{"id":4371,"date":"2024-10-06T02:55:34","date_gmt":"2024-10-06T02:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4371"},"modified":"2024-10-12T21:16:39","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T21:16:39","slug":"final-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/06\/final-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Final Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Final Justice<\/strong> (1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Arista Films\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence, nudity including full frontal, sexual content including rape, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Greydon Clark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Greydon Clark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Bell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Nicholas Josef von Sternberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Joe Don Baker, Rossano Brazzi, Venantino Venantini, Helena Abella, Bill McKinney, Patrizia Pellegrino, Lino Grech, Tony Ellul, Joe Theuma, Bettina Amato-Gauci, Joe Quattromani, Josie Coppini, John Suda, Elvisio Cannori, Josephine Mahoney, Jan Karl Farrugia, Marie Klaire Farrugia, Greydon Clark.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m not going to review the Greydon Clark actioner Final Justice<\/strong> like a critic. It wouldn\u2019t do the movie justice. There is great pleasure to be had from watching a really trashy B-movie that elitist film snobs would turn their noses up at. That pretty much describes Clark\u2019s entire oeuvre. He\u2019s the quasi-auteur behind quasi-classics like Satan\u2019s Cheerleaders, Without Warning and Joysticks. You can tell by the titles what kind of filmmaker he is. He doesn\u2019t make films for those with discriminating taste. He makes movies for viewers who just want to be entertained for 90 minutes. I love him for that!<\/p>\n

\u00a0My first encounter with Final Justice<\/strong> was in summer 1987. It was showing on cable. A co-worker told me it was pretty good so I sat down to watch it one night. I fell asleep (no reflection on the movie, I was tired), but what little I saw looked promising. I gave it one more try (same result) before moving onto other things in my life. I forgot all about it until recently when I watched another of Clark\u2019s movies Angels Brigade (or Angels Revenge if you prefer). I spotted Final Justice<\/strong> while looking at his IMDb profile and the memories just came flooding back. I saw that it was showing on Tubi and decided to give it another shot. Hey, third time\u2019s a charm, right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The star of Final Justice<\/strong> is Joe Don Baker, familiar to action fans as Sheriff Buford Pusser in the Walking Tall films. He was pushing 50 at the time and wasn\u2019t exactly in fighting shape. No matter; he\u2019s just as tough as ever as Deputy Sheriff Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III (what a great name!), a Texas lawman out for revenge after the sheriff (played by Clark) is gunned down by Mafia guy Joseph Palermo (Venantini, Cannibal Ferox) during an attempted car theft from the police station parking lot. During the subsequent foot pursuit, Geronimo shoots and kills Palermo\u2019s brother (Cannori) as they attempt to cross the Mexican border. Palermo vows revenge right before he\u2019s taken into custody.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Instead of facing Lone Star justice, Palermo is extradited to Italy to answer for his crimes there. Geronimo, under the command of State Department official Wilson (McKinney, Deliverance), is assigned the task of escorting the prisoner to Sicily. A technical problem, caused by a couple of Mafia goons with a remote control, forces the plane to land in Malta where Palermo manages to escape with the help of the same goons. Geronimo survives the attack which culminates with the taxi they were riding in being blown to smithereens. Needless to say, he\u2019s quite perturbed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At the police station, Geronimo offers his assistance in re-apprehending Palermo, but the chief (Grech) assures him they\u2019re quite capable of doing it themselves. Furthermore, Wilson orders him to be on the next plane to the States. That paperwork isn\u2019t going to fill itself out. Well, our hero isn\u2019t going to let trivialities like jurisdiction and official orders stop him from getting his man. He\u2019s mad as hell and wants revenge.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Vengeance is also on the mind of Palermo who\u2019s hiding out at the villa of mob boss Don Lamanna (Brazzi, The Final Conflict) where he\u2019s expected to stay until he can be safely spirited off the island. That gives him about a week to chill and take advantage of the amenities available to him- e.g. the bevy of half-naked hotties hanging out by the pool. There\u2019s nothing chill about this guy. He wants to get back out there and get the cowboy cop who killed his brother. Like his adversary, nobody better get in his way….. or else.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m well aware that many regard Final Justice<\/strong> as terrible. Why else would it receive both the MST3K and RiffTrax treatments? I agree wholeheartedly that it\u2019s a bad movie, BUT it\u2019s one of those \u201cso bad, it\u2019s great!\u201d deals. I got more laughs out of it than 95% of the so-called comedies released in the last ten years. That the comedy is completely unintentional makes it all the funnier.