Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112185 in DVD
• Released on: 1997-10-07
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, Georgian
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 130 minutes

Amazon.com
John McTiernan (The Hunt for Red October) imaginatively directs this action comedy, which is an interesting failure with some fascinating ironies that make it well worth seeing. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays both a character named Jack Slater--a fictional cop hero who exists only in the movies (i.e., the movies seen by the characters in this movie) and the actor who plays Jack Slater in the real world (i.e., in the movie we're actually watching). McTiernan's hall-of-mirrors effect is fun, though Last Action Hero never quite identifies itself as a pure action movie, science fiction, a kid's movie, or anything else. (The expensive film suffered at the box office as a result and was roundly criticized for this ambivalence.) What lingers in the memory, however, is Schwarzenegger, playing himself, being confronted by Slater for having created an alter ego for film in the first place. It's a provocative moment: how often have we seen a major star blatantly wrestle with his actor's legacy in this way? The DVD release has optional full-screen and widescreen presentations, optional French and Spanish soundtracks, and optional Spanish and Korean subtitles. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker
Here's a new idea: a thriller where the thrills lead nowhere. A boy called Danny (Austin O'Brien), bored at school and frightened at home, is enthralled by the screen exploits of Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger). With the help of a magic ticket, he crosses into Jack's world: an unreal place where the hero always wins under a roasting sun and never gets more than a flesh wound. His adversaries may look like clichés-Charles Dance as a quiet hit man; Anthony Quinn, in his traditional look-at-me mode, as a Sicilian mobster-but that is precisely the point; movie conventions exist to be mocked, and "Last Action Hero" is determined to have fun with them. There isn't a trace of acid; the director, John McTiernan, remains devoted to the genre that he mastered in "Die Hard." But the scattiness of the film-the way that it slips between fact and fiction, and fidgets from one gag to the next-may still be enough to shake the confidence of a young audience brought up on Schwarzenegger pictures; everything they used to believe in, all the toy violence and dizzy stuntwork, is being snapped back in their faces. The movie labors the point and outstays its welcome; but it's a bright and daring direction for Schwarzenegger to have taken, and therefore one that he may live to regret. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Clever "inside" humor, but DVD has a BIG flaw
I think I know why this film was so poorly received and tanked at the box office. It was TOO "inside". Much of this film is a series of jokes about the standard, conventional, formulaic, bombastic action film genre. But the humor was so tongue-in-cheek so often that it probably didn't bode well with the average action-junkie film fan. "Last Action Hero" made fun of itself as it unfolded, and one would need a certain sense of humor to fully appreciate it on its intended level. I dare say that most folks who went to this film just didn't "get it". Too bad for them.

The major flaw of the DVD is that the film is presented in the god-awful Pan and Scan format. Pan and Scan presentations of frenetically-shot widescreen films should be outlawed, it's just that simple. You almost get a headache watching this P&S version. The digital pan is so obtrusive and distracting that it can drive one to anger! It pulls you out of the film, to say the least. I like (but don't really love) this film, and the low price of the DVD makes the purchase a no-brainer. But it is too optically uncomfortable to watch in P&S.

Release it in widescreen and all will be okay.

Watch and NOT be disappointed!!!
This is one of those movies that a lot of people that haven't seen it say, "That movie wasn't really that good, was it?" but those that have seen it, say, "Why wasn't this movie more popular?" Maybe it was bad timing, or as some others suggested, just not correctly billed to the public.

Last Action Hero is hard to describe. It's funny, it's witty, with lots of those one-liners that Arnold became so popular with, and I loved the way he constantly poked fun at his fictional character as well as his "real" self. Some of my favorite dialogue in the movie is when the kid is trying to convince "character Arnold (aka: Jack Slater)" that he's actually just a character in a movie. The kid starts asking about phone numbers and how can they possibly all start with 555- in a city with several million phone numbers, when Jack Slater exasperatedly says, "That's why we have Area Codes..." Priceless. The movie is full of fun stuff like that, and I highly recommend this movie to anyone who is even remotely a Schwarzenegger fan, or who just like campy, yet intelligent, movies. The parody within a parody, and movie within a movie actually worked well in this one.

I thought the movie had a lot of great character performances, and clever scripting, and I think this movie got a bum rap. It's really a great movie, I'm glad I bought the DVD. The transfer is a little sloppy in places on the one I bought, but since it's a "Special Anniversary Edition", I have a feeling that had something to do with it. There's only a fullscreen version on my DVD, no widescreen, and the camera pans are really noticeable in a few places.

A very underated Schwarzenegger film.
John McTiernan's "Last Action Hero" is always looked at as one of the big flops in modern day cinema. The truth is the film is a lot better than a lot of people are willing to admit. In Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo" a desperate women falls in love with a character in a film she watches who just happens to jump out of the screen. Well it is basically the same sort of formula only a kid gets in on the action of the latest Schwarzenegger film, "Jack Slater 4" yet befriends the character and not the actor who thinks all of it is real and not a film. True, it is not as bittersweet as Allen's movie but I don't find that to be a flaw. It is a very fun movie and it was very enjoyable the whole way through. Arnold Schwarzenegger does a great parody of himself as Slater who spits out one liners during violent conflicts. I even found Austin O' Brien to be a fairly decent child actor in this film and that is a rare suprise in this sort of a film. The film is also backed by a great score of hard rock music from AC/DC, Alice in Chains, Megadeath and more. John McTiernan and Arnold Schwarzenegger suffered heavy blows with this film. True, it was not either of their best work but I think the critics were way too cruel. Its should not be viewed as a failure but as an enjoyable action adventure that it is.