Grade: C+

“The Last Stand” would have been a great movie if Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character had played his part rather than trying to be a retired Terminator.

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the sheriff named Ray Owens. After five years of working in LA as a narcotics officer, Ray moves to a small hometown in Somerton, Arizona to escape the bloodshed of the big city. Ray is able to settle down in the quiet town, where the biggest emergency is a kitten stuck in a tree.

However, he learns several years later that a dangerous criminal named Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) was on the run. He had escaped from the police in Las Vegas and was making his way to Mexico. Cortez will have to pass through Somerton, and it is left to Ray and his team to stop the criminal.

The movie is a great action movie, filled with guns, violence, cars and hot chicks. What didn’t make the movie were the short lines Ray said at the most random moments that served more to take away from the movie rather than to better it.

One really awesome thing about the movie was how they did the car scenes. At times the movie felt like it was a cross between an old, western movie and the “Fast and Furious”. Cars were in the air and bullets were flying everywhere.

The best scene in the movie was when Cortez was driving his car, racing through the night with a helicopter hot on his trail. The director did a great job of playing with the lighting on the cars when Cortez zooms out of the spotlight of the helicopter.

Another instance when they did this is when a shoot-out happened between the thugs, hired by Cortez, and two police officers in Somerton. The thugs turned off their lights after being discovered in the middle of the night. An all-out shooting battle starts between the blind officers and the thugs who are armed with night-vision goggles.

In all, the movie was a roller coaster for me. At the start, all I saw was the retired Terminator on the screen and nothing else. However, as the story progressed, I got more into it to the point where I was on the edge of my seat watching the action between Cortez and the police. Unfortunately, Ray disappears in the final scene of the movie when he pulls out famous one-liners and the movie was ruined to leave a bitter end.