I was hoping it might not be from the brief summary I saw, but that's exactly what it turned out to be.
I make it a rule to rarely watch made for TV movies, but like a few others on this site, I'm a bit of a Catherine Bell fan, so I let my guard down for her ... and was duly disappointed. Mind you, she is the best thing going in the movie, but she doesn't have a lot to back her up.
I don't necessarily go out of my way to watch big budget extravaganzas, but the lack of an appropriate budget for this production is pretty telling. From Afghanistan scenes filmed in close-up with just 3 soldiers, to silly looking Keystone Cops car park car chases, Last Man Standing screams cheap. There's virtually no real action till the third act, where the "big reveal", which was glaringly obvious to all and sundry from around 20 minutes in, finally occurs.
As suggested by my heading, the narrative is pretty neatly extrapolated (minus the amnesia) from Renny Harlin's excellent 1996 action movie, which almost 25 years later is still capable of providing a strong adrenaline shot. It also has Geena Davis and Samuel L Jackson gleefully sprouting all those clever one-liners. By contrast I'm afraid Last Man Standing is just deadly dull. A run of the mill script, no exciting set pieces to speak of and a predictable storyline which only stands out, due to a notable lack of tension, no matter how many times Catherine stares at her watch. I gave TLKG 8, so I'm giving LMS a generous 4.
