Last Action Hero

Plot synopsis:
The movie opens at night as a police car screeches to a halt in the middle of a deserted street. It is not the first unit to arrive - the entire street is clogged with police units, and officers are training their weapons at an elementary school where an axe-wielding serial killer named Ripper is holding several children hostage. The senior officer, Capt. Dekker (Frank McRae) laments that this is the worst way to spend Christmas. He summons an officer and orders the sidewalks secured. Just as soon as he's given this order, gunfire breaks out as the unseen Ripper opens up on the police cars with an assault rifle. A few officers are downed and multiple cops are shot. Once the gunfire stops, Ripper tosses the rifle over the edge of the roof, followed seconds later by the rifle's original user. Dekker curses Ripper for killing one of his men.A few moments later, a new face arrives, in the form of Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger). He walks through the police barricade, refusing to listen to Dekker's threats to confiscate his badge. The mayor and lieutenant governor are present and attempt to stop Slater, but he punches the lieutenant governor in the nose. He then delivers a groin attack to the officer guarding the entrance, then draws his pistol and makes his way to the roof.On the roof, Slater confronts Ripper (Tom Noonan), who is holding Slater's son Andy hostage with a chopping axe. Slater steps closer as Ripper tells him about how he has felt a sense of revenge ever since Slater sent him to prison ten years ago. Ripper tells Slater to put his pistol down. Slater complies, but Ripper isn't satisfied to find that his foe only has one gun with him. Slater reluctantly then removes his pocket knife and the other pistols he is carrying on his person. Asked by Ripper if that's all he's carrying, Slater says that yes, he is now unarmed, unless what he is currently carrying counts as a weapon: a "grenade" with a blade that pops out of it, that he tosses to Andy.Ripper laughs, astonished to find that Slater is willing to sacrifice his own son's life to get to him. He orders Andy to pick up the grenade and hand it to him. He tells Slater that while the grenade won't hurt Andy, his axe will. Slater and Andy exchange a look. A knife blade pops out of the grenade and Andy stabs Ripper in the leg. Slater dives to the ground and grabs one of his pistols as Ripper hurls the axe at him. He raises his gun and fires twice, both rounds hitting Ripper. As Ripper falls to his death, he takes Andy with him.Suddenly, the image goes out of focus. It turns out we're actually in a New York City movie theater after hours, where a young action-movie obsessed boy named Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) is watching the end of Jack Slater III, the third movie in the popular franchise of Jack Slater movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in the titular role. Annoyed that the movie is out of focus, Danny makes his way up to the projector room to wake up the projectionist, an elderly man named Nick (Robert Prosky). Nick fixes the focus, but the credits are already rolling. He apologizes for not seeing that beforehand, but Danny forgives him, as he 's seen this movie six times already. Nick tells Danny that the next movie, Jack Slater IV is scheduled to come out this Friday. It turns out Danny has seen the trailers for that movie and knows that it will involve Slater avenging his second cousin's death. Nick claims he's checking the print he's received for the new movie tonight, and offers to arrange to give Danny admittance to a private preview showing.Danny then goes to school. As he leaves the theater, he sees a cardboard cutout of Slater with a shotgun in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other, alongside new cast member Meredith Caprice (Bridgette Wilson), who gets an "And Introducing" credit, advertising Jack Slater IV. In class, his teacher (Joan Plowright) is teaching the class about Shakespeare's Hamlet, who is one of history's first action heroes. She proceeds to show the class a scene from the 1990 Laurence Olivier film adaptation of the play. The scene in question is the one where Hamlet contemplates killing his uncle Claudius but decides against it because Claudius is praying, and monologues about it.Danny is annoyed that Hamlet stops short of killing Claudius when he could have done it right there and ended the story. He promptly imagines his own version of the scene. In his version, Schwarzenegger plays a cigar-smoking Hamlet, who grabs Claudius and accuses him of murdering his father, before hurling him out a stained-glass window. An announcer blares "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and Hamlet is taking out the trash!" SchwarzenHamlet