The Last Outlaw is a 1993 HBO Made-for-TV Western directed by Geoff Murphy, written by Eric Red, and starring Mickey Rourke, Dermot Mulroney, Keith David, Steve Buscemi, John C. McGinley, and Ted Levine.
After the end of the American Civil War, a gang of former Confederate soldiers turned outlaw are on a wild bank robbery spree across New Mexico, led by the utterly ruthless Graff, (Rourke) their former Colonel and commanding officer from the war. However, Graff's bloodthirsty attitude and increasing cruelty are alienating some of his men, including his second-in-command Eustis, (Mulroney) who despite his sense of loyalty is growing closer to outright rebelling against Graff.
After their latest robbery goes turns into a bloody shootout with US Marshal Sharp (Gavan O'Herlihy) and his posse, several of the outlaws are injured, especially Loomis, (Daniel Quinn) the youngest member of the band. Knowing that pursuit from the marshal and his posse is inevitable, Graff threatens to leave Loomis behind if he can't keep up, and when it becomes clear that Loomis can barely stay in the saddle without help from others, Graff moves to execute Loomis so he won't slow the rest of the outlaws down. This is the breaking point for Eustis, who shoots Graff and leaves him for dead before Graff can kill Loomis.
However, Graff survives, and is captured by the posse led by Sharp and McClintock, (Richard Fancy) the wealthy owner of the bank they attempted to rob. Graff soon starts aiding the posse so he can use it as a way to get revenge on his former gang, and with his help the posse becomes almost impossible to escape as they start picking the outlaws off one by one.
List of tropes applying to the film:
- Affably Evil:
- Eustis and Lovecraft are pretty friendly and polite for outlaws, and Eustis even has a sense of honor and loyalty.
- McClintock, for a given value of evil. He's somewhat callous, doesn't care too much about the lives of his posse, and is focused more on getting his money back then anything else, but he's always polite and treats Graff fairly well after taking him prisoner. He even decides to let the outlaws go after Wills returns the money, only for Graff to kill him and frame Wills so the posse will continue the pursuit. He also showed concern for the people in the bank during the heist.
- Anyone Can Die: Definitely. With the sole exception of Eustis, the entire cast is dead by the end of the film.
- Artistic License – History: At one point when he thinks Graff is dead and is talking about him, Eustis refers to Graff's leadership in the Battle of Atlanta and calls it the bloodiest battle of the war. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the Civil War knows that this is not even remotely close to being accurate. The only way his statement can be remotely justified is if Eustis meant to say that it was the bloodiest battle that Graff and he fought in during the war.
- Asshole Victim: Grubb is a greedy, unreliable Jerkass, so it's hard to feel bad when he's gunned down by the rest of the posse when he tries to get them to turn back rather than continue to pursue the outlaws.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Lovecraft commits suicide rather than let himself be murdered by Graff, well aware that whatever Graff does to him will be far worse and much more drawn out.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Sharp is firmly a Hero Antagonist (albeit not a very nice one), who believes himself to be capable of taking down the outlaw gang, but he is repeatedly outsmarted by Graff during the heist and their escape afterward. Later on he would have lost the outlaws if not for Graff pointing the posse in the right direction. He winds up getting killed by Graff midway through the film, and Graff then manages to become the leader of the posse.
- Bittersweet Ending: Very heavy on the bitter side. A wounded Eustis manages to escape to Mexico and kills Graff, but the rest of the gang is dead and the money they took during the heist is gone.
- Boom, Headshot!:
- Graff's signature way of dispatching his enemies is shooting them in the head, which Sharp and Philo wind up being on the receiving end of.
- Eustis shoots a fatally wounded Loomis in the head to put him out of his misery.
- Butt-Monkey: Loomis. He easily gets the least respect out of the gang, and spends most of the film dealing with an agonizing leg wound that impedes his ability to move. He ultimately gets the most agonizing and painful death in the film, being repeatedly shot in non-vital areas by Graff until Eustis is forced to Mercy Kill him.
