Last Action Hero (1993)

Recently Empire magazine did an article on The Last Action Hero, which apparently was a big flop when it was released. It had an estimated budget of $85 million and didn’t make back the money after it’s run in the US. Of course its worldwide release made sure it made more than that, but it didn’t perform as the studio was expecting. I remember seeing it when it came out in the cinema and actually really liked it. Of course I was much younger then, so it was time for a revisit.

The story of the movie is a little bit different if you compare it to your average action movie. Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien) is a kid who is crazy about movies. He regularly sneaks out of his house in the evening to be able to watch them at his local theater, where he has befriended the projectionist Nick (Robert Prosky). His favorite genre is action movies, especially the ones starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Jack Slater. Nick tells him that he’s going to watch the newest movie at midnight and if he’s interested in joining him. When he does Nick gives him this magic ticket (which he got from Houdini but was always afraid of using), “which has a mind of its own”. The movie starts and all of a sudden Danny finds himself in the movie.

After the initial shock he uses his movie knowledge to predict what will happen. Of course the magic ticket is very interesting to the bad guy of the movie as well (The ticket can be used to get in and out of any movie and take characters with you), one of my all-time favorite villains called Benedict (Charles Dance) who always has a different glass eye in each scene. Apparently the role was originally written for Alan Rickman who turned it down, but I think Dance does an amazing job. As this is an action movie it means lots of explosions, crazy situations and cool one liners.

I enjoyed this movie as much as I did the first time I saw it. It’s satirical, knows to have fun with the subject and there are so many great moments in it. I love the scene where they walk into the police station and you have Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) from Basic Instinct and the T-1000 (Robert Patrick) from Terminator 2 appearing in the same shot for just a few seconds. I forgot all about it and it was fun to see again.

When they go back to the real world it’s also nice to see that movie things don’t work in real life (like shooting at a car doesn’t make it explode). Reading up on its history I was a bit shocked to read that Spielberg was asked to direct it. He ended up not doing it and instead making Schindler’s List (luckily), but wonder how it would have turned out if he had done it.

The movie got bad reviews at the time and its Rotten Tomatoes score isn’t high either (38%). Personally I love it and was smiling while rewatching it. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and if you do the same you’ll have a great time.

Score: 8

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSTVmYyk5ro]

What would you do if you had that magical ticket? Would visit some of the movies or hang out in the real world with some of them?
You can check out my choices here