**POSSIBLE SPOILERS
AHOY!**
Over a mix of black-and-white and
color archival scenes featuring atomic bomb test footage, volcanos erupting,
and cities in ruins, we are told that the world has now been divided into two
groups: the rich and the contaminated masses (so, not too far off what it was
before the nuclear holocaust), and that the contaminated people are regularly
hunted and killed to stop the spread of their sickness. However, we’re also told that one day someone
realized that the contamination was finished; all the people were now clean. Cut to Alan (William Mang) and his wife (Cinzia
Bonfantini, and the only reason we know she’s Alan’s wife is because she is
credited as such) as they are ousted from the city and reclassified as “hunting
material.” Soon enough (though it doesn’t
feel like it), lone hunter Erasmus (Harrison
Muller, Jr.) is in competition with Edra (Marina Costa) and her band of scummy hunters to see who can take
down the most contaminated people in one day.
Including Alan and his spouse.
Romolo Guerrieri’s The Final
Executioner (aka L’ultimo Guerriero,
aka The Last Warrior) is yet another
in the lengthy heritage of Pasta-pocalypse films that sprang up from Italy in
the wake of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York. For as much as it clings to certain motifs of
the subgenre, though, it also strays pretty far afield in other, significant
ways. As is customary, there is the critique
of society along class lines. The rich
control everything, and the poor are victims forced to behave brutally in order
to survive. By that same token, the
elite rich (here embodied by the hunters [since we never see an actual bourgeois
rich person outside the hunting reserve], even though they live in the
wastelands in rundown manses that look like they could have been used as sets
in one of Meatloaf’s music videos)
are savages by nature. They are callous
in their disregard for human life, and they think nothing of killing in order
to maintain the status quo that they have manufactured (although any context as
to why this serves their needs is left shrouded in mystery for the viewer, and
it makes no logical sense, so we’re left only with the generality that all rich
people are evil people). Of course, this
means that we have to assume that Alan was at one time one of the rich elite
(he is a cybernetics specialist), so he should be hardhearted and vicious before
he is sent to the hunting reserve, but he’s not (or we’re heavily encouraged to
assume he’s not). It’s only after his
encounters with Erasmus and Edra that his bloodlust grows.
As seen in multitudinous films of
this ilk (Endgame, Turkey Shoot, The Running Man, et cetera), there is also the recycling of a
variation on The Most Dangerous Game
afoot herein. Most succinctly summed up
in the scene where Edra’s gang and Erasmus lurk near a pond waiting for the
contaminated people to crest the hill like a herd of gazelle approaching a
watering hole, they pick the people off one at a time. They later tally who killed whom like they’re
comparing points on stags’ racks. What’s
interesting here is that the prey isn’t really the focus (outside of our man
Alan and his wife). They are literally
nothing more than faceless game at a reserve.
It’s odd that our attention should be on the hunters as anything other
than antagonists, but it’s their relationship that drives a large portion of
the narrative, not Alan’s struggle against them as might be assumed. The competition angle of the film, normally
set up between hunter and prey is instead here predominantly between hunter and
hunter. The tension between these people
is strong.
Even among Edra’s group, which we
can surmise are together because they have some kind of bond, there is a wealth
of animosity. Melvin (Stefano Davanzati) is absolutely
reprehensible (and that’s saying something).
The first scene he’s in, he points a gun at fellow hunter Louis (himself
a decrepit junkie and played by Renato
Miracco) and pulls the trigger (it’s empty, of course; and
unfortunately). He soon after remarks
about Erasmus’ special rifle, “whoever painted it didn’t know the color of
bullshit.” He spends his downtime admiring
his own body in a mirror. Sex fiend
Diane (Margit Evelyn Newton), when
not shooting people or doing it with boy toy Phil (Luca Giordana) is spying on her associates and just being generally
creepy. The one hunter character we
would expect to sympathize with, Edra’s little brother Evan (Karl Zinny), is arguably the worst of
the bunch. Youth usually comes with a
modicum of innocence in cinema (Bad Seed-esque
stories excepted), but there is none to be found in this young man. He carries out one of the worst acts in the
film, and later he gleefully relives it via some kind of memory projection (and
possibly sexual stimulation) machine.
Was he born bad? Is this Edra’s
influence on him? We’re never told. We only know that he’s irredeemable (yet
still not moreso than any of the others).
The film diverges from its
subgenre in its last third, and I think that this is also where it finally
collapses as an entertainment. It
essentially becomes a Revenge film as Alan picks off the hunters one by one at
Edra’s compound (come on, you didn’t see this coming?). The satisfaction in watching these pieces of
garbage get their comeuppance is delicious; I won’t deny that. However, it is completely dissociated from
Post-Apocalyptic (not to mention Pasta-pocalyptic) films past, present, and
future. The film’s climactic moment is a
total deus ex machina that rings hollow, because it suddenly reminds us that
there was supposed to be a theme going on underneath all this action and the
filmmakers just didn’t feel like exploring it, but it still needed to have some
lip service paid to it in a desperate attempt to try and trick the audience
into thinking there was more going on in the film than there actually was. This irked me quite a bit, because the story
is set up with a Science Fiction premise.
Nevertheless, it then unspools itself as a straight ahead Action/Revenge
film, and only in its final moments are we reminded that this is all supposed
to be set in a post-nuke future (costumes and “fancy” guns,
notwithstanding). Harlan Ellison once said (and I’m paraphrasing; also, it may not
have been he who said it, but this is the way I remember it, I think it holds
true, regardless) that a good Science Fiction story must have its fantastic
ideas be integral to the story itself.
And this is not the case with The
Final Executioner. This film’s
Science Fiction elements are little more than window dressing (which I suppose
is fine and dandy if you’d rather stare at the curtains that the view through
the window). Now, is that a fair criticism
for a film that is purposely trying to cash in on a prevailing trend from a
country known for putting out genre material that is imitative at best? I think in this case, it is. I felt cheated by this movie. The film takes the long way around to get to
the same point a more direct film could have reached in a more satisfying
fashion. It doesn’t help any that there
is almost no life to any of the action scenes, and the whole affair reeks of
rote regurgitation from start to end. If
someone who actually gave a shit about the end product had a hand in this film,
it could have been a nice little gem.
Unfortunately, such is not the case.
MVT: I give Erasmus points
for having one of the more interesting costumes in Pasta-pocalyptic cinema history.
Make or Break: The film’s
prologue is weak, lazy, and dull. It
bluntly lets us know that there is nothing coming in the next ninety minutes we
haven’t seen done before and done better.
Score: 5/10
