Undescribable Perfection

Good concept, poorly executed.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

20 yrs. ago, this movie has been recommended to me as a cool, exciting Western, by the guy from a video store, a rental store (instead, it's trite and boring). Here, Rourke began what has become a series of villain roles ('Double Team', by Tsui Hark, 'Out in Fifty' by B. Christopher and S. Leet, 'Get Carter' by Kay, 'Picture Claire' by McDonald, 'Shergar' by Lewiston)—either thugs or sleazy gangsters. His appearance reminds of Brando's '60s follies. It's also his true first descent into trash.By his glamor, Rourke always reminded more of Brando, than of Clift or Newman. Instead of the Leone movie, he got this valueless role as a bastard and mean officer.And suddenly, there's his Asian, striking, outlandish, mean, undeserved look, as if he was playing an alien warlord, with his newfound burnout ugliness and pulp thug menace. From now on, there's no more about hijacking scripts, but about Rourke doing movies on his own, having it his own way, irrespective of what everyone else on the set is doing. His role here could as well fit into one of the cheap fantasy movies of the '80s, like 'The Beastmaster' by Coscarelli, or others.Otherwise, 'The Last Outlaw' is worthless rubbish, with an annoying lead; I had already seen Dermot Mulroney in 'Bad Girls', and didn't like him.Costner, Willis, Gibson, Gere, Hackman, Crowe, Depp did images of broadly Western types, from various epochs, in the '90s; Cruise didn't.

An interesting cast does their best, with some material borrowed from Peckinpaugh and Leone. We get the closeups, and the blood spurting slow motion, along with some genuine tension. Mickey Rourke's character is menacing in an almost mystical way. What is not so good is that one must suspend disbelief, when the posse makes Mickey Rourke their new leader, when men seem to take endless bloody gunshots with little effect, and the distracting, out of place use of four letter words. The scenery is stunning, camera work above average, along with some acceptable acting. I consider "The Last Outlaw" to be a slightly above average western. - MERK

"Gee? Which way should we go?" "How many bullets did you say we had?" "Lets stop again since we are being chased." Yes, I am making fun of this movie. Why might you ask? For the simple reason that this film was far from being serious. Ok, we are never fully introduced to the 7 men in the gang to begin with. We get a small intro to some of the men but we never understand not are we identified with who they are. With that, it makes it hard to feel anything for these make believe "cowboys". Then, the plot of the story is one dragged on chase scene that has no ending. Watching this film, you search for an reason what so ever when you ask yourself why they are doing what they end up doing. The biggest question is why the law didn't kill Graff once they came upon the men at the hill? They kept Graff alive for the main reason of finding the men. Oh no, instead they keep him alive for no reason except to have him tag along. that makes tons of sense. Then again, the rest of the film had no major point. I feel bad since the only good acting in the movie came from Steve Buscemi and he is the first one to get it by Graff. Long story short, leave this one on the video shelf for the next sucker to come along.

This is absolutely one of my favorit western movies. I have written earlier that i thought Young Guns and Tombstone was the best,but that was because i had not seen this one. In the lead role you'll find Mickey Rourke as Graff,and he was like made for this kind of movie.He is the perfect bad guy. The movie has also other famous actors like John C. McGinley and Steve Buscemi,but no one can match the incredible Mickey Rourke.The story is about a gang of bank robbers in the wild west and after a while the gang starts to get tired of their leader Graff and decides to shot him after a job and leave him to die.Unnfortunantly for them Graff survives and are forced by the sherif and his menn to help to hunt down the gang.But no one knows that Graff has a plan of his own,to kill everybody and take off with the money.This movie has a real western feel to it and all the actors play their role great.