This Friday night I rented Final Score – get ready for soccer and terrorists!
Do you like Die Hard (1988) starring Bruce Willis? Do you like Sudden Death (1995) starring Jean-Claude Van Damme? Do you like Dave Bautista from Guardians of the Galaxy and the WWE? If you answered yes to at least 2 of those, then do I have a film for you! Final Score from director Scott Mann follows the old 80’s and 90’s action movie template of Die Hard to give you a familiar but fun guilty pleasure.
Final Score is the second time Scott Mann has used Dave Bautista in an action movie (Heist, 2015). Can’t blame Mann for going back to Bautista, this hulk of a man can carry an action flick. He’s got a dry comedic timing that I love to watch. The only negative about Bautista’s performance in Final Score is I wish they would of let him go further with his wit.
Ray Stevenson and Pierce Brosnan are brothers and former leaders of a revolution in the Russian state of Sukovia. At least that’s what I think the first 5 minutes tells us in a significant, boring exposition drop at the beginning of the film. I trailed off and didn’t care. We have Russian like bad guys that lost, Stevenson is looking for Brosnan is present day, got it, let’s go!
Bautista plays a war-torn soldier that is visiting his dead friend’s daughter named Danni (Lara Peake). Danni calls him Uncle Mike even if they aren’t blood-related. Mike drops into London to surprise Danni with soccer tickets. The film lets you know Uncle Mike hates soccer several times.
At the game, we see Arkady (Stevenson), and his rebels take control of the stadium with force. All while this is happening Uncle Mike loses Danni while getting hot dogs (remember, he loves the red, white and blue) and has to talk to our comic relief Faisal (Amit Shah). Faisal is a security person of some sort and helps Mike look for Danni. At first, I thought Faisal would get annoying and offensive being his character is brown-skinned in a movie with terrorist. He doesn’t. We do of course get a Muslim joke. They couldn’t help themselves, but in the end, Faisal is useful and not just the butt of jokes.
When Faisal takes Mike to search for Danni, we get a great fight with Bautista and a Sukovian goon beating the hell out of each other in a tiny elevator. It sets the tone nicely for how violent this movie gets.
After the fight in the elevator, Mike contacts the police chief or whatever they call that position in London. This conversation starts off many discussions with Steed (Ralph Brown) and Mike. Mike spends a lot of energy tiring to convince Steed that he’s serious about these terrorists and the stadium is set to explode with hidden C-4 explosives. Out of options, Mike throws one of the terrorists off the stadium’s roof with a message attached to get the point across that this isn’t a joke. These are just two of the many parallels between Die Hard and Final Score, and I don’t care, it works.
Ray Stevenson is just a joy to watch chew scenery. He’s over the top with his methods and owns the camera. Pierce Brosnan as his brother Dimitri barely has a role. He’s in this movie may be a total of 12 minutes. Dimitri has gone through extensive plastic surgery to look completely different (think Face/Off with Nicolas Cage) and wants nothing to do with his brother Arkady. I don’t know why Brosnan is used so little. Stevenson and Brosnan together in their one scene was tense and entertaining. Give me more of that!
The two terriost that steal the show are Vlad (Martyn Ford) and Tatiana (Alexandra Dinu). Ford is a massive bodybuilder in real life that makes Bautista look normal sized in a kitchen fight that is brutal. Faisal is the often used badass female that is more dangerous than her more massive lover Vlad (a lot like Sam Phillip’s character Katya in Die Hard with a Vengeance). Faisal gives Uncle Mike a run for his money is a cuckoo motorcycle chase through the stadium’s food court.
I haven’t talked much about Lara Peake that played Danni, but this young actress held her own around Stevenson and Bautista. Danni makes terrible decisions but in the end is useful and not just a damsel-in-distress to move the plot along.
In the end, Final Score is a popcorn action flick to rent on a Friday night to watch Bautista get the crap kicked out of him. Kick your feet up, order a pizza, drink some beer and start the weekend with some over the top mayhem. Final Score isn’t a classic, but it’s a good time. Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bruce Willis would be proud.
Final Score: C+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxl0XV89dE0
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– Stephen M. Bay