Last Action Hero

Burt loves action movies. He has seen every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie several times. I don’t care for explosions, gun fights and car chases. But Burt insisted that I watch The Last Action Hero which came out in 1993. Arnold stars as Jack Slater, a Los Angeles police detective. The movie was a howl!! It was a send up of action movies.

The movie starts with a boy, played by Austin O’Brien, going to a theater where a kindly projectionist gives him a magic ticket and lets him watch a new movie in the empty theater. The movie stars his favorite actor, Jack Slater. As he is watching the movie, the magic ticket begins to glow. A bomb thrown at Slater by pursuers comes out of the screen and lands in the theater. When it explodes, the boy is catapulted into the movie and winds up in the car with Slater.

The boy keeps trying to convince Slater that he is a fictional character in a movie. There are many action movie inside jokes and they skewer just about every cliché you can imagine. They must have had a great time making this movie. Eventually, the villain crosses over into the “real world” of the boy and Arnold must cross over to find him. He finds the real world is not quite the same as the movie world. Near the end of the movie, the fictional Jake Slater confronts the “real” Arnold Schwarzenegger who has come to the movie premier.

The movie didn’t do well initially. Many of the action movie fans did not get or did not appreciate the joke. People who don’t like actions movies didn’t go. When it was released on VHS and DVD, it became successful as a cult classic. Even if you don’t like actions movies, I can verify that this one is great satire.