Last Stand, The (Blu-ray) (2013) |
|
Last Stand, The (Blu-ray) (2013) |
|
|
| BUY IT |
| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Action |
Featurette-Making Of-Not In My Town: Making The Last Stand Featurette-Behind The Scenes-Cornfield Chaos: Scene Breakdown Featurette-The Dinkum Firearm and Historic Weaponry Museum Tour More…-Actor-cam Anarchy Deleted Scenes More…-Extended Scenes Trailer-x 3 for other films |
|
| Rating |
|
||
| Year Of Production | 2013 | ||
| Running Time | 107:10 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | Dual Layered | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Ads Then Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 4 | Directed By | Jee-woon Kim |
|
Studio
Distributor |
 Roadshow Home Entertainment |
Starring |
Arnold Schwarzenegger Forest Whitaker Titos Menchaca Peter Stormare Richard Dillard Eduardo Noriega Luis Guzmán |
| Case | Standard Blu-ray | ||
| RPI | ? | Music | Mowg |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 English Descriptive Audio Dolby Digital 2.0 |
|
| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 2.40:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
 |
||
| Video Format | 1080p | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 2.35:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles | English for the Hearing Impaired | Smoking | No |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
I recently had the opportunity to review the DVD version of The Last Stand. The plot summary below is taken from that review.
Ray Owens (Arnold Schwarzenegger) was an L.A. policemen until a shootout that went wrong left officers dead, so he moved to the small town of Sommerton Junction on the Arizona / Mexico border and become Sheriff. Nothing much happens in Sommerton; it has a total police force of four including deputies Sarah Torrance (Jaimie Alexander) and Mike Figuerola (Luis Guzman). One Saturday morning Ray is suspicious of a couple of truckers in the town diner, but is looking forward to a quiet weekend. But events are about to take a turn and his weekend will be anything but quiet.
In Las Vegas FBI agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker) is relocating a high profile prisoner, drug overlord and convicted killer Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega), to a more secure prison in a highly secret operation. However Cortez has a mole inside Bannister’s team, and the relocation is ambushed and Cortez escapes, taking a female FBI agent hostage with him. With the airports closed, Cortez has had readied a high performance Corvette and, with his hostage, he makes a dash for the border, a dash that will take him through Sommerton. With a band of hired killers led by Burell (Peter Stormare) clearing the way through police roadblocks it seems that Sheriff Ray Owens and his rag-tag group of deputies may be the only people standing between Cortez and freedom in Mexico. Outgunned, they block Sommerton’s main street and prepare to make their stand until the FBI can arrive.
The Last Stand is an exciting, well-made thriller with humour and loud well-executed action sequences including car chases, vehicle stunts and fire fights with a range of both high tech and low tech weaponry. It is a surprise that this very American contemporary western / thriller is directed by Korean Kim Jee-Woon, who is probably best known for the decidedly wacky and very entertaining Korean eastern/western The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), but it must be said that he brings his Asian eye to the genre. For example, some of the effects are quite bloody, with limbs severed and blood spurting up and around just like in many Hong Kong or Korean action films, but this aspect is not too overdone; mostly anyway.
However, the main reason people may have for watching The Last Stand is the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Other than the bit parts in a few films including The Expendables 1 / 2 (2010 / 2012), The Last Stand marks his first starring role in a feature film since The Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in 2003. I am happy to say that Arnie does not attempt to hide this age and his wrinkles, makes some comments about getting older, and doesn’t get the much younger girl, something aging action stars are a bit prone to. He still has a great film presence, can deliver silly one-liners with a straight face, and can shoot and punch with the best.
The Last Stand is hardly deep and meaningful cinema, but who cares. It is funny without being crass, includes spectacular action sequences, cars crashing and exploding, bullets flying everywhere and it never tries to be anything that it’s not by pretentious dialogue. And of course it marks the return of the great Arnold Schwarzenegger to a starring role. Great entertainment? You bet!
The Last Stand is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.40:1, close to the 2.35:1 original theatrical ratio, in MPEG-4 AVC code.
The print is very sharp with nice detail; every line, cut and graze on Schwarzenegger’s face is plain to see. Colours are great in that digital flat way, and some night scenes in the lights look an unnatural yellow. Skin tones are good, contrast and brightness consistent except for when the strong light source is behind the actor, when the print becomes quite glary. Blacks are solid, shadow detail good. There was occasional slight ghosting with movement and some digital noise but otherwise artefacts were absent.
The English subtitles for the hearing impaired are available.
A great looking print.
| Sharpness |   |
| Shadow Detail | |
| Colour | |
| Grain/Pixelization | |
| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
| Film Artefacts | |
| Overall | |
Audio is English DTS-HD MA 5.1 plus an audio description for the vision impaired, Dolby Digital 2.0 and 224 Kbps, from a male voice.
The Last Stand has a loud and aggressive audio. Dialogue sometimes could be a bit hard to understand but I doubt anything serious is missed and there are always the subtitles. The surrounds were fully utilised with car and helicopter engines, crashes, explosions, gunfire and ricochets all around the speakers. There are also panning effects as cars roared through and out of frame and bullets whooshed past. The sub-woofer was fully involved adding satisfactory oomph to the engines, crashes, gunfire and explosions. The result was loud and fully enveloping.
Lip synchronisation was fine.
The original score by Mowg was suitably loud and action oriented; it was not memorable but nor did it detract from the visuals.
This was a great, enveloping audio experience with plenty of oomph! The overseas Blu-rays come with a 7.1 DTS-HD MA audio which would be awesome!
| Dialogue | |
| Audio Sync | |
| Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
| Surround Channel Use | |
| Subwoofer | |
| Overall | |
On start-up the following trailers play and need to be skipped (6:47): 21 and Over, Side Effects and Movie 43. They cannot be selected from the menu.
Pretty much an EPK with some information about the director, Arnold, and some stunts. On set behind the scenes plus interviews with the director, producer, executive producer, stunt coordinators, production designer, special effects coordinator and all the main actors, including Schwarzenegger. Some of the stunt information is interesting.
Behind the scenes while filming the car chase in the cornfield, showing how some of the stunts were performed, plus comments by Wade Allen (stunt coordinator), the producer, executive producer, the fly cam operator plus Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eduardo Noriega.
A look at some of the historic weapons the good guys selected from the Dinkum Museum with comments from Larry Zanoff and Brett Andrews (armourers), the director, producer and Jaimie Alexander and Johnny Knoxville.
Actors Jaimie Alexander and Johnny Knoxville on set with cam recorders on the day they filmed part of the shootout in the main street.
Six deleted scenes as listed below. They are at various stages of production (a couple feature green screen and CGI partly completed), and there is no note or information as to where they fit, although some are pretty obvious. There is a play all option. The scenes are:
Seven extended scenes, again at various stages of production. There is a play all option:
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The Region A US and Region B Blu-rays have the same extras as we do, plus DTS-HD MA 7.1 audio. If your system will support the extra speakers that is the way to go; otherwise our release will do just fine.
The Last Stand is great fun. It never tries to be anything it’s not and includes spectacular, loud action sequences, humour and the return of the great Arnold Schwarzenegger to a starring role. Welcome back Arnie!
The video is good, the audio spectacular. The extras are interesting and the same as available in other regions. A good Blu-ray package.
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Extras | |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Sony BDP-S580, using HDMI output |
| Display | LG 55inch HD LCD. This display device has not been calibrated. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 1080p. |
| Audio Decoder | NAD T737. This audio decoder/receiver has not been calibrated. |
| Amplification | NAD T737 |
| Speakers | Studio Acoustics 5.1 |