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Meta culpa: John McTiernan's Last Action Hero

 Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austin O'Brien, Charles Dance, Robert Prosky, Anthony Quinn, Art Carney, Mercedes Ruhl. Dir. John McTiernan, Columbia, 1993


I wanted to start out this writeup saying I cannot remember the last time I completely let go with a movie and let it take me wherever it wanted, but that's not true - I did the same Saturday morning with ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. Regardless, I did let John McTiernan's 1993 meta-action comedy LAST ACTION HERO have its way with me tonight and I'm better for the experience.

Four years ago, at the start of my collecting career, I picked LAST ACTION HERO up for $1 at a local thrift store. I knew it flopped at the box office and with critics, but I kept reading good things about it, so I took a gamble, brought it home, and turned it off after five minutes, convinced it was too stupid to bother. That's called contempt prior to investigation, and it makes fools of people who buy into it. People like me.

The guys I follow on Youtube, Mike, of The Bored Cyborg, and Brian Saur, of Just the Discs (as well as the excellent Pure Cinema Podcast with his co-host Elric Kane) both praised LAST ACTION HERO as I binged their 'casts, so I dug it out of the stacks yesterday and watched it tonight. What can I tell you - they were right and I wasn't. LAST ACTION HERO is be one of the best action movies of the '90s, and possibly the best action-comedy I've ever seen.

Austin O'Brien plays Danny Madigan, a young teenager in New York City who seeks solace in action movies after the death of his father. He skips school to hang out in a faded movie palace owned by Robert Prosky's Nick, who also acts as projectionist, watching the Jack Slater series of action movies starring Schwarzenegger. When Nick gives Danny a "magic ticket" given him by Harry Houdini, Danny accidentally transports himself into the movie-world inhabited by Slater.

And what a world it is. LAST ACTION HERO dazzles with its nonstop barrage of meta-references to Schwarzenegger movies, action movie tropes, and to other classic films. In the police station where Slater works, Danny encounters Sharon Stone as her character from BASIC INSTINCT (Stone and Arnold co-starred in INSTINCT director Paul Verhoven's TOTAL RECALL), Robert Patrick in his TERMINATOR 2 LAPD uniform, recognizes a cop buddy of Slater's (F. Murray Abraham) as Salieri from AMADEUS, warning Slater, "Jack, that guy killed Mozart!" Danny DeVito, of TWINS and JUNIOR, voices a cartoon-cat cop, McWhiskers, who will save both Slater and Danny from Abraham later in the story.

Every beat in HERO starts at over the top, then goes batshit insane. Every stunt is ridiculous. Within the movie world, Slater speaks almost entirely in catchphrases and one liners. His daughter skips the prom to field-strip an AK-47 and is a martial arts expert.

Anthony Quinn plays an LA mobster who employs Charles Dance as his exasperated lackey, constantly correcting Quinn's malapropisms ("It's easy as cake." "PIE, you idiot!") When Dance gets hold of Danny's magic ticket stub he uses it to flee into Danny's (our) world where, he discovers, a Bad Guy can win. When Slater and Danny follow, Slater discovers that not only can Bad Guys win and Good Guys lose, Good Guys can also die.

I won't give away any more of the story, though kind of like the Coens' THE BIG LEBOWSKI, where the solution to the mystery hardly matters, the quite-clever plot really isn't the reason to enjoy the picture. The ludicrous stunts - Slater blows up about a quarter of Los Angeles, often by shooting things - and constant self-referential humor make the movie.

At heart, LAST ACTION HERO is more than just great parody. It's a story about the power of belief, about a boy discovering there could be more to life than movies and hero-worship, and about the people who step up to be surrogate dads to a boy who needs one. The relationships between Danny and both Nick and Slater and anny is sweet and lovely without being cloying schmaltz. When Danny tells Nick the magic ticket worked to save Slater's life, Nick twinkles as he says, "I think it had as much to do with you, Danny." It's an "awwww" moment exactly where and when it needs to occur.

Though I did cut loose with ROCKY HORROR the other night, it has been awhile since a movie I did not already know proved so captivating, so immersive, and so much fun. I laughed almost nonstop, and when not laughing I cheered, when not cheering I choked up a little. The film never bored me, never slowed down for tedious exposition, just kept moving, kept zigging and zagging, keeping me in the story from the first seconds to the end credits.

LAST ACTION HERO ought to appeal even to those who don't enjoy big, loud, gleefully dumb popcorn movies. It took me awhile to give it a fair shake, but I'm glad I did. I think others will be, too. 

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