YMMV / The Last Castle

• Awesome Moments: The entire climax of the film, as Irwin and the inmates stage a revolt with an insane amount of homemade weaponry and defenses ranging from lunch trays made into riot shields, catapults made from buckets and surgical tubing, a makeshift grappling hook fired from the prison’s water cannon, and a full-sized, homemade trebuchet.
• Awesome Music: Courtesy of Jerry Goldsmith.Highlights include “September 11, 2001 - Theme from The Last Castle”, a mournful piece that plays over the end credits, and “The Count Down/Hold Them”, “Taking Command”, “Battle for the Castle”, “Fall In”, and “The Flag, which all underscores the climatic prison revolt.
• Complete Monster: Colonel Ed Winter presents himself as a reasonable, benevolent warden of the military prison he runs, but is in truth a smug and sadistic Control Freak. Regularly using cruel manipulation and brutal abuse on the prisoners for petty fun, Winter flat out murders multiple men and frames them as "accidents" to avoid repercussions. Angry at his idol, Lieutenant General Eugene Irwin, for shaming his military collection, Winter dedicates himself to breaking Irwin completely by torturing and even murdering the friends the man makes in prison. When Irwin stages a near-bloodless prison uprising to overthrow Winter's harsh reign, Winter threatens to execute hundreds of prisoners just for saluting Irwin, then lethally shoots Irwin In the Back just for trying to raise a flag against Winter's wishes. Though claiming to care about his men and only use necessary evil when called for, Winter's facade is torn down and he's exposed for the spiteful bully he is, willing to abuse and threaten both prisoners and his own employees just for mild disrespect.
• Moral Event Horizon: Winter crosses this on-screen when he orders a guard to kill Aguilar.
• Retroactive Recognition: One of the creators of CinemaSins appears in the film as an extra, as their Sins video for their own channel pointed out.

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