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let\u2019s start with Joe Don\u2019s performance; specifically, his terrible Clint Eastwood impression. I\u2019m thinking about one scene in particular. It\u2019s like something out of a Sergio Leone spaghetti western knock-off. Geronimo has an actual showdown with three Mafia guys. They stand there facing each other in a piazza as the ersatz Ennio Morricone score kicks in. We get close-up shots of eyes, lips, twitching hands and sweat pouring down faces as everyone waits for somebody to reach for his gun first. The lawman, in his best intimidating voice, says \u201cYou think you can take me? Go ahead on. It\u2019s your move.\u201d LOL! What a line! It\u2019s repeated several times throughout the movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What you see in Final Justice<\/strong> can\u2019t be called acting. It\u2019s not accurate. Depending on which cast member you\u2019re talking about, it\u2019s either overacting or underacting. The latter definitely applies to Helena Abella (real name Helena Dalli) who plays Maria, the policewoman assigned to keep an eye on Geronimo in the guise of showing him around the island. She doesn\u2019t do a very good job keeping him out of trouble seeing as how he keeps ending up in the same jail cell waiting to be reprimanded by the increasingly impatient police chief. This would be the only major role for the former model and Miss Malta 1979 who left acting for the world of politics after Final Justice<\/strong>. Like so many models before and since, she\u2019s all beauty and no talent. She walks around with the same blank expression through the whole movie, barely even reacting to Geronimo continuously violating every procedure in the book. Only once does she speak up, when she says \u201cStop this fighting!\u201d in the middle of a bar brawl. I\u2019m shocked the whole joint didn\u2019t break down in laughter at that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Venantini tears away at the scenery as the villain of the piece. Whether it\u2019s making empty promises to his boss to kill Geronimo without any help from \u201cboys from Rome\u201d or abusing his \u201cgirlfriend\u201d (Italian actress Pellegrino), he\u2019s a vicious SOB. McKinney hams it up pretty good too. The late Brazzi went from making A-list films opposite big name stars like Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner and John Wayne to appearing in B-movies like Fear City and Final Justice<\/strong>. It happens to a lot of stars when they age out of leading roles. Interestingly enough, he plays a Mafia boss in both films. While he doesn\u2019t quite half-ass it here, it\u2019s obvious he\u2019s only in it for the paycheck. I wouldn\u2019t expect anything less from a respected actor in B-movie schlock.<\/p>\n

\u00a0After the total PG-ness of Angels Brigade, it\u2019s great to see Final Justice<\/strong> lean so hard into its R rating. The shootings are nice and bloody. There\u2019s plenty of nudity including one scene that would definitely please Booger from Revenge of the Nerds (\u201cWe got bush! We got bush!\u201d). A few scenes take place in a bar where the \u201cgirlfriend\u201d and another hottie (Gauci) entertain the clientele as only scantily-clad women on stages in seedy bars can. They do a number involving swords and G-strings to the aptly named \u201cYou Better Run\u201d. Needless to say, this particular establishment is NOT a tourist attraction.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Although made on the cheap, Final Justice<\/strong> does boast some nice Maltese scenery; that is, when the hero and his ragazza<\/em> Friday aren\u2019t cruising the side streets and back alleys of the Mediterranean country looking for trouble and always finding it. There are a few decent action scenes, but unintended humor once again comes into play when Geronimo chases Palermo into a church after a failed ambush attempt. The mobster thinks he\u2019s smart disguising himself as a priest in order to avoid capture. What he doesn\u2019t count on is this persistent woman who wants him to hear her confession. I hate it when that happens, don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Final Justice<\/strong> is pure junk. I LOVE THAT! In the 70s, it would have played the drive-in circuit. In the 80s, it rented like crazy from video stores. Now it can found on Tubi alongside other forgotten B-movie treasures. I like a lot of what\u2019s in it. Joe Don Baker is a good character actor. Clark is a cool director. There\u2019s action, violence and lots of boobs. There\u2019s even an 11th<\/sup> hour plot twist that you\u2019ll probably seeing coming if you accidentally left your brain in the ON position. I don\u2019t recommend it for Final Justice<\/strong>. To enjoy this one, you\u2019ll need to leave it on OFF. That\u2019s what I did and I had a total blast.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Final Justice (1985)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Arista Films\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence, nudity including full frontal, sexual content including rape, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Greydon Clark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Greydon Clark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Bell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Nicholas Josef von Sternberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 1985 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Joe Don Baker, Rossano Brazzi, Venantino Venantini, Helena Abella, Bill McKinney, Patrizia Pellegrino, Lino […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Final-Justice-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4371"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4864,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4371\/revisions\/4864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}