Customer Reviews

The Last Sentinel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Katee Sackhoff has become one of my favorite tough girls. Starbuck, Bionic Woman v1 both were great roles for a beautiful tough sci-fi girl...So I when I found "The Last Sentinel" I was excited with hopes to find an unknown treasure of a sleeper. Unfortunately, this was almost (but not quite)as bad as sci-fi gets.

The plot was terrible, the story terrible, the acting mostly bad, the special effects were almost not existent... But at least it had Katee Sackhoff, which raised it one *

Here's the deal... Pass on this!

1 ½ *

The Last Sentinel (which originally debuted on the Sci-Fi channel) is another run-of-the-mil post-apocalyptic action flick, which places too much emphasis on flimsy action sequences & cheap thrills and little elsewhere. Muddy cinematography (apparent poor lighting on sets, which not even the editing could conceal), bad acting and horrific choreography (writer/director Jesse Johnson, whose done stunt work on such films as Beowulf, MI3 and T3 should be ashamed). In fact, the best fight sequence in the entire movie is the final showdown at the end of the film (which isn't saying much at all). Mainly due to that fact that it doesn't consist of a guns blazing shooting spree like all of it's other battles.

Don "The Dragon" Wilson (the movie's protagonist) muffs his lines throughout the majority of the film. He looks bored and expressionless, as if he cannot wait for the filming to be over (who can blame him?). The character development between Wilson's character (Tallis) and Katee Sackhoff's (whose character's name just so happens to be named "Girl," how original) is poorly conceived. It's far too overtly contrived to be taken remotely seriously. Very little comes out of it.

Speaking of little, very little comes out of the film. Everything done in this film has been done a gazillion times before, and quite frankly, the movie isn't even that entertaining. The story and characters are entirely forgettable. They were just doomed from the beginning. Not even Keith David's appearance could save it (the movie).

There are so many great sci-fi action flicks out there that should never have to settle for The Last Sentinel (it's quite baffling how a film of this calibre gets a Blu Ray release). So, do yourself a favor and skip over this one. Wilson fans at least expecting some action on par with his Bloodfist films, may want to steer clear as well. As they will be left woefully disappointed.

This would have scored a star had Katee Sackhoff not been pleasing on the eyes. Might I add, she's not the main star of the film like the dvd cover attempts to have one believe.

Don Wilson plays an "electronically enhanced" soldier fighting evil police drones in a post-apocalyptic future. But most of the time is spent with him walking around not doing much at all. Writer-director Jesse Johnson did not do a good job either as a writer or director. The script lacks direction and focus and the movie looks cheap. This could have been excused if the movie had been fun, but it's not. Not recommended.

It's disappointing when a movie full of creative ideas fails to build a story to support them. The Last Sentinel IS that movie. It stars Don "The Dragon" Wilson, and Katee Sackhoff - the latter I originally wanted to see this for. Unfortunately, Sackhoff isn't in it nearly as much as I had wanted (The cover is totally misleading), and the movie suffers perhaps because of it. Don Wilson isn't a great actor... he's pretty monotonal throughout, and doesn't bring much of anything to the table. I actually preferred Keith David's (Who voices a gun, of all things, in this movie) voice acting over Wilson's. You can definitely tell this was made-for-TV, and it suffers a lot for that. Its biggest problems are the numerous head-scratching moments. They really stick out more here than in most any movie I've seen. This could work as a bigger budget movie with a better fleshed out story and director. Keep Katee and drop the faceless cast, and you have a real movie.

This movie was bad, but not all bad. An example of a movie that needed to be rewritten and directed by someone else. Many of the plot elements were wholly original, like guns with AI personalities. Some that were unoriginal but good, like making children into killing machines. Unfortunately Don Wilson is a crappy movie martial artist. The action consists of millions of rounds fired but none reaching their target. What was the point of creating superhumans with implanted computers, if they can't shoot a target. There were a couple of decent action scenes though. The ending was a major let down, not a good time to use bad fx and bad action. But still if you are a scifi fanatic/writer its worth seeing.

...who has the urge to watch all there is, even the junk. Throughout the movie I kept thinking that its ideas, if well developed here and there, could turn out into a good movie. Maybe they could have waited to get more budget. However, it seems that the movie was hurried out the door. Its cheap looks, lack of special effects (hilarious reuse of the same locations over and over again), the crude "shoot the scene once and I'm-outta here" action scenes, etc, etc, left the appreciation depend too much of the imagination and goodwill of the viewer.

To give you an idea of how bad it looked, my initial impression of it was of those B-movies made for TV which young actors take part in the beginning of their careers, and older actors when there is absolutely nothing left. Honestly I thought that this was something from 8 years ago because Katee Sackhoff had done such a good job at BattleStar Galactica that it only made sense for this movie to be one of her "young actor" stepping stones. So after watching it, I looked for the release date, and to my surprise, it's from 2007, after she had already acquired cult level stardom at BattleStar Galactica.

