With films such as Extreme Prejudice and Southern Comfort , director Walter Hill has established a solid reputation as a deft practitioner of the virile, macho and terribly misogynist action flick. His films extol the virtues and hard ethos of the old west, no matter how contemporary the setting, and Hill's preferred heroes are hard men, loners of few words but big actions, who battle overwhelming odds to emerge bloodied and battered but victorious, no matter what the cost.

His latest film, Last Man Standing, is familiar and predictable stuff for Hill and consequentially holds few surprises for audiences. Last Man Standing is essentially a reworking of Kurosawa's influential and much admired classic samurai adventure Yojimbo , but Hill has updated the action and relocated it to the American west during the prohibition era. Hill's stylish treatment of the material also perfectly captures the amoral tone of those classic spaghetti westerns from Sergio Leone.

Hill's enigmatic man with no name here is the anonymous "John Smith" (Bruce Willis), a grim mercenary who arrives in the lawless desert town of Jericho, located mere miles from the Mexican border. The dusty, dry and almost deserted town is run by two rival gangs of bootleggers who are jockeying for power and are at loggerheads with each other, and Smith plays one side off against the other in a dangerous game. The town's corrupt sheriff (Bruce Dern) remains on the sidelines, watching and biding his time, while occasionally cashing in on the lucrative bootlegging enterprises.

Willis is at his most laconic and taciturn here, and he brings a grim intensity to the type of role that perfectly suits his screen persona as the last tough action hero. Christopher Walken's performance as Hickey, a badly scarred and psychotic tommy gun toting hitman, is little more than another cliched character from his now familiar but limited repertoire, and he brings little of note to the film.

There is not a great deal of logic in the rather thin plot here, but there is certainly plenty of action and graphic violence, all delivered with Hill's typical lack of restraint and subtlety. There is plenty of carnage and stylishly choreographed slow motion violence, and Hill demonstrates that he has learned the lessons of his mentor Sam Peckinpah extremely well. Veteran cinematographer Lloyd Ahern suffuses the film in grim, deliberately washed out brownish colours that perfectly suit the bleak and arid setting, while Ry Cooder's atmospheric score further underscores the relentless and violent tone of the material.

© 1996-97 Greg King / Used With Permission