Golden Ticket
“Last Action Hero is aiming to take down cliches, while simultaneously using their fantasy to do so. Last Action Hero is a smarter movie than it’s often credited for. Few if any movies of the ‘80s were willing to look down on sexist tropes. Here in Last Action Hero, women cops wear outrageous leather with little coverage. Even the kid (Austin O’Brien) realizes the absurdity.”
Read our full Last Action Hero Blu-ray review for more.
Video
Sony brings a stellar master to 4K, posing a challenge to the encode given the up-and-down grain structure intensity. Compression holds though, maintaining a natural film veneer. Last Action Hero doesn’t fall to compression. The sharpness under that is exceptional, nailing the fidelity and revealing gobs of texture. Any faults lie at the source (there’s an optical zoom around 17-minutes that’s… eww).
Beefy contrast emboldens the frame, lifted by a hefty HDR pass. Highlights hit blinding peaks, full of life in massive gains over Blu-ray releases. Strong blacks deliver the densest shadows, spectacular in establishing image depth and dimensionality. It’s consistent.
Refined color saturation keeps Last Action Hero vibrant, but without going too far as to exaggerate things. Primaries stick out, attractive in their richness. Explosions pop with oranges. The theater carpeting is a bold red. Sony draws out some potent greens from trees and grass. Flesh tones? Spot on.
Audio
There’s nothing subtle in this Atmos track, favoring the rears for everything, even the heights. Music swells into each speaker to a nearly distracting degree. Bullets sweep the soundstage, not necessarily accurate or precise, but fun. Strong ambiance litters streetside scenes, staying active even when away from the action.
Boomy low-end enhances explosions, the bass running deep, tight, and powerful. Range is spectacular, and easily holds up against modern action flicks. Other discs drive deeper, but for an early ’90s effort, it’s plenty muscular.
Extras
Director John McTiernan provides a commentary track on the 4K disc, along with the other bonuses. Sony includes a 1993 making of, running 6:36. Six deleted/alt scenes run a little past nine minutes, and look restored given their sharpness/clarity. A music video and trailer finish this off.
Last Action Hero
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Extras
Movie
While whiffing its message, Last Action Hero has a blast sending up action movie tropes and Schwarzenegger runs with the material that mocks his own career.
User Review
( votes)The following six screen shots serve as samples for our subscription-exclusive set of 51 full resolution uncompressed 4K screen shots grabbed directly from the UHD:
Matt Paprocki
Matt Paprocki has critiqued home media and video games for 20 years across outlets like Washington Post, Variety, Rolling Stone, Forbes, IGN, Playboy, Polygon, Ars, and others. His current passion project is the technically minded DoBlu.com. You can read Matt's body of work via his personal WordPress blog, and follow him on Twitter @Matt_Paprocki.