The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role, alongside Forest Whitaker, Johnny Knoxville, Rodrigo Santoro, Jaimie Alexander, Luis Guzmán, Eduardo Noriega, Peter Stormare, Zach Gilford and Genesis Rodriguez.

In the film, a tough small town sheriff and his deputies must stop a dangerous drug lord from escaping to Mexico in a modified sports car.

Agent John Bannister has a blockade set up in Bullhead City, Arizona, but Cortez's men mow down the cops on site and clear the road for him to continue his getaway.

At 4:30 A.M, Owens dispatches deputies Jerry Bailey and Sarah Torrance to visit the residence of the local farmer Parsons, who has suddenly missed his usual milk delivery at the diner.

After discovering that Parsons has been murdered, the deputies follow a trail of tire tracks that lead them to Cortez's henchman Thomas Burrell and his mercenary cutthroats, who are planting a mobile assault bridge across the canyon that marks the U.S./Mexico border.

Shortly after being notified by Agent Bannister of Cortez's presence, Owens gathers Torrance and senior Deputy Mike "Figgy" Figuerola.

At 7:10 A.M., Owens and his deputies, equipped with weapons from Dinkum's private museum, have the town's main road barricaded with cars when Burrell and his men arrive, prompting a lengthy firefight.

Owens and Dinkum mow down a majority of the thugs with a Vickers machine gun mounted on the back of a school bus with Martinez providing cover fire, while Torrance snipes several gunmen on the rooftops.

In June 2009, Lionsgate Films and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura pre-emptively picked up Andrew Knauer's spec script for The Last Stand.

[6] Writer Jeffrey Nachmanoff was also brought in to rewrite the script,[7] which di Bonaventura compared the film to a Western, with a small town being attacked by an analogue to a corrupt cattle baron and a weathered veteran trying to stop him.

[6] Liam Neeson was considered for the protagonist, but after he passed in 2011 Lionsgate offered the project to Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had just ended his tenure as Governor of California.

Six vacant lots were filled with façades, in which production designer Franco-Giacomo Carbone tried to put a mixture of styles to heighten the appearance of a frontier city with much history.

Jee-woon aimed to "create a distinct look and change the style for every space", with the chaotic environment of the FBI having cold tones and a smarter ambiance, and Sommerton having a "peaceful small town feeling" heightened by warm colors such as yellow and orange.

[6] Given that di Bonaventura had a previous history with General Motors producing the Transformers films, the company provided them with the required muscle cars.

It's a crackerjack B movie worthy of comparison to such stylishly low-down, smart-meets-dumb, hyper-violent entertainments as the 1997 Kurt Russell thriller Breakdown, Clint Eastwood's infamous police bloodbath The Gauntlet, John Carpenter's original Assault on Precinct 13, and Arnold's own overlooked 1986 outing Raw Deal...[Schwarzenegger] gives a controlled and brutally charismatic performance that restores his dignity as a star.

The Last Stand is a formulaic action flick, but it still delivers enough decent car stunts, shoot-outs and fistfights to warrant a look-see for Arnold fans.