then proceeds to surprise and attack numerous guards, defeating them with thrown skulls and swords. He continues to go on his murderous rampage until a figure appears from behind a curtain saying "Stay thy hand, fair prince." SchwarzenHamlet quips, "Who says I'm fair?" then proceeds to produce a submachine gun and slaughters an entire castle of guards as the announcer assures that no one will tell this sweet prince goodnight! SchwarzenHamlet quips, "To be, or not to be. Not to be." then blows up the castle.As the castle is destroyed, the scene transitions to Danny watching the Looney Tunes at home while his mother Irene (Mercedes Ruehl) calls the school attendance office to tell them that Danny is "sick". She is somewhat annoyed to find that Danny has been to the movie theater again to see Nick. She then hurriedly realizes she is late for work and rushes out the door.Shortly after Danny's mother leaves, an intruder breaks in and takes Danny hostage, handcuffing him by one wrist. He looks around for something to steal, but is outraged when he finds nothing worth taking, and departs, dropping the handcuff key in the toilet. Danny goes to the police station to deliver a report. Despite the officer on duty telling him to go home as his mother has instructed him to, Danny instead goes to the movie theater to meet Nick. After letting Danny in through a service door, Nick talks about how he always wanted to be a magician. Before letting Danny see the movie, Nick hands him a special ticket, which he says he received from Harry Houdini. It supposedly is a passport to another world. It has a mind of its own and does what it wants to do. Nick tears the ticket in half and gives part of it to Danny.Nick starts the movie. The opening credits burn through the Columbia Pictures logo, busting through several walls until it finds the title Jack Slater IV. The scene then settles on a mansion overlooking a cliff near Malibu. Mob boss Tony Vivaldi (Anthony Quinn) is on the patio outside, interrogating Slater's favorite second cousin Frank (Art Carney), who is tied up and has been beaten severely. Vivaldi wants to know what Frank has told Slater about his operation. He tells Frank to tell Slater that his organization is joining forces with the Torelli family, another organized crime syndicate, to establish total control of illegal drug trade in Southern California. Frank claims he mostly talks to Slater about guns and muzzle velocities.Not satisfied, Vivaldi snaps his fingers and a bullet hits the orange target to Frank's right. The source of the bullet is Vivaldi's British hitman Benedict (Charles Dance), sitting in a chair overlooking the ocean and reading a newspaper. Benedict is unusual in that his left eye is a false acrylic one that he can pop out and replace with a different one depending on what each situation requires. Vivaldi warns Frank that Benedict is a professional killer, who sometimes even likes to bake while shooting people. But it also turns out that Benedict is annoyed that Vivaldi keeps screwing up metaphors all the time, like saying "easy as cake" when the saying is "easy as pie". Vivaldi asks Frank if he wants Benedict to operate on him. Vivaldi tells Benedict to take Frank and dump him back at his own house. He laughs in amazement at the fact that Frank is buying his nonsense about joining forces with another syndicate, but after the funeral that is going to happen in a few days time, everyone will know Vivaldi is Number One.Sometime later, four police officers are outside a two story house near downtown Los Angeles. They are about to execute a drug bust. Before they can kick the door down, Slater pulls up in his convertible with groceries and asks what they are doing, as they're on the porch of his cousin's house. Slater sets his groceries down, then knocks incessantly on the door. Finding it unlocked, he opens the door and finds Frank sitting in a chair in the foyer, on the verge of death. Frank tells Slater that Vivaldi is joining forces with the Torelli mob, and then dies.As Slater apologizes to Frank, he sees a small card with his name on it attached to Frank's shirt. He shuffles through the cards, which count down "5, 4, 3, 2, 1." When Slater reaches "2," he realizes it's a trap and hurriedly bolts out of the house just as a hidden bomb detonates. The house is incinerated in a giant fireball that throws Slater and the two cops on the porch into the air. A police car is also flipped over. The two cops are killed, while Slater is miraculously uninjured.Slater gets up, just as a red 1950s pickup truck comes speeding around the corner at full speed, driven by a group of henchmen toting automatic weapons. Slater gets in his car and floors the gas pedal as the henchmen open fire on him. He speeds around a corner, around the flipped