The Last Stand by Kim Ji-Woon (2013)
Kim Ji-woon established himself as one of South Korea’s top directors in late ’90s and early ’00s thanks to such stylish genre films as A Tale of Two Sisters, A Bittersweet Life, and The Good, the Bad, the Weird. Unfortunately, very little of that style can be seen in Kim’s Hollywood debut. There’s one scene near the end, when the hero and villain square off in a corn field to classical music, that boasts some of the panache seen in South Korea’s best thrillers. For the most part, however, The Last Stand is a tedious action film packed with wasted performances, stilted dialog, and flat jokes. There’s very little that differentiates it from the hyper-edited aesthetic mess that’s come to characterize Hollywood action films in the last 20 years.
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