Bullet Points: Last Man Down (2021)

The beauty of action cinema is that there is always a new and shiny movie coming out to fill that void left from the previous best. No matter how many Bond movies or superhero flicks come out each year, there are a whole slew of action-packed features just waiting for us to discover. Sometimes we miss that initial release and the film finds some sort of cult status. Other times, we’re lucky enough to ride that first wave of excitement and heap praise on a new action star in the making (hopefully).

Synopsis: After civilization succumbs to a deadly pandemic and his wife is murdered, John Wood -a special forces soldier – abandons his duty and becomes a hermit in the Nordic wilderness. Years later, a wounded woman appears on his doorstep. Maria Johnson is an escaped lab rat. And her pursuers believe her blood is the key to a worldwide cure. Though John is hesitant to get involved, all doubts are cast aside when he discovers Maria’s pursuer is none other than Commander Stone, the man that murdered his wife some years ago.

• A Dark Future: Last Man Down starts by telling us that our characters are living in world where a virus has wiped out most of the population of Europe and caused many of the survivors to move north into small habitats. Why exactly this is important information is up for debate. The virus and the eventual antidote/vaccine will certainly play a big role in the film but setting it in some de-populated world only kinda works since the cast is relatively small.
• John Wood: I’ve said on multiple occasions and even written an article on it (hero named John) but I think it goes without saying these days that the ultimate flex in your action film is to simply name your hero John. Not only that, Last Man Down’s John Wood also gets a great intro that will put those 80’s Commando vibes all over your body like a warm blanket.

• A Simple Life: John just lives in the forest in a really nice cabin that I would totally rent on Airbnb if available. He spends a lot of time working out, reading The Art of War (might come in handy later), and chopping enough firewood to fuel the sun for a decade. We see that he has a falling out with a group of commandos who killed his wife because she was infected. It appears that he is immune to the virus and now they want his precious blood.
• Mystery Blonde: We’ve all dreamed of model Olga Kent wandering onto our property but even John couldn’t have foreseen that she would stumble onto his mini lumberyard with a bullethole in her side. John nurses her back to health and we learn that the same group of assholes who killed John’s wife and tried to kill him are now after Olga’s Maria.

• Prepare for War: John only wants to live a peaceful life but he’s 100% prepared to make some serious war. They fortify the hell out of his cabin with sandbags, fox holes, and the simple boarding up of some windows. John also chops some more firewood cause apparently he won’t rest until every tree in the forest has been vanquished. John and Maria also make a few stupid mistakes where they take target practice and then a shower. You know…target practice outside while you’re hiding out from a bunch of commandos. The shower scene is mostly SFW as we’re only subjected to a couple pairs of ass cheeks.

• Let the Killing Begin: Once the henchmen under Commander Stone (Daniel Nehme) start showing up the film rarely slows down till the credits roll. The final act of the movie is John and Maria killing dozens of nameless bad guys with guns, knives, and arrows. None of the kills were the type you would call your best friend about but my favorite had to be when John murdered a couple of dudes while taking a dump.

• Sneakability: The finale at the cabin is full of some of the best or worst sneaking I’ve ever seen. John and Maria sneak around and kill some guys. Then they get snuck up on and knocked to the ground. It’s the same thing for about 20 minutes until we start to run out of ski mask wearing skinny guys in under armor. In my opinion, showing John come up with a plan for the defense of his cabin would have gone a long way as to making the final act feel like more than just utter incompetency from the bad guys. I mean, he was reading Sun Tzu earlier in the film and who would know the tactics of this group of commandos better than a former member of the team? Either way, some simple changes could have turned this revolving door massacre into something much, much better.

The Verdict: Last Man Down is what I would call a real “mixed bag”. On one hand, it has an action star in Daniel Stisen who looks the part like none other. His appearance is top notch and it totally fits the 1987 mold of “make your action lead a jacked up dude”. There is action a plenty in Last Man Down. In fact, at times some of the scenes seem to run together and I’m certain that I saw him kill the same stunt men at least half a dozen times. The times where LMD struggles as a film is when Stisen and company aren’t killing bad guys. The moments where they try to piece together a story about a virus and a potential bloodborne vaccine falls flat. None of it is really necessary and the fact that this takes place in some sort of future world where the Euro population has all but been wiped out is never relevant. Jason Momoa’s Braven from a few years ago has a similar concept done with a much better execution. For fans of 80’s action, though, you’ll think you woke up in some sort of dreamland when watching Stisen on screen. Given the right project moving forward, he could fill that void that has been left empty for the past couple of decades as the totally jacked action hero. Well worth a watch for us old school action fans!