With its unpaved streets and rickety buildings, Jericho, Texas is an unlikely outpost for gun-toting mobs from Chicago. But with Prohibition in full swing, tweed-suited rum-runners have corrupted and terrorized this sleepy border town. Civil law is dead. Like their bosses in the Windy City, the fierce leaders of Jericho's rival crime families are warring for control of a lucrative bounty of booze: truckloads of 100-proof, making their way from Mexico to a thirsty nation's illicit network of gin joints and speakeasies.

Fatefully, a mysterious loner (Willis) passes through this besieged town looking for a place to spend the night. Calling himself Smith, the rugged drifter is polite, cynical and elusive; perhaps too cynical for the intimidating welcoming committee that vandalizes his car and tells him to look elsewhere for a place to rest.

When the crooked local sheriff (Dern) warns the stranger not to count on anyone for help, Smith takes the law into his own hands. In a daring assault on the gang's headquarters, he riddles the place with bullets and kills a top gunman. The mob is stunned by this brazen attack. But before they can retaliate, the rival gang offers Smith a job. They could use a kamikaze gunslinger, and they'll pay him handsomely.

With a pervasive bootlegging war choking the life from this nearly extinct ghost town, Smith decides to cash in on the action. He cleverly hires himself out to each gang while remaining loyal to no one but himself. A soldier-of-fortune with his own agenda, he betrays both sides to the other in a bold attempt to destroy the bootleggers and rescue what remains of Jericho's shell-shocked residents. But a traitor can not live among mercenaries without being exposed and killed.

MOVIE REVIEW

Last Man Standing is a western movie at the end of its time. Vehicles have already replaced horses, roughneck cowboys have been replaced by prohibition gangsters, and the hero is an assassin that works for the highest bidder. Bruce Willis is the hero, and all but a couple other characters are the gangsters.
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