over police car. As they speed down the street, one of the henchmen stops shooting, and grabs a stick of Acme dynamite from the bed of the truck. He hurls it at Slater's car, but it bounces off the trunk, lands in the street, and explodes harmlessly. Going around a left turn, the henchman lobs another bundle at Slater, but Slater produces his Desert Eagle pistol and shoots it multiple times in midair.It is at this point that Danny's magic ticket starts glowing. He doesn't realize it until the bundle of dynamite Slater shot suddenly bursts out of the screen and into the theater. He gets up and starts to run as the bundle begins rolling down the aisle with a lit fuse. He snuffs the fuse with his popcorn bucket, then runs up the aisle, only to be engulfed in a flash of blinding white light.When Danny's vision is restored, he's in the backseat of an unfamiliar car looking up at palm trees under a sunny sky. As Danny is rising, trying to get a view of his surroundings, Slater suddenly fires his pistol at the pursuing truck. It turns out Danny has been transported into the car chase scene he was watching literally seconds earlier. Slater turns, startled to find a passenger in his backseat. Danny has no idea how he ended up there. Slater tells him to keep his head down as he speeds through a left turn, taking more fire from the gunmen in the truck. One of the henchmen lobs another stick of dynamite, but it misses and instead blows up a car parked on the curb. Driving down the next street, Slater swerves from side to side in an effort to throw the henchmen's aim off. Without his car losing control, Slater takes both hands off the wheel, turns backwards, and fires his pistol several times at the truck. One henchman is thrown off the pickup, and through the windshield of a parked ice cream truck, which promptly explodes, and causes a different henchman to get an ice cream cone through his neck. Slater eventually loses the pickup truck when it is cut off by a backing up tanker truck blocking its way.As Slater drives with Danny as his extra passenger across the LA River Basin, a minivan screeches to a halt in the middle of the road ahead of him. Henchmen armed with a chain gun open the passenger door and begin firing on him. Slater turns left and plows through the bridge railing. His car falls into the river basin and keeps on going. The minivan drives down the side of the embankment and gives pursuit. When the remaining men from the pickup truck fire on Slater at the next bridge, Slater makes a hard right turn up the slope of the banking. The car flies into the air and lands on the roof of a Coca-Cola semi truck, then drives off of it.After losing the remaining bad guys, Danny tries to convince Slater that they are in a film, but Jack sees nothing unusual about his world, which includes a cartoon cat detective named Whiskers (voice of Danny DeVito), a black-and-white image of Humphrey Bogart, female officers dressed in outlandish battle armor, even cameos by the T-1000 (Robert Patrick from his role in Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct).As Jack and Danny drive along the coast looking for the "bad guys", Danny recognizes, from the opening sequence, the mansion belonging to crime boss Tony Vivaldi (Anthony Quinn). Despite Jack's skepticism, they go in and meet Vivaldi's British henchman Mr. Benedict (Charles Dance), known for his ever-changing glass eyes. After overhearing Danny discussing his role in the Slater film, Benedict follows Jack and Danny as they visit Slater's daughter, Whitney (Bridgette Wilson; though the Slater movie credits her as "Meredith Caprice"), raids the house with some thugs, takes the magic ticket from Danny, and escapes after a gun battle with Jack and Whitney. While inspecting the ticket at the mansion, he discovers a portal to the real world.Eventually, Jack and Danny figure out that Vivaldi plans to kill his rivals at a rooftop funeral by planting nerve gas in a dead body. After a brief scene in which Whiskers saves the two from betrayal by Slater's friend John Practice (F. Murray Abraham), Jack tells Danny to commandeer a construction crane, takes the body and escapes from the funeral, and disposes of the body into a tar pit with Danny's help at the crane. Whitney arrives in her truck immediately afterward, and Jack and Danny use the truck to crash into the villains' mansion shortly after Benedict irritably betrays and shoots the inept Vivaldi. In the ensuing struggle, Benedict and his butler fall through a portal into the real world, and Jack and Danny follow them. In the real New York City, Jack is disappointed to learn that he is a fictional character and resentful at having been given such a hard life by his films' creators, particularly Schwarzenegger himself. While talking with Irene, he learns