Last Man Standing (2011)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Sorry, this movie sucks

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Standardized but well-made action thriller, with a gender-reversal: here, it's the wife that has to move heaven and earth to rescue her kidnapped husband. Ernest Dickerson is an experienced director and the film is made with professionalism and does not look like a made-for-TV project, although you'll probably forget it as soon as you've finished watching it. Catherine Bell is a very good action heroine - sneaky and quick, no fuss, wham-bam-thank-you-mam - but her abilities are underutilized; Mekhi Phifer and Anthony Micahel Hall provide solid support, and there is one plot twist that I feel almost ashamed for allowing it to fool me. **1/2 out of 4.

I'm sorry to all the other reviewers who, clearly, have a fondness for Ms. Bell but I felt more like Guil Fisher - the whole script was mind-numbingly moronic.In the scene where she's just come back from dropping her daughter off with a neighbour, what ON EARTH is she doing with her hands while she is 'composing herself'? I really don't know what the director was trying to induce her to portray but maybe it's something only a woman would understand.Then, when she goes to the widow's house, she flits downstairs and opens a locked door by taking a credit card from her little handbag and no more than shows it to the door and she's in. And then there's that old American movies rubbish of the paper knife to open a locked desk drawer. For God's sake, get real. Haven't you lot done that one to death yet? Do you think we're all idiots out here?The she's on the phone, logging into a secure military system - one she's had no contact with for EIGHT years - but her pass code still works!!So, she's flying all over the place, desperately trying to rescue her husband (yeah, right) but still manages to stop at the public phone to call her neighbour to read bedtime stories to her kid! For goodness sake!! Who wrote this stuff?This woman can only be 100lbs soaking wet but she's capable of chucking 200lb security guards all over the place with hardly a flick of her pretty little lashes....and when she finally gets into this high security building by incapacitating three burly guards, she then manipulates a computer system she's never seen before, bypassing ALL of the network security protocols by - get this - popping into some unlocked broom cupboard she's never been in before and swapping a couple of wires around on a network she knows absolutely nothing about! HAHAHAHAHAHA!! This garbage is PRICELESS!! I nearly wet meself!! So the gaumless writers think that NOBODY out here knows ANYTHING about computer security???Then there's the car chase. Talk about Keystone Cops! All she has to do is drive around this car park and the cops keep driving into the bushes. BRILLIANT!!It was at this point that I just about gave up because I'd laughed as much as I wanted to and I felt that I'd been patronised enough. Also, the sickening lovesick-teenager-like relationship that these two had left me looking for the vomit bag!This is yet another American movie made simply because someone decided that Catherine Bell needed to make another movie. Who cares that none of the scenes make sense? And they don't. No common sense at all has been exercised in the direction of the plot. The whole mess is just thrown together with a hubris so common in cheap American films.A movie FOR women, written BY a woman, in my view, because not one of the scenes survives close scrutiny.This stuff is nothing more than an insult to the intelligence of anyone who watches it.

First of all the leading lady Catherine Bell was so unbelievable that I had to laugh at this little woman knocking out all the men around her, forcing police cars off the road and generally being a pain in the butt. I was laughing at most of the picture. She looked cross eyed most of the time and definitely not an attractive person to watch on a large screen. Why is this actress working? Then the plot was silly and most of the time just boring to watch. Kept turning to another channel for relief. But wanted to see the ending. I just can't get over all of these large men being attacked by her and she the victor. That made this totally unbelievable. I kept wanting someone to catch her and lock her up. But she keeps getting away with breaking the law. What a waste of Anthony Michael Hall. That's it. Dislike this actress.

Like "eldorado80" (reviewer #2 on this film), I, too, am a fan of Catherine Bell, and as such, I made a point to catch this film's last scheduled showing on the Lifetime channel in its initial run there simply because Ms. Bell starred in it. The title of these comments arises from Bell's stunt driving to escape the police in one scene from the film.eldorado80 cited four presumed holes in the script. I would add a fifth. Early in the film, Abby Collins (Bell's character) receives a phone call from her war buddy, Jeremy Davis (Mekhi Phifer) that the other member of their three-person team in Afghanistan back in 2002 has committed suicide, and that the funeral will be two days hence.Later that evening, as they are preparing to retire for the night, Abby's husband Nick (Anthony Michael Hall) asks her who called her earlier that day, so she gives him the lowdown on the call.The next scene we see is Abby at the grave site. As the funeral ends, Abby calls Nick to tell him it's over, and apologizes for some unspecified behavior "last night." But there is no "last night" in the film, as the previous action occurred two days earlier.As an aside, am I the only viewer who finds it curious that Bell's 2002 Afghanistan colleague here, the aforementioned Jeremy Davis, has the same first name as her son who died in today's Afghanistan war in her current "day job," TV's "Army Wives"? Bottom line: despite any real or perceived flaws, "Last Man Standing" is an exciting, suspenseful thriller wherein our girl Cat gets to kick butt. I loved it, despite the fact that I figured out the bad guy very early on.