LAST MAN STANDING (51)

Directed by: Walter Hill

Starring: Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken

The Pitch: In a desert town riven by gangland war, a mysterious stranger hires himself out to the highest bidder, arranging for the two factions to destroy each other.

Theo Sez: A fairly faithful version of YOJIMBO, except that it dilutes it in small ways: making explicit (usually in voice-over) what could have been left unsaid, softening the impact of the hero's one sentimental deed by making him more generally a friend to the oppressed (most notably the friendly inn-keeper, much more a victim in this version), making the town a hellhole instead of a respectable place under siege, thus negating the story's elements of SHANE - and, of course, pumping up the testosterone, the bloody shoot-outs and generally the macho posturing even if, as ever, Willis does an amusing line in tough-guy wisecracks ("You're gonna have to kill me"; "It'll hurt if I do"). It works best as spectacle, and in fact it's hard to beat for pure texture, Ry Cooder's moody score wafting over long, luxuriously slow dissolves from one gorgeous-looking scene to another (orange filters to the fore, swirling dust a speciality). It gets tiresome long before the end but, in small doses, it's near-perfect pulp: everyday acts of violence in a world too stoned on its own lush decadence to care.