Last Man Standing (2011) Reviews

• Drauma, suspense, kick butt action thriller

  jagfanlinda2011-06-07

  Close Quarters, released under name of The Last Man Standing. This fast paced action flick is Lifetimes breakout from "ladies" and family films. Stars Catherine Bell as soccer mom married to vet. making pancakes, telling bedtime stories to small daughter. Typical stay at home mom and wife. Suddenly her quiet little warm life falls apart when her husband is taken . She has to reach back into her past. A past she has locked away. To find the reason and save the man she loves. This great film uses fast flashbacks to show us her background as secret operative for the military.It moves very fast. Lots of action, blasts, fights,)Catherine does the car chase driving herself) kinks and turns. Who is after he and why? Catherine Bell is excellent as the ex-secret agent. She does most of the tricks and kicks herself. The dead and injured pile up like stove wood. The Last Man Standing (Close Quarters0 is written by team of Jolene Rice (Still Small Voices) and Adam Beason, Catherine's real life hubby. Excellent writing, acting and very great story. See again on June 11th. Do not miss this one

• Hotrod Housewife

  HallmarkMovieBuff2011-07-28

  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.

• Could Have Been So Much Better!

  eldorado802011-07-25

  First, let me say that I love Catherine Bell and make an effort to watch everything she is in. With her as the main character and a very intriguing storyline, I had high expectations going into this movie. I must say, however, that I came away somewhat disappointed with the overall experience. I agree with the previous reviewer who said that the acting was excellent for the most part. Ms. Bell's performance was flawless. She is such a great actress whose talents are sadly under-utilized. How great she would have been in movies like "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and "Salt." The actress whom we all know was cast for the starring roles in those films was clearly unbelievable as the characters she portrayed; Ms. Bell would have been perfect. As for "Last Man Standing," the concept was original and the story was believable, but I must disagree with the previous reviewer's assessment that the writing was excellent. There were four glaring errors or plot holes that for me took much away from the movie as a whole: 1. When Nick said to Abby: "Don't forget to feed Gatsby," why did it take her so long to realize that he was giving her a clue as to how to find him? She totally dismissed it until later seeing a tiger on the TV and then having a revelation. Abby was a very intelligent woman who probably would have gotten the message immediately. 2. When her contact told her that her husband's location was a warehouse four miles from the pay phone she was calling from, she immediately hung up and proceeded to go there. How did she know where to go without an address? This could have easily been remedied with a more precise description of the location, and was just sloppy scripting. 3. When the man was ordered to kill her husband, why in the world would he place a blindfold on him and then step back 20 feet to take aim before shooting him? This made no sense whatsoever. This, of course, allowed Ms. Bell to come up behind him and tell him to drop his weapon, but the scene could easily have been written to play out in a more realistic manner. 4. When the second man came back to check on her husband, he realized that something was amiss and said, "Where's your blindfold?" How did he know that there ever was a blindfold? Nitpicking? Maybe, but these are mistakes that a more experienced writer would never have made and could easily have been averted. Nevertheless, if you like Catherine Bell, watch this movie. If you can overlook a few amateur writing mistakes, you will enjoy it.

• Absolute garbage!!

  m_imdb-664-2630752013-04-21

  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.

• TV movie starring Catherine Bell

  blanche-22013-01-26

  Catherine Bell stars with Anthony Michael Hall and Mekhi Phifer in "Last Man Standing," a 2011 TV movie, also produced by Bell. Do I need to say it's a Lifetime Movie? It is. It gets points for not being a retread of their stalker movies, wife killer movies, husband killer movies, and two women in love with the same man movies. In this film, Bell plays a former military secret operative, retired, and now a mom with a little girl and a husband (Hall, totally wasted). Suddenly, her life is turned upside down - one of her partners in the military commits suicide, and shortly afterward, her husband is kidnapped. Bell has to go back into her past skill set and do what the kidnappers want, all the time searching for her husband. This wasn't great, though it had some good sequences. I figured out who was behind it practically before I knew what she was ordered to do in order to keep her husband from being killed. The performances were so-so - I frankly don't find Bell that interesting an actress. And one thing I hated was that she and her husband were so nauseatingly lovey-dovey, in order to set the stage that she led this idyllic life. This film is a tiny bit reminiscent of "The Long Kiss Goodnight," a film starring Geena Davis, which is fantastic and highly recommended. Last Man Standing is just okay, but if you're a fan of "Army Wives'" Bell, you will like it a lot more.