Last Action Hero
Danny Madigan is a big fan of Jack Slater, an action hero played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Days after days he goes to the local theatre to check out the Slater movies with his friend Nick, the projectionist. When Nick has to check the film of the latest Slater movie, he invites Danny to attend so he can check it out even before the premiere. Needless to say that Danny is all excited and when he arrives, he gets a magical ticket from Nick that little later transports him right into the movie. However, things turn for the worse when the hoodlum in the movie gets his hands on the ticket and manages to get back to the real world with it. Danny and Jack Slater have to follow him before he does any harm, but in the real world, things aren’t as easy as in the movies…
Sound and Vision:
Last Action Hero arrives on Blu-ray with reasonably sharp image, solid black levels, bright and shiny colors and plenty of detail. There’s also no edge enhancement which is a plus. Unfortunately, there’s quite a lot of grain and noise and we also got to see some smearing in the action scenes. It seems that the compression wasn’t really handled all too well.
The sound comes with a DTS-HD track which nicely uses all channels for surround effects and does a good job at keeping dialogues perfectly understandable at all times. However, explosions and stuff where the subwoofer is supposed to come into action are a bit less.
Extras:
None
Conclusion:
Last Action Hero dates from 1993 and hasn’t really withstood time very well. While the lighthearted approach combined with the action was quite decent back in the days, it can’t compete with modern blockbusters anymore. It’s funny to see the Governator take himself not too seriously, but the action can’t compete with modern days movies and overall it’s become a bit childish. I would certainly advise this movie to younger kids, but adults may find it quite boring.
The Blu-ray release comes with ups and downs. The image quality has improved over the earlier DVD releases but really doesn’t compare to more recent releases as there’s quite some issues. The sound has a similar issue that it does a good job in the mid and upper range, but fails to impress in the lower regions.
5.0