- The Chessmaster: Graff cleverly takes control of the very posse that captured him. First, he takes advantage of the confusion caused by the outlaw ambush to kill the posse leader, Marshal Sharp, making it look like he died in the crossfire. He then offers to lead the posse to his former gang, playing on their greed. When an opportunity presents itself, he throws McClintock and his money off a cliff, making it look like the outlaws were responsible, so that the posse has further incentive to hunt down the remaining outlaws. This causes an argument among the remaining posse members, with Grubb and a couple of others trying to persuade the rest to kill Graff and go home and claim the bounty for two dead outlaws, while the others want to keep Graff alive so that he can help them track down the rest of the gang. The argument escalates into a gunfight in which Grubb and his supporters are killed, finally allowing Graff to regain his freedom and become leader of the remaining posse members, effectively turning them into his new gang.
- Chromosome Casting: All speaking characters in the movie are male. Women only appear very briefly as background characters in the town and saloon scenes.
- Chekhov's Gun: Literally. During the heist at the start of the film, Graff finds a derringer pistol on one of the bank employees and throws it aside. Eustis grabs it and hold onto it until the very end of the movie when he uses it to fatally shoot Graff.
- Cold Sniper:
- Marshal Sharp straddles the line between cold and Friendly Sniper. He's a Hero Antagonist, albeit a smug one who thinks too much of himself, and also a deadly shot at long range.
- Give Graff a rifle, and he's the embodiment of every negative stereotype about snipers, which is best seen with his absolutely torturous killing of Loomis.
- The Complainer Is Always Wrong: Zig-Zagged. Potts is constantly contradicting and complaining about whatever Graff and later Eustis tell him. He's right roughly about half the time.
- The Corrupter: Graff functions as this to whatever group he's a part of. The outlaws are shocked by his ruthless disregard for lives during the heist, when he intends to burn and/or blow up the bank hostages. Once he becomes part of the posse, he soon begins corrupting and manipulating them. It's all but said that if the posse had survived, it's likely that any remaining members would have simply become Graff's next gang of outlaws.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Loomis is shot repeatedly in non-vital areas, leaving him mortally wounded and pretty much guaranteeing him a slow death. Eustis is ultimately forced to Mercy Kill him.
- Deadpan Snarker: Graff is fairly prone to some dry snark every now and again.
- Decapitated Army: After he is captured, Graff takes the opportunity to eliminate Marshal Sharp, who is not only the posse leader, but also its only member who isn't motivated solely by greed. With him gone, Graff finds it much easier to manipulate the remaining posse members and eventually take control of them.
- Dirty Coward: Wills at first is fairly cowardly, panicking as the posse encroaches on the outlaws and ultimately running off with the money to return it to the posse to get them to call off the manhunt. When Eustis decides to leave him behind, however, Wills decides to Face Death with Dignity and take as many members of the posse with him as he can.
- The Dissenter Is Always Right:
- Zig-Zagged with Potts. He is generally the voice of dissent against Graff and his successor Eustis's decisions. While he's clearly wrong at several points, he's right when he points out that Graff's callousness and ruthlessness has made him a danger to everyone around him and later when he bluntly tells Eustis that they should stop trying to engage the posse directly and instead focus on fleeing to Mexico.
- Wills, terrified for his life after the posse managed to kill two members of the gang, grabs the money they had stolen during their heists and returns it to the posse to get them to stop their chase. While the gang lambasts him for his cowardice, Wills's decision almost works; McClintock is ready to call off the posse once the money is returned and let the outlaws escape, only for Graff to covertly kill him to keep the chase going.
- Disney Villain Death: Graff throws McClintock off a cliff along with the money after Wills attempts to return it, then frames the outlaws so he can continue his pursuit.
- The Dog Bites Back: While Potts is beating Wills up for returning the money, Loomis gleefully joins in and starts whacking Wills with a 2x4 as revenge for his earlier suggestions that they just leave him behind.
- Doomed Contrarian: Potts and Wills, the most openly disobedient and contrarian of the gang, are both killed.
- Doomed Defeatist: As Lovecraft goes increasingly unhinged, he becomes convinced that Graff is some kind of immortal Revenant Zombie who cannot be killed. He ultimately betrays the gang to Graff and the posse in exchange for being granted a quick death, but he can't bring himself to shoot Eustis and kills himself instead.
