Last Action Hero
Action! If there’s one word associated with cinema, the tension of movie sets, and the focus of attention, it’s this one. Action is very often at the heart of popular cinema: Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock hands in Safety Last! (1923), Cary Grant threatened and strafed by a plane in North by Northwest (1959), Franka Potente gasping for air in Run Lola Run (1998)... Westerns, swashbuckler films, martial arts or adventure flicks, thrillers, all these genres rely on action—sometimes frenetic, sometimes meticulously measured.
From movies by Sergei Eisenstein to Gilles Carle, from John Ford to John Boorman and Werner Herzog, via Paul Verhoeven, Kathryn Bigelow, Park Chan-wook, Érik Canuel, and Nicolas Winding Refn, this series will take you through the full range of emotions, from laughter to thrills, from fear to satisfaction.
A young movie buff receives a magical ticket that allows him to enter the film he’s watching and join Jack Slater, his favorite hero who stars in a series of action movies. He tries to make Slater understand the fictional nature of the world he inhabits, which causes them quite a few problems. Built entirely around the narrative device of metalepsis—which refers to the transgression of the boundary between two diegetic worlds—the film is an absolute delight, particularly because Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the hero, and the film flirts with satire and self-parody.
John McTiernan
John McTiernan is an American film director, producer and writer best known for his work in the action film genre. His films include Predator (1987), Die Hard (1988), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Last Action Hero (1993), and The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), almost all featuring a reimagined version of the macho hero, played notably by Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sean Connery.
