Such is the overwhelming might of Bruce Willis that even two gangs in a rough Texas border town can't contend with his searing brand of vengeance.
"Last Man Standing" finds Willis as an unnamed drifter who rolls into Jericho, Texas, during the Prohibition era. When someone asks him his name, he utters "John Smith" in an ironic, disinterested deadpan. The so-called Smith — you never can be sure that's his real name — gives away as little about himself as possible while collecting every snippet of information he can from everyone he meets. Secrets and rumors, he figures, are just as valuable as cash and as deadly as bullets.
A gang of rum-running thugs promptly bashes-in his car. Wrong move. By film's end, everyone who accosts John ends up dead.
John sizes up the town and learns that two mobs, the Italian Strozzis and the Irish Doyles, are running the outpost, operating under an uneasy truce. John goes back and forth between the gangs, working for one against the other, telling everyone what they want to hear while shifting to the highest bidder, manufacturing strife and filling his mud-lined pockets.
People are also reading…
John may be a coldblooded killer, but only when he needs to be. He's just as content to get his way by using a combination of his mind, verbal skills and a penetrating gaze to scrape his way to victory. His masterly scheme unfolds with the precision of a domino chain.
Director Walter Hill ("48 Hours," "Undisputed") is the master of the guns-blazing dude flick and finds his perfect tough-guy vessel in Willis.
Wry, cold and confident, Willis squints and blasts his way through the film, a blazing pistol in each hand.
"Last Man Standing" captures Willis in vintage form, just after his rise to action-film glory with the first three movies in the "Die Hard" series and before his tumble with "The Jackal" (1997). Soon after, Willis had completely sold out and was hitting one of his many low points, starring in Disney's "The Kid" (2000).
There is nothing Disney about John. He sits on a stoop and eats a raw potato, slicing off piece by piece with a knife.
Hill crafted the story on the shoulders of history, adapting the Akira Kurosawa epic "Yojimbo" (1961) and taking more than a few notes from Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964).
The dialogue smacks of locker-room bravado and sly turns of phrase. Death is referred to as "the only cure for stupid."
A barkeep tells John: "Last I heard, you were gonna have a talk with some fellas. Next thing I hear, one of them's dead."
"The conversation kind of went downhill," John replies.
Hill fills out his cast with a rogue's gallery of character actors who would go on to find work in top-flight HBO dramas. Look around and you'll see William Sanderson ("Deadwood"), Bruce Dern ("Big Love") and Michael Imperioli ("The Sopranos"). As a bonus, Christopher Walken pops up as Hickey, a bow-tied psychopath who shoots up saloons for no good reason.
None is the match for John, who takes no prisoners. After all, the film's not called "Last Men Standing."
Last Man Standing (1996). Rated R. Starring Bruce Willis. Directed by Walter Hill. 101 minutes. Available on DVD. For links to other reviews in the series, go to www.azstarnet.com/sn/ review.
