The Last Stand

Directed by Kim Jee-woon

R

**

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Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new movie is “dumb fun, emphasis on the dumb,” said Connie Ogle in The Miami Herald. But if you’re “interested enough to pay for a ticket,” chances are you’ll be “moderately diverted for a while” by this ludicrous tale about the sheriff of an Arizona border town who must stop a fleeing Mexican drug lord from outrunning U.S. authorities. “If anything,” Schwarzenegger’s acting has gotten worse since he took a screen sabbatical to serve two terms as California’s governor, said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. But the 65-year-old former bodybuilder “has always had a genial arrogance that audiences eat up,” and that playfulness is on full display here, even if he doesn’t move or look as good as he used to. “There are a few laughs along the way,” as well as some “heart-pounding car chases,” said Stephanie Merry in The Washington Post. Let’s not pretend it’s all good fun, though. This is a movie bent on engineering for its villains violent demises of a kind “that elicit an ‘ohhhh!’ or maybe an ‘ewwww!’ from the audience.” That’s worse than mindless.