Number 22: Final Justice (1985)
You know, it’s hard to keep trying to coming up with ways to
describe how dull and unremarkable a film is and Final Justice is dull and unremarkable.
It’s hard for me to describe what happened in Final Justice as I was distracted while
watching it by a particularly tricky game of solitaire I was involved in. And
then there was some paint I had to keep an eye on so it dried properly. Then I
watched a kettle boil which was a big mistake as time stopped moving yet the
film kept playing.
Another entry from our Italian friends, the film stars Joe
Don Baker as the preposterously named Sheriff Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III.
This is the third film ‘starring’ Joe Don Baker to make it in the Bottom 100 (Mitchell, Leonard 6). If Al Pacino can
be taken as a stamp of quality in a movie (Gigli
aside, everyone’s allowed one mistake), then Don Baker can be taken as a
stamp of shiteness. All hail our bad movie King!
That’s possibly unfair as I haven’t seen every movie he’s
been in but in his 50 year plus career, his name does pop up often in films
around the lowest part of the IMDB scale.
The film is about him transporting a criminal to Malta,
criminal escapes, Sherriff Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III (think about that, he’s
the third person in his family to carry that name and I’m pretty sure they
mention he has a son who is presumably Thomas Jefferson Geronimo IV) gets the
criminal back after having problems with the local police. They din’t know ha
to police ya see? They needed a big ol’Texan to show em how it gets done round
these pars.
And oh yeah, Geronimo is fat. They mention it a few times
like he’s going to keel over and have a heart attack any moment. He doesn’t and
it doesn’t play a part in the overall story at all, so why they made a point of
mentioning it and that he has to follow a strict diet I have no idea.
To be fair, there are some semi-decent action scenes but
nuttin to write home t’da ranch abou’.
Number 21: Ram Gorpal Varma Ki Aag
Yay, back to Bollywood! They’re films are always so bright
and colourful.
Well,…not always.
To clarify, this film is actually called Aag (which I’m
given to understand means ‘flames’ but if it doesn’t don’t blame me, I don’t
speak Hindi), Ram Gorpal Varma is the name of the director.
Ignoring that bit of shameless self-promotion, there is somewhat a scoop here in
that this film features Amitabh Bachchan, which the opening credits cheekily claim
to be ‘introducing’. Some might think Bachchan is the star of some 200 movies (even a small cameo in Slumdog Millionaire) and arguably the biggest star in Bollywood history but they’d be wrong as this
was where he was first introduced.
There’s a nice twist to this actually as Aag is actually a remake of 70’s film Sholay, which Bachchan was also in as
one of the main heroes (he plays a different role here). Except of course he
wasn’t in Sholay, because as we know
this was his first film.
Aag is about two
outlaws recruited by a police chief to take down a mobster. That’s the whole
film summarised in 15 words but somehow that gets stretched to nearly three
hours. Every scene feels like it could have been done in half the time. I think there's a minimum length requirement for Bollywood and I'm not sure if that was sarcasm or if that is actually a thing.
Songs, of course they’re still there and I have my usual
gripes with them. Not the songs themselves (music being very subjective) but
never have I felt more like ‘we now interrupt this movie to bring you a music
video’ about a Bollywood film then I did here. See, the film is trying to be
dark and gritty but the songs just really ruin the atmosphere of it all. I don’t
want to see my villain bodypopping.
The background music is all over the place as well.
Sometimes it’s 70’s cop show, other times it’s trying to be a western. Which I
kind of understand but the levels are all wrong and oft times it drowns out the
dialogue.
Where it does shine though, is whenever Amitabh Bachchan is
on screen (making his film debut, remember). He plays the main villain, Babban
Singh, and he is brilliantly evil. Imagine an older version of Heath Ledger’s
Joker from The Dark Knight and you
have a good idea of where he’s at. A strong beginning from Mr Bachchan, I can see
him having a bright career.
To go back to what I said at the start about Bollywood films
not always being bright and colourful, there are some brutal scenes in this.
Such as Bachchan playing a game of Russian Roulette with a rival gang boss and
another in which he saws a policemans finger off with a hacksaw (and I have to
give the director props for using a dark filter in all of debutant Bachchan’s
scenes). Unfortunately, these horrific acts of barbarity are usually followed
by scenes surrounding the rom-com subplot, rather spoiling the flow of it all.
Worth seeing for a darker side of Bollywood westerners maybe
aren’t aware of but there are almost certainly better examples out there.
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