Last Action Hero

'No one likes a smart-ass,' Jack Slater (Schwarzenegger) advised young Danny (O'Brien), the kid who keeps insisting that Jack's fictional. He has a point. Here's the set-up: an elderly projectionist allows 11-year-old Danny to sneak into the midnight preview of the new Schwarzenegger action movie, Jack Slater IV. A magic ticket (!) transports him into the flick, where he helps his hero tackle the evil Benedict (Dance), until the killer in turn breaks through the screen to wreak havoc in 'reality'. It's a promising scenario but McTiernan pitches ham-fistedly at a post-modern attention span and shoots with the subtlety of a rampaging rhino. This is film-making of the 'more- is-more' school: heavy metal action, but no character, no suspense. It may be the first action art movie but this po-mo parody is so self-reflexive it scarcely requires an audience.