Harry Dean Stanton Also Joins
Even at 64 years old, Arnold Schwarzenegger is still capable of surprises — and we’re not just talking about bastard children. The action star’s career has pretty much been one blockbuster movie after another to varying degrees of success but he’s certainly never done something like “The Last Stand.” A modestly budgeted quasi-western, with a gaggle of character actors in supporting roles, all in a film marking the Hollywood debut by a foreign filmmaker, in this case, “I Saw the Devil” helmer Kim Ji-woon. We’re definitely curious and now that production is officially underway, a few more names have joined the genuinely random, sort of WTF cast.
Johnny Knoxville, Forest Whitaker and the always awesome Harry Dean Stanton are rounding out the cast on the film, though their roles haven’t been specified. Penned by first-time writer Andrew Knauer and veteran Jeffrey Nachmanoff—and recently rewritten by George Nolfi—the story follows a disgraced LAPD cop in a new job in a small town, who is trying to stop a drug cartel leader, Cortez (Eduardo Noriega), who has just busted out of prison and is trying to make it across the border with $400 million bucks. Jaimie Alexander, Zach Gilford and Rodrigo Santoro are the team of cops on the small town force working with Ahnuld, and together they will team up against Peter Stormare who works for Cortez.
We’re hoping that Ji-woon’s stylish edge isn’t rounded down and that this lives up to the gritty, muscular story it’s promising. Certainly, there are a lot of different ways this can wind up and it’s that unpredictability about the project that is perhaps the most exciting. We just hope everyone is pushing this thing to the boundaries of outrageousness because that may be the only way this will work. Guess we’ll find out when it opens on the far too distant January 18, 2013. [THR]