but I was never really excited. I guess after the 50th villain gets shot about 20 times by Willis, who never bothers to reload his gun, I began to get a little tired.
Walter Hill, the director, staged similar shootouts in Wild Bill, his last film. In that one, the shootouts were exciting. I don't know why, since they were pretty much the same as the ones in Last Man Standing, but in Wild Bill I was thrilled. In Last Man, I was nauseous.
Hopefully Hill will go back to making good films, like Johnny Handsome (you must see it!) and 48 hours ( I even liked the second one). This movie is just horrible.
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