The last resort is often your first last resort.

Today I watched Last Resort and I’m not talking about the 2012 film starring Andre Braugher, god rest his soul. I’m talking about the 2023 film Last Resort by director Jean-Marc Minéo. Jean-Marc is a Frenchie and six time French champion and one time world champion of Kung Fu. So I’m going to take it easy on ridiculing the guy because he could probably break every bone in my body with his pinky toe while cradling a full cup of coffee and not spill a drop or break a sweat. I’m sure his other two films are just fine.

Last Resort is your typical Tubi action movie; a group of terrorists from the middle eastern country of Fullabrownpeoplestan attack a bank in Thailand, even though most of the terrorists seem to be Thai with a few guys named Omar and Sahid sprinkled in for Middle Eastern spice. The terrorist group led by ex-special ops Cooper (Clayton Norcross) find themselves on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of a gun, as it turns out they kidnapped the wrong people. Specifically the wife and daughter of another ex-special ops man Michal (Jon Foo).

First off I’d like to say Clayton Norcross looks really good for 70 years old. John Foo made me realize the depressing reality that back in 2016 there was an attempt at rebooting Rush Hour as a television series. Foo plays Jonathan Lee who is definitely not Jackie Chan and you shouldn’t think he is just because he partners with a wise-cracking black guy who totally isn’t Chris Tucker (Justin Hires). I’m going to go on a limb here and say they don’t replicate this scene from Rush Hour:

Or maybe they do, I haven’t seen the show.

Last Resort is junk food movie, which begs the question is it any good? And the answer is…yeah. It’s like upper middle tier junk food. It’s somewhere between store brand and Red Baron pizza quality. I will give the film credit for things like using a lot of practical blood splatters and for the fact that John Foo and Clayton Norcross’ stunt double can do hand to hand fight scenes and shootouts with a surprisingly impressive show of strength. It’s not exactly the kind of film that has you on the edge of your seat wondering what will happen next, but it’s pretty good.

The camera work is pretty darn good too. I guess the downside to this movie is that outside of Clayton Norcross, it’s very obvious that none of the rest of the actors speak much English. The wife and daughter are both terrible actors, to the point where it’s almost refreshing seeing a bad child actor in a film after seeing so many movies where the kids have talent. Lee’s daughter feels pulled right out of a 90s Stephen King made for TV adaptation. This isn’t A Good Day To Die Hard, more like A Fine Day To Sprain Your Buttcheek.

We know the bad guy is middle eastern because he says “Allahu Akbar” over the phone at one point. Baron Von Muslim’s main purpose is to get his hands on a deadly gas that’s being stored in a bank vault in the bank, a concept that is utterly idiotic until you realize that Jean-Marc Minéo wanted to do a bank hostage film but also really wanted his villain to be a Muslim and can’t think of anything a Muslim bad guy would want other than a chemical WMD.

There aren’t really any middle easterners as part of the middle eastern terrorist group, almost like they wanted to have the stereotype villain without actually hiring Arabs onto the film. Last Resort is a hit or miss, and now I want to go back and watch Rush Hour’s only season before it got cancelled.

Rating: C+