- Doomed Hurt Guy: Loomis, no matter how much Eustis tries to defy it.
- Driven to Suicide: Lovecraft can't make himself turn on Eustis, but is terrified out of his mind of Graff and the pursuit. In the end he decides that it would be better to kill himself than to let Graff do the deed.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: After being left behind by Eustis, Wills decides to go out fighting and spends his last moments engaging the posse in a gunfight and killing several of them.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The rest of the gang are horrified when Graff kills the hostages during the opening bank heist by setting the bank on fire and leaving behind ignited dynamite to blow them up. Eustis finally has enough when Graff decides to leave Loomis to die, and then moves to shoot Loomis when Eustis tries to intervene.
- Face–Heel Turn: Lovecraft turns on the gang so that Graff will at least grant him a quick death. He ultimately doesn't follow through with it and shoots himself instead.
- Fatal Flaw: Graff's overconfidence. He is a ruthless but highly capable leader and a crack shot. He is also a shrewd judge of character and extremely good at manipulating people. However, this leads him to believe himself superior to everyone and in the end he underestimates Eustis, taking the time to rub his superiority into his face instead of just killing him immediately because he believes Eustis has run out of bullets; what he doesn't count on is Eustis having a hidden derringer pistol.
- Freudian Excuse: Graff's ruthlessness and sadism were caused when his family was raped and murdered by Union soldiers, which set him off on his current vendetta against the North.
- From Camouflage to Criminal: All of the outlaws (with the likely exception of Lovecraft) once served in the Confederate army and are now dangerous criminals.
- Good Is Not Nice: Sharp is the Hero Antagonist and as close as the film gets to a genuinely good guy, but he's short-tempered, aggressive, and makes it very clear that he wants to see the entire gang dead.
- Gorn: Philo's face is gruesomely blown apart after Graff shoots him in the head with a rifle.
- The Great Offscreen War: The story is shaped by the Civil War, which embittered the outlaws and turned Graff in particular into a cruel, broken man. The marshal also fought in the war for the Union, and his posse includes both Union and Confederate veterans. However the film begins 8 years after the end of the war, and while it is often mentioned there are no flashbacks to it or scenes set during it.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: The outlaws are violent criminals, but for the most part they are just in it for the money and would rather avoid killing civilians. Meanwhile, the posse are just as violent and - with the exception of Sharp - are also entirely concerned with money and have absolutely no loyalty to each other. And there's Graff, who is a ruthless and sociopathic murderer playing both sides against each other so he can get his revenge on Eustis.
- Handy Cuffs: After the posse takes Graf prisoner, not only do they handcuff his hands in from of him, the rudimentary set that they slap on him has a very long chain between the cuffs so they do virtually nothing to limit Graf's movement. When the gang ambushes the posse, he takes advantage of the chance to kill off the Marshall in the confusion, completely unimpeded by the cuffs and he uses the chain to pull the Marshall off his horse, wrestle away a revolver, and then shoot him.
- Hero Antagonist: Sharp. He's pompous and not especially likable, but he does genuinely want to see Justice done. It's averted by the rest of the posse, who are entirely concerned with their payment and have absolutely no loyalty to each other or devotion to the idea of justice.
- Jerkass Has a Point:
- Potts, on occasion. The most notable case is at the start of the film when he's complaining about the ambush at the bank, which was supposed to be unguarded. Eustis, who hasn't yet turned on Graff, tries pointing out that Graff got them out of the ambush alive and correctly guessed that it was there before everyone else, which saved their skins. Potts counters that Graff also got them into the situation in the first place, and force marched them for days to arrive at the bank, only to be wrong about the resistance they'd face once they arrived. It's clear from Eustis's face that this hits home and is another factor that shakes his faith in Graff.
- Grubb is one of the few members of the posse given a personality, and it's that he's a greedy and unpleasant man. However, after the deaths of McClintock and the Marshall, he tells the rest of the posse they should forget about going for the rest of the gang, they'd already have a large bounty they can claim just from the captured Graf and Philo, they should cut their losses, head back to town, claim the bounty, and call it a day. While a few agree with him, the rest are blinded by the thought of claiming the bounties for all of the gang, and so insist on continuing the hunt. Continuing to hunt the outlaws eventually gets everyone in the posse killed.
