Aside from a cameo appearance in Sylvester Stallone‘s The Expendables last year, Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn’t been in a feature film of any kind for years. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t been busy, he’s been governing the state of California and fathering a child with his maid. Now that he’s out of office, and going through a divorce, what better time to make his grand cinematic comeback?
Lionsgate has officially announced, after months of rumors, that The Guvernator will make his return to films in The Last Stand, an original action movie with Kim Ji-Woon (I Saw the Devil) set to direct. Andrew Knauer and Jeffrey Nachmanoff wrote the script, in which Schwarzenegger will play a small town sheriff who is the only thing standing between a drug kingpin and his border escape.
I’m not sure Schwarzenegger can sell movie tickets like he used to, even though Lionsgate bigwigs seem to have confidence in him. So much confidence in fact that it sounds like they’ve made The Last Stand a vehicle for his triumphant return.
I remember Schwarzenegger fondly from some of his seminal ’80s/’90s sci fi picks, like Terminator, Predator, and even The Running Man and Total Recall. Though I have fond memories, I’ve never thought of him as a particularly nuanced actor. More like a muscle-bound behemoth who was fun to watch kicking ass (as long as he didn’t have too many lines to say). If he can recapture that simplicity, then I can get behind this pic; if he’s going to be the “politician” version of his old self, I’d rather he stayed retired.
Here’s the synopsis for The Last Stand:
Schwarzenegger will be starring as Sheriff Owens, a man who has resigned himself to a life of fighting what little crime takes place in sleepy border town Sommerton Junction after leaving his LAPD post following a bungled operation that left him wracked with failure and defeat after his partner was crippled.
After a spectacular escape from an FBI prisoner convoy, the most notorious, wanted drug kingpin in the hemisphere is hurtling toward the border at 200 mph in a specially outfitted car with a hostage and a fierce army of gang members. He is headed, it turns out, straight for Summerton Junction, where the whole of U.S. law enforcement will have their last opportunity to make a stand and intercept him before he slips across the border forever. At first reluctant to become involved, and then counted out because of the perceived ineptitude of his small town force, Owens ultimately accepts responsibility for one of the most daring face offs in cinema history.