She (and Don Wilson, Bokeem, and Keith Davis) must be very upset (p***ed off is a better term) to have been set up in participating of such a low budget, low resources movie. Maybe even Jesse Johson was duped into letting his budding idea into the hands of such a low budget production. and most likely in the end he had to direct it on autopilot, with cheap effects and scrap metal, to fulfill contractual obligations.

If you ever wanted an example of how good ideas can be brought down by a low level production, this is it. Hopefully this will be a forgotten episode in the career of all those involved, and it won't come back to tarnish their reputations.

This movie sucks a big donkey's honker big time. I cannot believe that Don Wilson could even act in this sort of "lest and B" movie. The acting sucked, effects sucked, dialog sucked, editing sucked and the director should have been ran off the lot and barrowed for life in stepping back on the lot again. This movie SUX! Even the blu ray transfer SUCKED. I will donate this one off to a Goodwill store. It isn't even worth reselling to recover the loss of money for this dumb movie.

Final note: Is there anything less than a One Star? If so, I'd like to go as low as I could on this one.

Have a nice day. DON'T BUY THIS DVD in ANY FORMAT!

when i first saw this movies premier on sci-fi i was shocked by the scale of it. most of their movies have just a few actors and focus on monsters this film is a true action movie. epic sets and hundreds of actors actress and stunt men. the movie is about the last soldier in a unit of cyborg soldiers that were killed in combat. now this soldier must protect a young freedom-fighter who just may be able to stop the advance of evil forces across the world. a 5 star action flick well worth watching and waiting for the dvd.

This movie is like sp many others about a world where robots have taken over the world and a few brave freedomfigthers are left to try to fend them of, yadda yadda ya. We have seen it all before. But the movie is fun, the concept of talking, intelligent weapons is interesting especially for pepole that like this AI. The acting is ok. In short it is a ok sifi movie that will entertain for the time it runs, but that are completely forgettable and fail to stand out among the rest.

Director Jesse V. Johnson is a good guy of low-budget action movies. He's no Isaac Florentine, but his efforts like Pit Fighter and The Fifth Commandment prove that there are filmmakers out there willing to do more than a slapdash job when it comes to movies produced on less-than-blockbuster budgets. "The Last Sentinel", however, is not one of his better examples of his work: though it boasts a decent cast and generally looks nice, the movie ties with any number of flicks produced for the Sy-Fy channel for the most boring and convoluted action film of the year. It's pretty impressive that Johnson would be able to snag good projects after this one, since this movie's just about enough to send any other director's career to hell, but he still ought to be ashamed for creating this big of a blunder.

The story: Tallis (Don Wilson, Bloodfist series) is the last remaining member of an elite team of cybernetic ally-enhanced soldiers trained to battle an army of drone "protectors" who have declared war on the human race. After a resistance mission gone wrong, he rescues a nameless woman (Katee Sackhoff, Battlestar Galactica) who will aid him in an all-or-nothing strike against the drone core.

After almost twenty years of starring in subpar martial arts fare, kickboxing superstar Don Wilson put his trust for one more outing in a science-fiction adventure and a cast that included Bokeem Woodbine (Ray), Keith David (Platoon), and Steven Bauer (Scarface). Do you suppose he knew that all of these names would be limited to bit parts, flashbacks, and voiceover roles? Granted, hearing David's resonant vocals as those of a talking machinegun is kinda neat (he joins Dawnn Lewis of A Different World in that department), but fact is that Wilson's character could've used some company in addition to the sporadic Katee Sackhoff to keep the film more interesting. The story really drags, even when it's not being abruptly halted by the intrusive flashback scenes, and whatever importance the plot places on Sackhoff's character is dropped when Tallis ends up going the last twenty minutes of the film on his own.

I lost comprehension of the storyline amidst the endless shootouts, but disappointingly, this wasn't because the gunfights were good enough to get immersed in - I simply stopped paying attention during them and didn't wake up in time to find the plot thread again during the numb monologue scenes. Yes, it's disappointing that the film's dramatic portions are a shot in the bucket, but even more so the fact that it fails to deliver on the action front as well. The gunfights alternate between guerilla-style battles between Don and the drones and a couple 'epic' war encounters during the flashbacks but neither approach is executed very well, lacking not only combat logic but also ebb and flow. Never before have I so longed for Don Wilson's mediocre hand-to-hand fight scenes, but since the movie makes a point of advertising him without his 'the Dragon' ring moniker, his fisticuffs are kept to a minimum, with the only one-on-one fight being the final bout with the "super drone" (David Mattey, Hancock)...and yes, that one's pretty bad, too.

As is the case with most of director Johnson's movies, the production values are generally strong with plenty of attention paid to costume and set design. I don't blame him for the weak CGI used to create a few helicopter scenes. However, he does receive my scorn for foolishly trying to manage such a relatively large movie on a meager budget: with a bit more financial backing, "The Last Sentinel" could've been a fun watch, but in its current state, it has all the credibility of something like Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus but not nearly all its entertainment value. Avoid!