- Lack of Empathy: Graff shows no true warmth or respect for anyone, and more than once refers to the members of his gang as if they were his property.
- Made of Iron: Eustis is shot twice during the final confrontation with the posse, but keeps fighting, kills Graff, and is last seen riding over the river to Mexico.
- Noble Demon: Eustis is far more moral than Graff and deeply values loyalty, which leads to him turning on Graff for trying to kill Loomis. However, Graff's torment gradually wears away at him until he's only a little better than his former commander.
- Pet the Dog:
- McClintock, who is otherwise not especially likeable, is worried about the people in the bank at the start.
- Several of the others besides Eustis voice concern over Loomis in the early going, especially Steve Buscemi's character Philo, and even Potts.
- Even after his gang turns against him, Graff stops a posseman from mutilating the dead Philo, putting a gun to his face and telling him that his boys will be shown proper respect.
- Playing Possum: The final posse member tries this against Eustis, but it doesn't work because Eustis hears him cocking his revolver and manages to shoot him first. However, Graff takes advantage of the confusion to get the drop on Eustis.
- Pocket Protector: Graff survives Eustis shooting him because the bullet hits a flask he had been carrying. The rest of the gang don't know this, which leads an increasingly unstable Lovecraft to conclude that Graff is immortal and can't be killed.
- Politically Correct Villain: In spite of the gang consisting of ex-Confederate soldiers, the black Lovecraft is still a member and treated with respect by the rest of the gang. The only exception is when Graff refers to him by a racial slurnote in a conversation with Eustis, but it's ignored otherwise.
- The Reliable One: Lovecraft is the most put-together and logical of the gang, and pretty much everyone relies on him for advice. However, he gradually loses it over the course of the film until he finally snaps and betrays everyone to Graff.
- The Remnant:
- Eustis explicitly says in his opening narration that after the war he still saw himself as fighting for the South, viewing things like robbing banks as stealing from or striking blows against the North.
- At one point Graff comments to Sharp that the war will never be over.
- Sadist: Graff shows signs of this. He shoots Loomis repeatedly in non-vital areas, keeping him alive but suffering and on the verge of death, just to torment Eustis, and he later fatally wounds Potts right when he reaches the Rio Grande so he can die just inches away from freedom. And of course, he makes it very clear that he's saving Eustis for last just to punish him all the more for his betrayal.
- Sanity Slippage: Lovecraft gradually starts to lose it and becomes convinced that Graff is immortal and unkillable as he continually leads the posse against the gang. It culminates in him turning against the outlaws so he can at least get a quick death from Graff.
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: While the film pointedly avoids making much if any reference to slavery, Graff, who is unquestionably the most evil person in the film, is a former plantation owner, and thus a slave owner as well.
- Spoiler Title: Only one of the outlaws survives the film: Eustis.
- Still Wearing the Old Colors: A number of the outlaws still wear at least parts of their old uniforms, although for most it's just bits and pieces, like Philo's cap. Eustis and Graff are the main ones where it's clear that they're still wearing large parts of their old uniforms.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Eustis becomes increasingly ruthless as Graff and the posse's pursuit increases in intensity. Compare his earlier refusal to abandon an injured Loomis to him abandoning Wills after his horse is shot and it becomes clear that Lovecraft's horse can't carry him. Although in fairness, there is literally nothing that Eustis can physically do to help Wills at that point, whereas Graff could have but refused to try with Loomis.
- Worst Aid: Graff "treats" the shoulder wound he suffered while riding away from the town by pouring gunpowder into it and setting said gunpowder on fire to cauterize the wound. This is an absolutely terrible way to attempt to deal with the wound and in real life would have likely caused worse problems with the potential for internal injuries, sepsis, and killing off a bunch of tissue inside his body. If done in real life or if the film had treated the "cure" realistically, the best case scenario for Graff would have been losing the use of that arm for the rest of his life, the worst case would have been death within days from sepsis.
