


Strozzi is saddled with Giorgio Carmonte ( Michael Imperioli), son of a Mafia chief in Chicago. He decides to end their uneasy truce in order to make money from the resulting chaos.īoth gangs have some interesting lieutenants. He discovers local power is divided between the Strozzi gang (led by Ned Eisenberg) and the Doyle gang (led by David Patrick Kelly). Following in the footsteps of Kurosawa's samurai tale, Willis arrives in a strange town with no history and few plans (“Drunk or sober, I had no complaints-even if I did get my hands dirty on the way”). “Last Man Standing” takes that story line to its ultimate refinement. What he almost always shows are violent men living in a society that doesn't give them much opportunity to do anything other than kill one another. When he's not in top form, he makes male action mythology like “ Wild Bill” (1995). When he's in good form he makes films such as “48 HRS” and the neglected “ Geronimo” (1993). The director and screenwriter is Walter Hill.
#Last man standing bruce willis movie
Well, Kurosawa has inspired other good American movies (his “Seven Samurai” was remade as “The Magnificent Seven,” and “Yojimbo” also loosely inspired “A Fistful of Dollars”), but here the attempt to move the story from Japan to Texas seems pointless, because the movie made from it isn't Kurosawa, or a Western, or a gangster movie, or anything else other than a mannered, juiceless, excruciatingly repetitive exercise in style. The credits announce that it's based on a story by Ryuzo Kikushima and Akira Kurosawa, and some filmgoers will recognize the plot outlines from Kurosawa's “ Yojimbo” (1961). “Last Man Standing” is not intended as a realistic portrait of anything. Whom do the bootleggers sell their booze to? Is Jericho simply a distribution point? Then why are there two virtual armies of gangsters, one imported from Chicago, wearing fedoras and business suits and hanging around ominously? I'm missing the point, I know. “I won't say business has been good lately,” the bartender tells John Smith, who walks in for a drink.
