The Last Outlaw (1993)

The Last Outlaw

I don't think they could have got a better cast if they tried, you just have to look at the stars in this film to show that, Mickey Rourke, Steve Buscemi, Ted Levine, Keith David, John C. McKinley and the wasted Dermot Mulrony who a lot of western fans will remember him for one of his early roles as Dirty Steve in Young Guns. I saw this when it came out on video in the mid nineties and films that went straight to video back in the nineties were great like Surviving the Game, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man etc and the Last outlaw was the same. The beginning of the film is a blatantly obvious homage to the beginning of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch where they rob the bank and the town's sheriff and his men are waiting for them to have a huge gun battle. But the film really starts when Dermot Mulrony shoot's the leader of the pack Graff (Mickey Rourke) for trying to execute one of there men and that's when the films suddenly becomes a revenge story. Of course Graff survives and is picked up by the posse hunting them down and instead and giving himself up he ends up offering the posse to actually be there leader and hunt down his own men for leaving his for dead. From there it's like a cat and mouse western which doesn't stop till the end credits and it really delves into the story of leadership. You have fine performances here from Mickey Rourke as the sadistic Graff but the films goes to Dermot Mulrony as the desperate Eustos who battles with thought of whether what he did was right as his men are picked off one by one. This film ain't no Good the Bad and the Ugly but it definitely bests any John Wayne film ever made (I'm an obvious John Wayne Hater).