About two years ago my friends and I held a Dolph Fest in honor of DTVC Hall of Famer Dolph Lundgren. He's essentially the Babe Ruth of bad movies for us, and we needed a weekend film festival to celebrate his work. Ten movies over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. This film was one I bought specifically for the occasion, because it was one none of us had seen.
Last Warrior is sorta kinda a post-apocalyptic thing with Dolph as a military dude ready to lead us to the promise land. In the near future, an earthquake measuring 9.5 on the Richter scale splits LA off from the mainland US. The survivors are trying to gather and make an attempt to get back to the mainland... I think. We find this out from a constant Dolph voice-over that sounds like bad Film Noir. There's a prison run by a dude and his geologist friend, and the inmates worship him to the point of drinking urine. Dolph and he are on a collision course to wackiness. There's a group of kids Dolph needs to help out too, as if he didn't have enough to deal with. Finally, in case you're not sufficiently bored and confused, a voodoo Christian woman does a chant and makes it rain. Not like a rich Hip Hop star dumping money on strippers, but actual rain.
This film was the low point of the Dolph Fest. Two friends started playing Ghost Recon while we watched, and one of them cranked up the sound on his computer, which was really annoying. Part of the reason for the lack of interest was probably my friends having ADD, and this was the fourth film that day, which may have danced beyond their attention span threshold. I know it was a tad much for me too. But on the other hand, this film was so slow and plodding that I can't blame any of us for calling it a day. There were huge pockets of exposition buffered by small pieces of action. It sucked.
The Dolphage wasn't too bad. No gun play, but a fair amount of martial arts. He hits a dude in the head with a brick a la Friday or Home Alone 2. In the first Dolph Fest, we used clips of films we weren't showing as bumpers between the other movies, scenes like Dolph smashing Heyerdahl into the toilet in Silent Trigger. I think when we do our second fest later this month, we'll probably use the brick scene as a bumper. We definitely won't be showing the whole thing.
Another scene could be the rain one. Out of nowhere, a voodoo Christian women does a chant or something, and it starts pouring. It was so absurd, it pulled my friends away from Ghost Recon. I just couldn't figure out why the scene was even in the movie. Nothing led up to it, nothing suggested that people with mystical powers existed; it was so out of left field, like Manny Ramirez cutting off Johnny Damon's throw to the shortstop.
I'm not sure I got why LA was incommunicado with the mainland. I would hope if LA was made an island after a major earthquake, the coast guard at the very least would be able to sneak over and make contact. What about Hawai'i? The film was made in Israel, so maybe the Israelis don't know of the existence of Hawai'i. It was one of many issues that weren't thought out well and very poorly explained. I usually like when bad action films have plots with huge holes and major continuity issues, but in this case, they spent so much time explaining things, that I just got more frustrated and angry. There were others too: why was there a Latin dude running a prison and having the inmates drink urine? What about the kids? Where'd they come from? I guess it really doesn't matter.
During the Dolph Fest we noticed our favorite Swedish Beefcake has a habit of getting shot in the left arm. This is especially true of his DTV films. For the most part these wounds are incorporated into the film in a way that at least fits the plot. Usually after being shot he has a bandage on it or some kind of tourniquet, but the wound itself seems superfluous and does little to hinder his heroics. Try Detention, for the quintessential instance of this phenomenon. What makes Last Warrior great is that the left arm shot is completely perfunctory. It's comes out of no where, and seems like an afterthought. If I didn't know better, I'd say the left arm shot might actually be a running joke for Dolph, and he felt he needed to throw it in this film too.
This movie is boring and hard to handle. You may want to rent it, just to see what it's about, and I'm here to warn you to tread very carefully. If you're new to bad movies, try Showdown in Little Tokyo, Bridge of Dragons, or The Punisher first. I could probably give you another five or six Dolph films to watch before that too.
For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0214871/
Great post. This movie hurt my soul. There is much better Dolph films out there.
ReplyDeleteI have a blog at www.moviesfilmsandflix.wordpress.com.
I have a weekly column called Bad Movie Tuesday. I write about the Dolph a lot.
I'd be glad to promote your blog.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks man, that sounds great, I can do the same for you. I'll throw you link in my other great sites section. And by all means, take a look through the archives. We have all of Dolph's DTV work covered.
ReplyDeleteI agree, DTVC, you got it exactly right, the film is truly bad not because of its glaring faults (which can be sort of funny, even laughable!) but because it is so relentlessly tedious. It comes as a shock to realise that The Last Warrior is directed by Sheldon Lettich who is the creative presence behind some of Van Dammes best. Here he seems relentlessly intent on making a picture than which nothing more boring could exist. And he succeeds beyond his wildest bad dreams, with subplots so puerile and inane, so humdrum and implausible, as to leave us gasping in disbelief! I will however, part with DTVC on one point and give the movie this plus mark: the Dolf voice-over is actually the best thing in the whole show. It doesn't sound 'like bad Film Noir' which is in any case something of a contradiction in terms. Rather, it lends a certain gravitas to The Last Warrior, a kind of brooding sense of doom and abject pity, which fleetingly seduces you into thinking that this is going to be an awesome exploration of the dramatic potentialities of the genre. But no, nothing of the kind. If 'the end' is going to be 'nigh' like this, a silly, ludicrous, totally fatuous affair, then we've been badly wrong all along about the coming apocalypse. It will barely register a yawn, and we will barely batter an eyelid.
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