to be sensitive and loses interest in violent action.Meanwhile, Benedict learns that in this world he can get away with murder and hatches a plan to wipe out Jack by killing Schwarzenegger. Jack correctly guesses Benedict's plan after Benedict uses the ticket to escape a car chase, leaving behind a newspaper with hand-drawn marks on some film advertisements.At the premiere of Jack Slater IV, after a brief encounter with Schwarzenegger (himself), Slater confronts the Ripper (Noonan), the ax-wielding villain who killed Jack's young son in the climax of Jack Slater III and whom Benedict has brought to the real world. In a rooftop scene similar to the finale of Slater III, the Ripper throws Danny from the roof before being electrocuted by Jack. Slater finds Danny clinging to the side of the building and pulls him to safety, but Benedict confronts Jack and shoots him in the chest while ranting about his plans to form an army of film villains (such as Dracula, Freddy Krueger, Adolf Hitler, Hannibal Lecter and King Kong) and take over the world. Danny knocks Benedict to the floor, enabling Jack to get Benedict's gun and shoot Benedict directly in his explosive glass eye, blowing his head to smithereens; but the ticket flutters off the roof and lands in front of a movie theater showing The Seventh Seal. Death (Ian McKellen) emerges from the resulting portal and follows Jack and Danny to the Pandora, where Danny hopes to save Slater by transporting him back into the film. Death notices that Slater is not on his list (but Danny is due decades later) and advises Danny to find the other half of the magic ticket, which he does. Jack and Danny are transported into Slater IV, where the wounds are minor. On Jack's insistence, Danny returns to the real world. The film ends as Jack explains his new insights to Dekker, then drives into the sunset.

Tags: dark, comedy, fantasy, murder, stupid, cult, violence, flashback, insanity, psychedelic, action, satire, romantic, entertaining

Review:
It's sort of every film buff's fantasy, one that we get to enjoy through young Danny Madigan(Austin O'Brien) as he meets up with clichéd action hero Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger, of course).
A lot of people looked at this as a cheap Arnold action movie, and while it's not a great film it's certainly a good one with a very good concept.
After a string of predictable cookie cutter script action flicks that made money from Arnie's muscles and persona, one studio decided to take a chance and try a Hollywood self-mocking film starring the big guy.
It had a story line that actually made one think and pay attention in order to appreciate the paradoxes arising from its premise.( A fun side effect is that its movie within a movie allowed for some more over-the-top stunts and tough guy scenes than even the simplest knuckle dragging mouth breathing 'action' film fans would normally sit for) Scenes with recognized characters drawn from recent popular films were played tongue in cheek and while the story proceeded on a couple of levels there were enough innuendos and amusing elements in the background to keep the viewer's appreciative attention.
It is possible that the market segment that would appreciate a film like this had already dismissed Arnie as the Commando/Raw Deal lout and dismissed the film unseen, while the usual shoot'em punch'em fans found their brains hurting too much from trying to follow a real story.One thing is sure, the studios are watching and you can bet they won't make that mistake again.
Arnold had been riding the wave of Total Recall and Terminator 2 before the release of Last Action Hero, no one expected such a radical deviation from the norm.Danny Madigan is a lonely kid living in a tiny New York apartment with his single MILF.
Danny likes to escape into the world of action movies, his biggest hero, obviously, being Arnie himself.
He leads a pretty poor life and the only good thing that happens in it is that he gets to go to the movies to watch his favourite movie(s), Jack Slater with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Madigan marvels at his good fortune and observes the many action movie clichés: a police officer getting blown up two days from retirement, Jack Slater evading every blast and machine-gun burst that comes his way, the bad guys never winning, the attractive daughter and not one unattractive woman to be seen.
The action is fast and furious, and shows off even more of Arnie's sense of comedy.There is also a dark contrast between the film world and the real world, for example, the fact that Benedict can kill people in the real world, without anyone caring.Arnie also performs the action scenes with humour, in a way, taking the mickey of his past characters.Keep an open mind, and it's hugely enjoyable..
Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) is crazy about the screen character Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and when he uses a magic ticket he is pulled into his latest film, where guns don't need to be reloaded, cars can jump the grand canyon, and the hero can't be hurt, etc.
When Jack Slater comes over to the real world in pursuit of the bad guy (Charles Dance) the fun really begins, and for once Jack Slater seems out of his depth.The whole movie is a funny parody of itself, and it's crammed with ludicrous stunts and action throughout.
LAST ACTION HERO (1993) is a clever satire of blockbuster action films and is loaded with meta references that are sure to delight movie buffs.At the heart of the story is Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien), a young movie lover, raised by a single mom (Mercedes Ruehl) in New York City, who skips school to watch his favorite action flicks for the umpteenth time at a dilapidated movie palace run by a dotty old man named Nick (Robert Prosky).
Danny escapes his troubles in the adrenaline-pumping fantasies of the cinema, especially the JACK SLATER film series.The JACK SLATER movies spoof the action franchises popular at the time, like DIE HARD or LETHAL WEAPON.
Going where other cops wouldn't dare.In the film, the star of the JACK SLATER series is real-world action superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is LAST ACTION HERO's biggest meta concept as Schwarzenegger stars as a parody of himself (playing both Arnold and Arnold-as-Jack).With the help of an enchanted ticket given to Nick by the famed escape artist Harry Houdini, Danny is able to enter the world of the newest JACK SLATER movie and help Jack beat the bad guys.
Austin O'Brien doesn't do a bad job in the film, but he does start to get on my nerves a little.The fun really starts once the villain (Charles Dance) gets ahold of the magic ticket and enters the real world, a place where heroes can bleed and bad guys can actually win.
Jack and Danny track him to the star-studded premiere of JACK SLATER IV, where fictional hero Jack Slater comes face-to-face with Hollywood superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger (among other fun celebrity cameos).The satire of LAST ACTION HERO is on-point.
The top-notch pedigree surely helps sell the film's high concept.The script has a lot of potential for the right actor, and Arnold Schwarzenegger seems like he's having a lot of fun with the material.
Arnold has a good sense of humor about himself and seems to enjoy playing with his image.One of the best in-jokes for serious movie buffs comes early in the film when Danny's English teacher, played by Joan Plowright, introduces a clip from Laurence Olivier's HAMLET (1948), suggesting that the students might know the British acting legend from his late-career role of Zeus in CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981) or an older TV commercial for Polaroid.
And since "Arnold Schwarzenegger" can't exist in the fictional world of Jack Slater, his famous role in the TERMINATOR films is played instead by Sylvester Stallone.The JACK SLATER action is hilariously over-the-top and stylized, satirizing Hollywood action blockbusters and further contrasting the fantasy world of the silver screen with the real world Danny knows.
Ian Mckellen plays an interesting role as Death, and Charles Dance is excellent as what is possibly the best villain ever created.The story is spot on superb, mixing effortlessly classy action, with comic dialogue, inn-jokes and emotional binding factors.However as interesting as a boy taddling along with his action hero may be, it gets better once the villain escapes to the real world, in which Arnie and the boy follow.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, obviously is the "hero" and Austin O'Brien does a nice job playing an 11-year-old kid who is wise (a bit too wise) beyond his years.The villains are particularly interesting in here.
Director John McTiernan (director of Die Hard, Die Hard with a Vengeance and Predator) and Action star Arnold Schwarzenegger teams up again, delivering another good action movie, but this time, a little bit different.Last Action Hero is a satire of the action genre, showing us it's over the top moments and how they DON'T work in real life.This is one of the best performances of Arnold Schwarzenegger, his character does what we like about him: Saying one liners and working on the action fest !
Aside from the ambivalence of having born with a smash hit vocation and wanting to be something more, which makes the original premise to lose weight along the way, I would say the principal flaws have its roots in a bad structured screenplay: the plot of the movie within the movie (a vane, not original at all mob story) is given too much importance, and when we come to the real point (the confrontation between fiction and reality) we are almost at the end and then a lot of a good story beats happen quickly and disordered,  creating a little bit of a mess.Anyway, let me insist this is, at least, very curious and fun, and movie lovers will appreciate it above all its flaws..
