Last Action Hero

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Movie
German title Last Action Hero
Original title Last Action Hero
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1993
length 130 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director John McTiernan
script Shane Black ,
David Arnott
Story:
Zak Penn ,
Adam Leff
production John McTiernan,
Steve Roth
music Michael Kamen
camera Dean Semler
cut Richard A. Harris ,
John Wright
occupation

Last Action Hero is an American action film directed by John McTiernan in 1993 . The film-in-film version is a parody of the action film genre. The film opened in German cinemas on October 7, 1993.

action

Eleven-year-old Danny Madigan is a fan of action films, especially action hero Jack Slater, whose films he watches in an old New York movie theater . Jack Slater is a Los Angeles police officer and - as befits a movie hero - muscled and freezing cold. One of his opponents is the Ripper , a madman who is armed with an ax .

One day Danny gets a magical ticket from his friend Nick, the projectionist of his home cinema , which he supposedly got from Harry Houdini himself. Nick promises him a private screening of the latest Slater flick, Jack Slater IV . Shortly after the film begins, the ticket begins to glow, and a wad of real dynamite that seems to have come from the film itself lands in the cinema next to Danny and explodes.

When Danny wakes up, he is amazed to find that he is sitting in a car right next to his hero Jack Slater. He is just as surprised as Danny and has no idea where the boy suddenly came from. When Danny then experiences a wild chase with crooks in the car, in which elements occur that would not be possible in reality, he realizes that he must have ended up somehow in the fantastic film world of Jack Slater . Then the enthusiastic Danny Slater joins in and tries to make it clear to him at the same time that they are all here in a movie. But he doesn't succeed because Slater regards his environment (with many beautiful women and a befriended cartoon cat named Whiskers) as completely normal. Even when Danny goes to a video store with him to show Slater his actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, he is surprised to find that the actor does not exist in this world due to Slater's real existence and that the respective characters (such as the "Terminator") do not exist Actors (Sylvester Stallone) are embodied.

Then Danny Slater wants to lead to the property of the mafia boss Tony Vivaldi, because he had previously (in the opening sequence of the film) questioned Slater's cousin there as a hostage about the police officer and then had it murdered. Although Slater doesn't believe the story, they drive to Vivaldi's mansion. There they meet Vivaldi's right-hand man, the unscrupulous Englishman Benedict (who has impressive glass eyes ), but who sends them away due to lack of evidence for Danny's allegations. But Benedict overhears Danny's conversation with Slater, in which he also explains Benedict's role in this film; this now arouses the interest of the henchman. He grabs some of his men and follows them to the house of Slater's beautiful daughter Whitney, where he confronts and threatens the two. There is a violent shootout between the crooks and Slater, who can take them all off. But Benedict was able to take Danny from his magic movie ticket and escaped. When he examines this more closely, the scoundrel finds out that the ticket can create a transition into the real world.

Slater and Danny learn that Vivaldi is planning an assassination attempt on all of his rivals during a funeral on the roof of a building. To do this, he had large amounts of poisonous gas implanted in the corpse , which will be released during the funeral service and kill all the guests. With the help of a crane , Danny and Slater can thwart the plan and bring the dead out of reach. Benedict has now betrayed his boss and, after killing him, escapes through the portal into the real New York City. Danny and Slater arrive just in time and can follow him at the last second.

In the real world, Slater now has to find completely disappointed that he is really only a fictional film character and does not have his fantastic skills here. Benedict, however, wants to take advantage of this and comes up with a plan to eliminate Slater. To do this, he brings Slater's old enemy, the Ripper, from the last Jack Slater film into the real world, in order to kill Slater's actor Arnold Schwarzenegger during the film premiere of Jack Slater IV . Slater and Danny can thwart this, however, and place the Ripper on a roof. After a dramatic fight on the rainy roof, Slater manages to electrify the accumulating water for a brief moment and electrocute the madman. But shortly afterwards, Benedict suddenly appears on the scene and wounds Slater with his pistol. He reveals to the two of his plan to use the magic movie ticket to bring a whole army of well-known film villains such as Dracula, Hannibal Lecter and King Kong into the real world and thus achieve world domination. However, Danny manages to wrest the gun from Benedict, whereupon Slater shoots him through his explosive glass eye and destroys him.

