Arnold’s back with firefights and fisticuffs
LOS ANGELES — Arnold Schwarzenegger’s back as a movie headliner, and what a way to return after seven years as the governor of California.
His latest starring role is in the crime flick The Last Stand.
At a Beverly Hills, Calif., hotel to promote the comeback, Schwarzenegger was his usual charming self as he casually chatted with a few reporters before his news conference. Trading small talk, he made it seem like he’d never been away. But times have changed and he knows it.
“It’s kind of like a scary thing to be back,” admitted the 65-year-old a little later. “There’s been a whole generation of actors who have come up in the meantime. (Studios) forget you very quickly in our business.”
Certainly, pundits will be paying close attention as the former governor seeks votes of a different kind at the box office in the wake of his domestic controversy.
Everybody knows the trouble Arnie has seen. His
“How many times do you get to have a chase in a cornfield”
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
25-year marriage to Maria Shriver dissolved in a blaze of publicity after it was revealed he had fathered a son with the family’s housekeeper 14 years earlier. The revelation occurred in 2011, just as the 38th California governor was quietly circling back to his previous career as an action star.
Rather than hide, Schwarzenegger decided on proactive damage control, which included an autobiographical book, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, and a high-profile fall promotional tour of the memoir.
Before that, he said hello with a teasing cameo in Sylvester Stallone’s 2010 all-star action romp, The Expendables, and followed that with a co-starring part in last summer’s sequel, which scored an impressive $300.4 million U.S. at the box office worldwide.
Now we arrive at Schwarzenegger’s Last Stand, a made-to-order shoot-’em-up in which Schwarzenegger portrays a former L.A. cop who lands a sheriff job at a small U.S. town bordering Mexico. His plan is to escape the violence from his past.
But that changes abruptly when he’s asked to stop the leader of a Mexican drug cartel heading his way by car. Complications develop when sheriff and inexperienced deputies are confronted by a heavily armed gang waiting for its boss.
Johnny Knoxville, Rodrigo Santoro, Jaimie Alexander and Luis Guzman provide the comic relief as the members of the sheriff ’s mostly undisciplined posse. Forest Whitaker plays the FBI agent on his way to assist the sheriff. Eduardo Noriega portrays the crazed crime czar and Peter Stormare is the head of the henchmen facing off with the sheriff and his band of misfits.
At the centre, of course, is Schwarzenegger’s hero, who lets his actions speak volumes in fire fights and fisticuffs. He acknowledged his reappearance on a movie set was a fairly easy transition, likening it to “riding a bike or skiing.”
His supporting cast confirmed that Schwarzenegger made a smooth return during the shoot in and around Albuquerque, N.M., last year.
“He made it so easy for you,” said Alexander, who played one of his deputies. “He’s so open and pleasant and gregarious.”
Knoxville, the Jackass practical joker, agreed. But there were no patented Knoxville pranks on Schwarzenegger off camera. “That would have been a horrible idea,” he said. “The man can bench-press 800 lbs.”
Indeed, the former Austrian body builder looks fit in The Last Stand and proves to be just as convincing in the action scenes.
His senior citizen status doesn’t mean that the actor took a break from attempting most of his stunts. He insisted on doing his own driving in a car chase through a massive cornfield.
“How many times do you get to have a chase in a cornfield?” said the actor, who couldn’t resist the challenge. “That’s the fun of making movies.”
We can expect to see him having fun in many more films in his post-political career. He’s in Ten with Avatar’s Sam Worthington, which will hit theatres soon. He reunited with Stallone for the action flick The Tomb, set for release in September.
And Schwarzenegger confirmed that another Conan the Barbarian picture is in early stages of development, while a script for a Twins sequel called Triplets is being prepared.
“A lot of it has to do with timing,” Schwarzenegger said. “That’s what show business and politics have in common.”
What he always understood is the supply and demand of film economics.
“Every actor longs for challenging roles and to do things they have not done,” said Schwarzenegger. “I am very open-minded, but at the same time, I have to be realistic.
“In the end, it is show business. I always think about how I can make sure (the studio) gets the money back with a little profit, of course.”