Danny Madigan is a big fan of Jack Slater, a larger-than-life action hero played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Nick gives Danny the ticket, and somehow Danny is transported into the movie right behind Slater in the middle of a car chase scene...The laughs begin right away as Jack and Danny get wrapped up in the movies plot, and just keep going on and on.Last Action hero has a stellar cast literally, having a huge selection of big name stars, which simply adds to the delight...This movie has had lower reviews than I would have ever imagined.
I'm shocked that "The Last Action Hero" has received so poor reviews.The movie makes fun of all action movies made, and who could play the leading role better than Arnold Schwarzenegger?I really laugh each time I think about this movie.
Also the scene where Schwarzenegger is talking to the press about his new Jack Slater movie is funny, he comes with the usual comments that you hear before each premiere over and over again.The acting is like you can expect in an action/comedy-movie.
And since the script never indicates that JACK SLATER IV is intended as a parody, what we're left with is a mere nonsensical muddle.But what totally kills the film are things like the rabbi, the cartoon cat, the attack dogs that make a pyramid, the women's JETSONS-style clothing, and stuff like that which has nothing to do with any action movie ever made.If Mr. McTiernan had thought back to his experiences helming DIE HARD, PREDATOR, and THE HUNT FOR RED October, he might have noticed the complete lack of animated animals or heavily-armed nuns.
I love this movie to death I miss Arnold Schwarzenegger I miss him, I wish he would make such a good action films today I really do wish.
Last Action Hero is a 1993 action fantasy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Jack Slater, an action movie hero whose movie world is invaded by real-life teenager Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) through the use of a magical ticket.I give this movie 10/10 it doesn't deserve the hate, f*** the haters again I don't understand the hate for Batman Forever another 90's superhero flick.
Schwarzenegger also served as the film's executive producer and plays himself as the actor portraying Jack Slater, and Charles Dance plays an assassin who escapes from the Slater world into the real world.Last Action Hero was a box office disappointment during its initial theatrical release.
It also takes a while to warm up and I'd argue that the best part of the movie doesn't come until later, when the action hero finds himself in the real world.
And its ending was surprisingly heart-warming.Last Action Hero is not Arnold's best movie, but it's worth a watch..
Oh, by the way, the funniest thing in the movie: Real-life actor - and I do use the term very loosely - Schwarzenegger is incorrectly identified (by his escaped film character, as I recall) as "Braunschweiger" (imagine it with the accent).
When young Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) is given a magic movie ticket by friendly cinema owner Nick (Robert Prosky) at an advance screening of new action movie Jack Slater IV, he is magically transported into the movie and into the car of supercop Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger).
This film is brilliant, it takes the concept of one of those huge, explosive action films and constantly makes fun off it with observation between the movie world and reality which aren't recognised by the characters.
Having said that, action fans will love it because it is packed with fast, fun action.Surpprisingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger was very good at comedy in this film, as well as bringing his trademark action.
Well, I just watched it again and, if anything, I disliked it even more than the first time.The basic (high) concept—action movie fan Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) enters the fictional world of his movie hero Jack Slater (Arnie)—is actually pretty clever, allowing for lots of ingenious meta-moments, but the way in which it is all realised is diabolical: the screenplay is full of misjudged humour (what is it with that dumb animated cat?), child star Austin O'Brien puts in a thoroughly annoying performance, and the exaggerated action scenes within Slater's movie-verse are completely devoid of excitement.
There are also quite a few jokes that have dated extremely badly, especially the 'star' cameos from people that are no longer as famous as they used to be.The saddest thing about the whole film is that, given the great talent involved (Arnie, screenwriter Shane Black, director John McTiernan) it really should have been much, much better.
Last Action Hero is notorious action film that attempted to be a meta satire, being a box-office and critical flop despite it starring the biggest action hero of the time, Arnold Schwarzenegger and helmed by Die Hard and Predator director John McTiernan.Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) is a movie obsessed kid who skips school so he can watch the over-blown action series Jack Slater, starring Mr. Schwarzenegger.
