Introduction
While Bruce Willis has been an action star who has outlived several of the others (except for Dolph Lundgren and Jean Claude Van Dam) in making action movies since almost everyone else fell asleep (or made B-Grade movies) after making such fantastic action movies in the 80s, the movie "Last Man Standing" despite being a flop was one movie that folks who love the rugged old westerns will thoroughly love.
Plot
The plot of Last Man Standing revolves around the story of Akiro Kurusawa's
Yojimbo butin a Western context during the Prohibition Era (where the mafia was prevalent in 1920 to 1933) in the United States where John Smith (BruceWillis) makes his way into the town of Jericho that is deserted, thanks to the antics of two rival gangs - the Italians under Strozzi andthe Irish under Doyle.
John Smith gets a reputation for killing some of Doyle's gang members who take his car apart, and this is where the fun begins in the movie 'Last Man Standing'. And this is where the movie resembles the plot of Akiro Kurusawa's masterpiece as John Smith begins to play 'mind games' between the two gangs for money by using a corrupt sheriff and an out-of-work bartender in doing so.
And while it is obvious that John Smith is doing this for the money, certain events unfold that tug at his conscience, which could possibly be summarized in the lines of the corrupt sheriff who thought that he [John Smith] would sooner or later, "go down under a skirt".
If one must describe the movie Last Man Standing, it shows how gangs lived lives of ruthless killing and lawlessness in those days, and the movie doesn't stray much from the reality of Prohibition Era either. While some folks consider this movie to be 'dry', in my mind... it is one of the best [albeit, one of the darkest] movies [of this era] made for the screen ever.
Duration: 101 minutes
Genre: Action
Overall Rating: 5/5