1993’s underrated The Last Action Hero (Saturday 13th, 10pm) sees Arnold Schwarzenegger sending up his own screen persona as Jack Slater, a fictional all-action cop whose films are the favourite escape of young Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien). Danny thinks it’s a dream come true when a magical cinema ticket takes him inside the latest Jack Slater film – a hilarious world stuffed with clever nods to all the most ridiculous aspects of the era’s blockbusters.
But the portal works both ways, and soon the sinister assassin Benedict (Charles Dance) has escaped into the real world, where violence has real consequences. Can Danny and Jack save the world when that’s a world without Slater’s usual narrative invulnerability? As well as Slater, Arnie also gets to play himself as the actor who plays Slater in what’s probably the most successful of his occasional forays into comedy.
