[De Semlyen] does well in covering the stars who are his focus, with their rivalries and trash-talking providing some bursts of humour ... It seems obvious he likes some more than others, even if he acknowledges that they all, perhaps inevitably, developed big egos as their stardom, income and power rose.
There’s history to tell in The Last Action Heroes, but there’s not really a cohesive, galvanizing story ... A smooth writer and dogged researcher, Mr. de Semlyen keeps the narrative on track, but at a certain point readers realize they’re mostly getting a litany of facts ... He paints a robust picture of an industry feverishly cranking out movies ... But the book’s two biggest stars, Arnold and Sly, never come fully alive on the page, even as Mr. de Semlyen strains to puff their real rivalry up to mythic proportions. And the author misses the chance to note the technological and industrial changes that... banished these men from the screen ... More damagingly, Mr. de Semlyen dodges what his stars and their movies meant to the popular culture and political climate of their day, and he barely touches on the attitudes they modeled for how men should behave in the world ... The Last Action Heroes is a celebration, not a cultural analysis, and plenty of readers will be satisfied with that. But a tougher, more observant book might explore how the absurdly pumped-up bodies of these stars, and the way they dealt death accompanied by a quip, reflected the culture’s reaction to an age where men were being challenged about their place in society and America was being challenged about its place in the world.
The eight-hander format might have undone The Last Action Heroes were it not for its deft, hilarious, overlapping weave of anecdotes and detail ... What’s the moral of The Last Action Heroes? I would venture to say that any book that relates Van Damme’s boast during the filming of Universal Soldier that he “could crack a walnut open with his ass cheeks” perhaps doesn’t need one.
This book can be enjoyed on several levels. Readers who want A-lister trivia... will find plenty of satisfaction. Those looking for high-level film criticism mixed with social commentary are also in for a treat.
The author shows plenty of love for the high-adrenaline classics he discusses ... Additionally, de Semlyen’s astute analysis takes this up a notch (he suggests that ’80s action films satisfied audiences’ appetite for moral simplicity and “a renewed sense of purpose” after the disillusionment of Watergate and the Vietnam War).
