★★☆☆☆
In The Last Son, Sam Worthington dons an impressively fuzzy, straggly beard to play a bad old-time outlaw. Once cursed by Native Americans, one of his many, many sons is apparently destined to kill him. Bet he regrets all the drinkin’ and whorin’ he did now, eh? Undaunted, he sets out to kill each and every one of those sons, and by the time the movie opens, he’s almost reached the end of his list. That’s what people in these stories always try to do, fight their fate. Hey, we all die in the end, why not just relax and make the best of things while you can, like most people do?
Because he’s one mean, tough son of a gun, that’s why! With has-been Heather Graham as a hooker with a heart of gold and pop sensation Machine Gun Kelly as a vicious bank robber, all the familiar Western archetypes are here, and there’s plenty of blood and vengeance. There’s nothing wrong with all these archetypes and clichés, of course; there’s a good reason they become clichés to begin with, and The Last Son could have been a pretty fun, if forgettable, ninety minutes.
However, the picture insists on using the brooding style of The Revenant and, indeed, almost every Western since 1989’s Unforgiven. Oh, and why don’t we see deserts or plains in Westerns any more? It’s all snow now: The Revenant of course, True Grit, The Hateful Eight, Red Dead Redemption II…