In Defence Of Last Action Hero
3. The Unexpected Benefits Of WTF
Yes, that's Ian McKellen dressed up as Death from The Seventh Seal, in case you forgot he was in this movie. When Danny and Jack travel back to "the real world" at the start of act three, Danny knowingly tells him, "you can't go through life nitpicking every little thing", as if Shane Black was, in typical Shane Black fashion, lampshading the rough-edged absurdity of his own movie.
It's just as well, because even staunch defenders of Last Action Hero will have troubling denying that it can be a bit of a mess. One of the most common things reviewers said about the movie is that it should've been a far broader action parody, rather than throwing a cartoon cat into the mix amid the aforementioned obscure pop-culture references.
Indeed, Last Action Hero could have turned out a far more accessible - and therefore far more boring - movie, but instead McTiernan and Black teamed together for what's arguably the most surreal and peculiar big-budget, A-list action-flick ever made.
Yes, there's a distinct lack of clarity regarding the rules between the movie world and the "real" world, but with Black's pen at work, it's rather easy to accept this as merely another layer of his intentional commentary. After all, the real world depicted isn't in fact real at all, is it?
It's tempting to say, "Just switch your brain off and enjoy it", but that would betray the fact that this is, at its best, an extraordinarily intelligent and literate movie. Do all the edges fit together neatly? Absolutely not, but that only enhances the film's enduring status as a demented curio, a work of anti-tentpole cinema that almost anarchically soils convention and, yes, sometimes narrative logic too.
Is that the long-winded equivalent of, "Just roll with it"? Perhaps, but for the overwhelming majority, Last Action Hero's eccentricities play in its favour rather than to its detriment.
As fascinatingly entertaining as the more expectation-defying elements of the movie are, one of its more conventional-ish aspects also ends up being one of its level-best: the antagonist...