But Danny ends up transported to the movie world where he tries to convince Jack Slater he is really a fictional character as the villainous Benedict (Charles Dance) sees an opportunity to be more then a Mafia hit-man.Last Action Hero had a troubled production and post-production, from getting Shane Black to radically rewrite the script, having an awful test screening, being edited to the last minute and coming out a week after the hugely popular Jurassic Park.
Murray Abraham, but O'Brien was a grating presence as the know-it-all child.Last Action Hero is far from being Arnie's worst film, it wouldn't even be in the bottom five, but it is a wasted opportunity at satirising the action genre, being too meta for its own good.
A young boy from a lower class existence spends his days endlessly watching the movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger's franchise action character Jack Slater.
'Last Action Hero' is one of Schwartznegger's best movies, he sends himself up perfectly in a satire of the action genre and many of his own films.The story is every kid's dream, of being transported into an action movie starring their favourite star.Great co-stars including Anthony Quinn,Charles Dance & F.Murray Abraham - Well written with many in-jokes and references to many other films throughout & Action packed from start to finish and from the Director of Die Hard & PredatorAt the time of it's release it was projected to be a huge hit - It didn't happen - on a huge budget (of it's time) of $85M it opened to only $15.4M and made a mere $50M stateside and $137M Worldwide - The fact it didn't make the huge business anticipated was probably down to opening the Week after Monster Hit (and at the time the highest grosser of all time) Jurassic Park, so it was a case of bad timing on behalf of the Studio - Sony ended up making a $27M declared loss on 'LAH' while not being in Pluto Nash Territory that's quite hefty!The only small complaint I have, is that at 130 Minutes, it's rather TOO long and could been 15-20 Minutes shorter.All in all a vastly underrated and under-appreciated Action Thriller that a lot of people don't 'get'****1/2 out of *****.
"Last Action Hero" the film that was Arnold's first real flop makes up for what money it lost at the box-office with a fresh, inventive plot and great performances.
Jack Slater may not believe that his life is a movie but the fact that Danny seems to know all about the plot and villain Benedict.When this film came out the critical mauling was so severe that it was hard to really get a balanced opinion of it.
I can see their point because the film does have major problems but overall I actually thought it was a clever try at something different from the usual blockbusters that doesn't quite work but is still quite fun.From the very start the film sends up the clichés associated with summer action movies and, although not a film in itself, this idea made it much more than the basic story suggests it will be.
As an action movie it is a bit too self-aware and not as smart as it would like to think it is but it delivers enough in terms of fun and sly humour to cover the weaknesses up.
Where can you find an action hero who dislocates his shoulder doing a simple stunt, likes classical music, comes up with the new tag line of "rubber baby buggy bumpers, works with a cartoon character and takes the last bullet in the movie with fatal consequences?
I like Arnold and his movies, I think he is a good and fun actor to watch...is he Oscar caliber?
Also, the running gag of Arnold not knowing that in Danny's world he is a huge action star remains funny throughout the film.
Anyone who loves classic, cheesy action movies from the 1980s and 1990s probably owns a copy of Last Action Hero, an absolutely darling spoof of the genre starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Transported into the cinematic world of his favourite action hero, a young film fanatic struggles to convince the character that his life is one big movie in this ambitious exercise in meta/self-referential filmmaking starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Jack Slater the hero of Austin O'Brien who knows Slater's world inside and out.
This films got classic Arnold lines, great over the top action, and some very funny scenes (one of my favs is when the kid takes Jack Slater to a video store and trys to prove he's a fictional character being played by real-life Schwarzenegger and to prove his point he trys to show him a poster of T2....only Stallone is on the poster dressed like the terminator!
"Last Action Hero" is brilliant satire - spoofing all the clichés and inner-workings of all action films, but most specifically Arnold Schwarzenegger's - beginning with Jack Slater (Arnold) going to his cousin's house: a bomb goes off, kills two nearby cops (one an aging black man days from retirement), but Arnie is left unscathed.