Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comeback flops at box office as `The Last Stand` rakes in only $1.9m

London: Arnold Schwarzenegger, who promised his fans that he’d be back with a bang, seems to have failed to resonate that reassurance as his latest movie, ‘The Last Stand,’ fell flat at the box office during its opening weekend and came in at ninth in total Friday grosses.

The movie stars the former 65-year-old California governor as a sheriff in a sleepy Arizona town in his first leading film role in nearly a decade. According to estimates by Deadline, ‘The Last Stand’ earned a paltry 1.9 million dollars on Friday, the Daily Mail reported. Studio executives no doubt expected a better box office performance from the Hollywood heavyweight, who had his first leading role since 2003’s ‘Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.’ The movie also stars Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker and Johnny Knoxville, of MTV’s ‘Jackass’ fame. Many critics said that Schwarzenegger’s performance of Sheriff Ray Owens falls flat in the film. According to Variety, the Governator looks ‘at once blankly inexpressive and doggedly determined’ making a ‘creaky but reasonably commercial comeback bid.’ The showbiz publication branded the movie itself as ``predictable,`` with ``cartoonish`` action. The Hollywood Reporter slammed the ‘conspicuously tasteless’ use of a school bus in one of the movie’s violent scenes, but draws comparison of Schwarzenegger’s role as that of Clint Eastwood in the early 1990s - an aging man who is still physically capable when need be. ANI