The Critical Drinker presents his top five cinematic “last stands.” Last stands in both history and fiction can be damned inspiring, the sort of thing that every man worth his salt hopes to aspire to. As the man wrote: “To every man upon this earth, death cometh soon or late, And how can man die better, Than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his gods.”
His top five are pretty good, but I’d actually put one of his “honorable mentions,” the last stand of Leonidas in “300” very, very close to the top. But very likely my number one would be that of Jack in “Oblivion,” who, while facing down (and telling a truncated version of Horatius at the bridge to) a Lovecraftian cosmic horror, says something that I wish was more commonly accepted: “Everyone dies. The thing is to die well.” He then goes out like a boss with a fantastic last line, God his own self smiling next to him.
Leave a comment on your favorite last stands. They need not be the actual *last* stand of a character; sometimes they manage to pull through. But a defining feature is that the character – fictional or historic – goes into it accepting that it is, indeed, the Last.
