Last Man Standing (1996) *

Directed by:  Walter Hill

Starring:  Bruce Willis, Bruce Dern, William Sanderson, Christopher Walken, David Patrick Kelly, Ned Eisenberg, Michael Imperioli

Without anyone to root for, movies like Last Man Standing die on the vine.     Its hero is an opportunist looking to profit from a gang war he will help create.    The gangs are guys with guns who exist only as current or future targets.    The town in which Last Man Standing takes place is a dry desert town with only the gangs, a sheriff, a bartender, undertaker, mechanic, and 2 prostitutes as denizens.     The rival gangs are bootleggers, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of bootlegging going on.     There aren't any potential customers in the town, so perhaps the gangs look to take advantage of nearby Mexican distribution.      I spent more time trying to figure out how anyone makes any money in such a desolate place that seems caught in an Old West time warp.    

Last Man Standing takes place during Prohibition in the said town of Jericho, Texas.    John Smith (Willis) arrives in town and has his car vandalized by unwelcoming members of the Doyle gang.    You would think these guys would be happy to see anyone new.    He quickly kills the two men who damage his car and then offers his services to the Strazzi gang, who were brought in from Chicago to get a piece of the allegedly lucrative Jericho action.    If I were the Strazzis, I would wonder who I pissed off in Chicago to be sent to Jericho.     

Smith makes his intentions known through voiceover narration.    He is the hero, I suppose, but there isn't much likable about him.    He is sweet on the two hookers in town, including one who was kidnapped by the Doyle gang, but maybe that's because they are the only two women in Jericho.     As the movie progresses, Smith will switch gangs (for a price) and the bosses don't seem to find anything fishy about it.     The right-hand man of Doyle, an ominous man named Hickey (Walken), is suspicious and perhaps a bit jealous of the newcomer who commands so much money for his services.    My question again is, how do these guys have any money?    Somehow they pay for the custom-made suits they walk around in.     And where do they buy new suits?    Even if they get them for free, there doesn't appear to be any kind of store in Jericho.    

I know I'm not supposed to ask questions and just go with the flow, but Last Man Standing doesn't really engage the viewer in thought.    People shout at each other, threats are made, and then people are shot.    Smith is some kind of marksman.     Armed with two guns, he can kill 10 men in a room without missing or getting shot himself.     I don't know how many rounds are in his clips, but he seems to pump roughly five bullets into each victim.   That's a whole lot of shooting.    Where does he buy his ammunition? 

So what do we have with Last Man Standing?    Not a whole lot, except for question after question about the logistics of it all.     It's a shoot-em-up without interesting people, situations, or anything to care about.     Watching people get shot to bits isn't very riveting.    I think of a much better Western-type shoot-em-up like Tombstone, which not only has violence, but a point of view and an understanding of why the violence was necessary.     Last Man Standing is a gun nut's wet dream.