Since Slater would almost certainly be dead in the real world, Danny brings him back into the film with the help of the magical map. Back in the film, his wound is, as is so often the case, only an annoying minor matter; he receives medical attention and his life is saved. Danny says goodbye to his idol and returns to his world.

criticism

Even before it was released, the film was so unanimously panned by American critics that only a few viewers went to US cinemas and the media spoke of a financial disaster. The film is considered Schwarzenegger's biggest flop, but was still able to generate a considerable profit. TV Spielfilm writes that “US critics rushed like vultures on John McTiernan's action parody and wrote it to the ground. In doing so, they apparently missed the fact that the 70-million-dollar material battle skillfully made fun of all the clichés of the action genre and its most popular actors ”. In retrospect, however, the film was also praised, especially in Europe. The film review portal Rotten Tomatoes gives 36% positive reviews for the film and it has a Metascore of 44 out of 100 at Metacritic .

“Last Action Hero is playfully probing the limits and secrets of cinema. This is a film to be amazed at to be amazed. The action cinema can actually no longer be the same "

- Süddeutsche Zeitung

"Schwarzenegger operates a balancing act between idolizing and satirizing, embedded in the winking play with illusion and reality"

- Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger

“Arnold Schwarzenegger's action comedy works better on purpose than on realization. The parody is too clumsy for the film to really lift off the ground. Nevertheless, his approach of marking cinema stunts as an illusion and foregoing the extreme bloodthirstiness of the genre in favor of transparent action tricks is a sympathetic departure from the cliché. "

- Lexicon of international film

“With so much ingenuity, no Hollywood film has been caught between two stools in a long time. The fact that it doesn't work properly on the market also tells a little about the distancing of cultures: the audience of action films and that of “cinematic art” would have to be able to meet in such a film if there weren't a few unreasonable demands in both directions [...]. LAST ACTION HERO is pure anti-Spielberg. A story of disillusionment that manages not to be cynical. "

- Georg Seeßlen : epd film 10/93

Trivia

  • The movie contains a number of continuity errors , most of which were intentionally introduced.
  • In the school, the students are shown the film Hamlet (1948) with Laurence Olivier in the leading role.
  • The teacher, who praises Laurence Olivier's acting skills, is played by his widow, Joan Plowright .
  • On a Terminator 2 cardboard display, Sylvester Stallone can be seen instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger when Danny tries to convince Jack Slater that he is actually the actor, Slater replies: “He's fantastic. The best film he has ever made. "
  • In the same year Stallone ridiculed his Planet Hollywood partner with a "Schwarzenegger presidential library" in the film Demolition Man .
  • The death metal band Jack Slater was inspired to get their name from this film.
  • The first film that Danny watches in the cinema is presented as "A Franco Columbu Film". Columbu, Schwarzenegger's longtime friend and training partner from bodybuilding times, has appeared with him in Mr. Universum , Pumping Iron , Conan the Barbarian , Terminator and Running Man, among others .
  • In the film, is often spoken of that of F. Murray Abraham played character Mozart or Moe Zart (Slater, Mozart does not know) have killed. This is a reference to his role as Antonio Salieri in the film Amadeus .
  • As Jack and Danny walk up the main steps of Police Headquarters, Catherine Tramell ( Sharon Stone ), the leading actress from Basic Instinct , emerges in the exact clothes in which she had to endure an interrogation as a potential murder suspect at Police Headquarters. She lights a cigarette, relieved and annoyed (in Basic Instinct she had already smoked in the interrogation room, although this was not allowed there). In the same scene, the Terminator T-1000 ( Robert Patrick ) comes out, which is the villain in Terminator 2 - Judgment Day .
  • The death from the movie The Seventh Seal (1957) by Ingmar Bergman was actually played by Bengt Ekerot . Ian McKellen took over this role at Last Action Hero .

Cameo appearances

Many celebrities have in this movie cameo appearances :

Soundtrack

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.tvspielfilm.de/kino/filmarchiv/film/der-letzt-action-held,89960,ApplicationMovie.html
  2. ↑ Last Action Hero at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
  3. ↑ Last Action Hero at Metacritic (English)
  4. ↑ Last Action Hero. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 3, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  5. ↑ Georg Seeßlen: Last Action Hero , epd film 10/93