Just as this masterpiece links its source novel, Hammett's Red Harvest, to previous adaptations YOJIMBO and A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (by throwing gangsters and noir into western/samurai melodrama), so too, does Walter Hill create the postmodernist link between Leone and Tarantino. This is what I consider the third film in a trilogy -- starting with THE WARRIORS and continuing with STREETS OF FIRE -- that appears to take place on another planet entirely, one where several periods in American history are jumbled together, anachronisms be damned because we never seem to have a footing on a specific place in time (and no, it's not MAD DOG TIME, which tried a similar idea and failed). Sure, it takes place in Prohibition-era Texas, but isn't this a world outside of our own, where reality seems rooted entirely in other movies and their conventions? One could argue Leone was onto this with ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, but Hill beat KILL BILL to the punch by at least two decades, and his loosely-connected "trilogy" is far more assured and accomplished.
LAST MAN STANDING does for the American Crime Drama what The Beatles did for rock 'n roll on The White Album: it encapsulates the long history of a particular genre into lean, edible pop grandeur. It even pauses to acknowledge the contemporary popularity of Hong Kong heroic bloodshed (reflected in the use of John Smith's twin pistols). And Hill turns everything on its ear, giving us a downbeat, cynical story with an anticlimactic ending that -- incredibly -- feels absolutely right. Brilliantly photographed, edited, scored, and performed by a cast of old pros (Willis and Bruce Dern, terrific, are nearly upstaged by David Patrick Kelly, Ken Jenkins and a non-hammy Christopher Walken), this is a sure vote for Criminally Underrated Genre Film of the 90s.
