Last Action Hero

Day 165 - 6/14/09 - Movie #164

BEFORE: This should be like the ultimate Schwarzenegger film - all the killer action scenes, but done in sort of a self-parodizing way, so partially comedic. I've seen bits of this before, but never watched it all the way through.

THE PLOT: A young movie fan gets thrown into the movie world of his favorite action film character.

AFTER: This film got something of a bad rap, because it came at the end of a decade full of action films, from "Die Harder" to "Lethal Weapon 3" and so on - obviously Ah-nold was a big part of that, so by 1993 audiences had sort of burned out on this sort of thing. But because part of the film takes place in the "action-movie" world, and part in the "real" world, it manages to be both the ultimate action film, and a parody of the genre at the same time - very shrewd.

There are a ton of cameos and a LOT of inside references here, including a snippet of "Hamlet" starring Laurence Olivier - Hamlet's "play-within-a-play" structure is the obvious precursor to this "action movie-within-an-action movie" storyline. And the teacher who is showing "Hamlet" to the class is played by Joan Plowright, who was Olivier's second wife - nice. (I liked the glimpse of how Arnold would play Hamlet, complete with large-caliber handgun... "To be or naht to be...I say...naht to be!")

Young Danny gets thrown into the on-screen world of his favorite action hero, Jack Slater, and uses his knowledge of action-movie conventions to help Slater out. He recognizes that Slater's old partner, played by F. Murray Abraham, can't be trusted. Why? Because he "killed Mozart" in that other movie. Slater wonders, "Who is this Moe Zart person?"

There's an interesting reference to Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" at the end, too, as the magic movie ticket pulls the personification of Death (played by Ian McKellen) off the screen and into the real world. How many action-movie fans would get a Bergman reference, I wonder?

The villain's plan to grab characters from classic cinema - Dracula, King King, Hitler - into the real world is an interesting one. There's at least another movie's worth of ideas there. The showdown happens at the premiere of the new Jack Slater film, where the real Schwarzenegger is in attendance - so once again we see TWO Arnolds on the screen at the same time. Good to also see my buddy Tom Noonan in a double-role as well, as the Ripper and himself.

It's too bad that it's so hard to find kids who can act well - the star of this film is only slightly better than Jake Lloyd was in "Star Wars: Episode I". Never work with kids or animals, they say...

RATING: 7 out of 10 sticks of dynamite (8 minus 1 for bad child acting)