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Last Man Standing (1996)
Dir: Walter Hill
Cast: Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, Bruce Dern
Summary
Prohibition era gunslinger finds himself in the middle of a gang war between Italian and Irish mafia, in a deserted On a West Texas town. Where he can play both sides off against each other, to his benefit.
Synopsis
Arriving in a deserted West Texas town loner gunslinger John Smith immediately creates trouble with a careless glance at the girlfriend of Doyle, the local Mafia boss. After reporting the incident to the cowardly local sheriff, Smith finds out about the town from the local saloon keeper and does to confront Doyle’s men about damages to his car. In an ensuing gunfight, Smith kills one of Doyle’s men.
Smith then starts working for Strozzi of the rival gang, the organisation where to assist with the stealing one Doyle liquor shipments and start an affair with Strozzi girlfriend, Lucy and meets a visiting high profile Chicago mobster.
Smith the defects to the Doyles where he lets them know of Strozzi’s plans and deceptions, causing the Doyle gang to attack and kill some of Strozzi’s men and kidnap the Chicago gangster. Strozzi’s gang responds by kidnapping Doyle’s girlfriend, Felina. A fair exchange is arranged.
Smith meanwhile is summoned by the sheriff to meet Capt Picket of the Texas Rangers who is intending to wipe out one of the gangs as he can tolerate just one. Smith explains he means to play both groups against each other so that the wipe each other out. Capt. Picket informs him in ten days he will attack and if Smith found he would be killed too.
Lucy visits Smith to tell him she been attacked by Strozzi, so he gives her money to leave town. Smith then start more rumours that Strozzi is intending to kidnap Felina again and is sent by Doyle to where she been hidden. Smith kills Doyles means guarding Felina, and after finding she was won by Doyle in guard game from her husband, he helps her escape back to her husband in Mexico.
Some of Doyle men are suspicious of Smith, and Smith double cross is eventually uncovered, and Smith is tortured for the whereabout of Felina. Smith does not reveal her whereabouts and manages to escapes with the assistance of the tavern owner and sheriff; witnessing Doyle men wiping out Strozzi gang in the process.
A few days later while Smith is recovering in an old church is finds out that the Saloon owner has been captured for helping Smith. Smith return to town to seek revenge on Doyle’s gang and free the tavern owner.
Doyle and his right hand are absent from the final shoot as they are trying to find Felina. However, they face Smith in the final scene where they try to convince him to join them again. However, the Saloon owner kills Doyle for ruining his town, and Smith shoots the others.
Smith then leaves town commenting that he is just as broke as when he arrived as he had given all his funds to Lucy and Felina but at least the town was better off without the gangs.
Review
While this is almost a carbon copy of Yojimbo, I found this film a hard watch. The running time was only 101min however, it much longer. The pace was slow; there was no energy to the movie. I did, however, enjoy the look of the film, the cinematography gave drab muted, dust covered colours which I would associate with the period particular in a Texas ghost town.
The character of Smith is just a little dull; Bruce Willis performance seems to mumble lines and doesn’t give off the aura of a hired gun. Walken is strong as Hickey but is hat down to the script and direction or just the actors natural ability to portray that style of character – I think the latter. And perhaps in not even worth going into the technical inaccuracies like over 40 shots from 2 guns that would hold about 16 to 18 shots between them.
While I disagree with him on cinematography, I think the great Roger Ebert hit the nail on the head with his opening paragraph:
““Last Man Standing” is such a desperately cheerless film, so dry and laconic and wrung out, that you wonder if the filmmakers ever thought that in any way it could be … fun. It contains elements that are often found in entertainments–things like guns, gangs and spectacular displays of death–but here they crouch on the screen and growl at the audience. Even the movie’s hero is bad company.”
Bibliography
Ebert, Roger (1996-09-20). “Last Man Standing review”. RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 2016-07-13.