The Last Action Hero [VHS]

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$15.99

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Average customer review:
(132 customer reviews)

Product Details

Amazon Sales Rank: #356384 in VHS
Released on: 1998-09-01
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Number of discs: 1
Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
Running time: 130 minutes

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Jack Slater is an action-film hero played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. An old projectionist (Robert Prosky) hands a magic movie ticket to Jack's biggest preteen fan (Austin O'Brien), and the kid steps right inside the latest Jack Slater film, becoming the actor star's sidekick in gunfights and car chases. But when Jack's nemesis (Charles Dance) gets his hands on the ticket, the fight busts out into the real world and Jack (à la Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear) refuses to believe he's a fictional character. Director John McTiernan churns some nifty scenes out of this setup, although the fiction-to-reality shuffle is not as deft as in, say, Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, and the plot needs the kind of logic and discipline found in that classic when-worlds-collide film Back to the Future. Still, Schwarzenegger has moments of wit and smashing action, and we get a faux-movie trailer advertising an intriguing new shoot-'em-up: "Something's rotten in the State of Denmark--and Hamlet is taking out the trash!"

From The New Yorker
Here's a new idea: a thriller where the thrills lead nowhere. A boy called Danny (Austin O'Brien), bored at school and frightened at home, is enthralled by the screen exploits of Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger). With the help of a magic ticket, he crosses into Jack's world: an unreal place where the hero always wins under a roasting sun and never gets more than a flesh wound. His adversaries may look like clichés-Charles Dance as a quiet hit man; Anthony Quinn, in his traditional look-at-me mode, as a Sicilian mobster-but that is precisely the point; movie conventions exist to be mocked, and "Last Action Hero" is determined to have fun with them. There isn't a trace of acid; the director, John McTiernan, remains devoted to the genre that he mastered in "Die Hard." But the scattiness of the film-the way that it slips between fact and fiction, and fidgets from one gag to the next-may still be enough to shake the confidence of a young audience brought up on Schwarzenegger pictures; everything they used to believe in, all the toy violence and dizzy stuntwork, is being snapped back in their faces. The movie labors the point and outstays its welcome; but it's a bright and daring direction for Schwarzenegger to have taken, and therefore one that he may live to regret. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

43 of 48 people found the following review helpful.
Clever "inside" humor, but DVD has a BIG flaw
By John S. Harris
I think I know why this film was so poorly received and tanked at the box office. It was TOO "inside". Much of this film is a series of jokes about the standard, conventional, formulaic, bombastic action film genre. But the humor was so tongue-in-cheek so often that it probably didn't bode well with the average action-junkie film fan. "Last Action Hero" made fun of itself as it unfolded, and one would need a certain sense of humor to fully appreciate it on its intended level. I dare say that most folks who went to this film just didn't "get it". Too bad for them.
The major flaw of the DVD is that the film is presented in the god-awful Pan and Scan format. Pan and Scan presentations of frenetically-shot widescreen films should be outlawed, it's just that simple. You almost get a headache watching this P&S version. The digital pan is so obtrusive and distracting that it can drive one to anger! It pulls you out of the film, to say the least. I like (but don't really love) this film, and the low price of the DVD makes the purchase a no-brainer. But it is too optically uncomfortable to watch in P&S.
Release it in widescreen and all will be okay.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Watch and NOT be disappointed!!!
By M. Garland
This is one of those movies that a lot of people that haven't seen it say, "That movie wasn't really that good, was it?" but those that have seen it, say, "Why wasn't this movie more popular?" Maybe it was bad timing, or as some others suggested, just not correctly billed to the public.

Last Action Hero is hard to describe. It's funny, it's witty, with lots of those one-liners that Arnold became so popular with, and I loved the way he constantly poked fun at his fictional character as well as his "real" self. Some of my favorite dialogue in the movie is when the kid is trying to convince "character Arnold (aka: Jack Slater)" that he's actually just a character in a movie. The kid starts asking about phone numbers and how can they possibly all start with 555- in a city with several million phone numbers, when Jack Slater exasperatedly says, "That's why we have Area Codes..." Priceless. The movie is full of fun stuff like that, and I highly recommend this movie to anyone who is even remotely a Schwarzenegger fan, or who just like campy, yet intelligent, movies. The parody within a parody, and movie within a movie actually worked well in this one.

I thought the movie had a lot of great character performances, and clever scripting, and I think this movie got a bum rap. It's really a great movie, I'm glad I bought the DVD. The transfer is a little sloppy in places on the one I bought, but since it's a "Special Anniversary Edition", I have a feeling that had something to do with it. There's only a fullscreen version on my DVD, no widescreen, and the camera pans are really noticeable in a few places.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
A very underated Schwarzenegger film.
By A Customer
John McTiernan's "Last Action Hero" is always looked at as one of the big flops in modern day cinema. The truth is the film is a lot better than a lot of people are willing to admit. In Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo" a desperate women falls in love with a character in a film she watches who just happens to jump out of the screen. Well it is basically the same sort of formula only a kid gets in on the action of the latest Schwarzenegger film, "Jack Slater 4" yet befriends the character and not the actor who thinks all of it is real and not a film. True, it is not as bittersweet as Allen's movie but I don't find that to be a flaw. It is a very fun movie and it was very enjoyable the whole way through. Arnold Schwarzenegger does a great parody of himself as Slater who spits out one liners during violent conflicts. I even found Austin O' Brien to be a fairly decent child actor in this film and that is a rare suprise in this sort of a film. The film is also backed by a great score of hard rock music from AC/DC, Alice in Chains, Megadeath and more. John McTiernan and Arnold Schwarzenegger suffered heavy blows with this film. True, it was not either of their best work but I think the critics were way too cruel. Its should not be viewed as a failure but as an enjoyable action adventure that it is.