Bullet Points: Last Man Standing (1995)
Recently I was watching an episode of one of my favorite TV shows, Blue Bloods, when I saw a familiar face. That face belonged to Jeff Wincott.
The Toronto born Wincott’s big break was working on the Canadian cop show, Night Heat, for 4 seasons in the 80’s. That no doubt helped prepare him for life as an action star in the golden era of direct to video action movies in the 1990’s.
In 1995, Wincott starred in a movie entitled Last Man Standing. This is not to be confused with the 1996 movie Last Man Standing starring Bruce Willis or the Tim Allen sitcom of the same name.
- The Premise: Wincott plays Detective Kurt Bellmore. After he and his partner Detective Frank Kane, affectionately known as Doc and played by the fantastic Jonathan Banks of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul fame, bust a big money thief Snake Underwood with hundreds of thousands of stolen dollars and only $3500 of it is claimed in evidence, Bellmore starts to get suspicious of the cop who was in charge of processing the evidence, Lt. Seagrove. Bellmore and Seagrove are butting heads in no time. Eventually Bellmore finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place, with dirty cops on one side and Snake Underwood and his ne’er do wells on the other.
- Highlight of the Movie: The chase scene involving Snake Underwood and his gang in an armored car and Kurt Bellmore on a motorcycle was the highlight of the movie for me. It had everything you’d want in a chase scene, cars flipping, a jack knifed semi, gunfire, cars on fire, a multi-car accident and you’ll cheer as Bellmore catches up with Snake and gets from his motorcycle to the back the armored car!
- Stand By Your Man: Jillian McWhirter plays Kurt’s wife, Anabella Bellmore. When Kurt realizes he can’t trust anyone on the police force and he knows Snake and his crew could be after him too, he reacts the way any good husband would and his first instinct is to get Anabella out of harm’s way. But to her credit, she refuses to go to stay with her father. She takes her marriage vows seriously and she is sticking by Kurt for better or for worse. Even after Snake’s man Kazz (played by Robert LaSardo) tries to blow them up, she is still there. I did question the target practice the two had. I get that Kurt wanted to make sure she could handle a gun if things got rough, but since them going on the run was all impromptu, as going on the run often is, my guess is they had limited ammo. Joe Bob Briggs did want me to let you all know that McWhirter does show her boobs in this one.
Last Man Standing was a well executed action movie. After just watching Jonathan Banks give a stellar performance on Better Call Saul a few nights earlier, him popping up in this movie was a pleasant surprise. The multiple layers of villains kept the heel side strong and Wincott was 100% believable as a cop trying to do the right thing when doing the wrong thing would be so much easier.
It is movies like Last Man Standing that kept the direct to video action movie market thriving through out the 1990’s. It was my pleasure reviewing the first (and I’m sure not the last) Jeff Wincott movie for Bulletproof Action.
Here are a few more Last Man Standing Bullet Points before I go…
- The Chris Lorenzo Collection: Some of the sport coats that Kurt Bellmore wears at the start of the movie look like they were taken directly out of the closet of Detective Chris Lorenzo from Silk Stalkings. I definitely preferred that look over his “vest only” look at the end of the movie.
- Road Rage: I mentioned the armored car/motorcycle chase earlier, but there’s also a chase involving two Corvettes, one driven by Snake the other by Kurt. During this chase, Kurt displays some signs of serious road rage with a steady stream of expletives. He might want to talk to someone in anger management.
- Isn’t Dementia Funny?: We find out that Doc had a cheating ex-wife, no doubt to explain why this veteran of the police force is living with his mother. And speaking of his mother, the movie seems to make light of the fact she shows signs of dementia… after all, why else would she put mushrooms in her son’s cereal?
- Don’t Smoke: I’m guessing after seeing him in this film, the anti-tobacco people weren’t in any hurry to ask Jeff Wincott to join their Don’t Smoke campaigns. No worries Jeff, the Ultimate Warrior has it covered…
