The Final Alliance (1990): Cat’s Life

Matty is left all ‘meh’ by a dud revenge flick that should have been catnip.

THE FINAL ALLIANCE is anchored by the kind of ‘hell yeah!’ premise guaranteed to attract attention:

David Hasselhoff, taking revenge against the biker gang that killed his wife and kid, assisted by a motley crew of townsfolk and — brace yourself — his pet puma.

Sadly, the fun is kneecapped by poor directorial choices.

A cinematographer by trade, helmer Mario DiLeo at least ensures that The Final Alliance is crisply composed. However, the bulk of the film is stricken with a locked-off, two-shot staginess indicative of DiLeo’s sideline as a gun-for-hire handler of episodic television. The Final Alliance represents his sole feature as director. Further megaphone-wielding credits include single ep stints on Miami Vice, Crime Story, The Equalizer, and, post The Final Alliance, Baywatch. Because of course.

While The Hoff is at his charismatic best and merrily embellishes the excesses of Harel Goldstein and John Eubank’s playful script, DiLeo appears completely ill at ease with the material. He either misses or wilfully ignores the humour The Hoff and the rest of the cast inject into their broad, pleasingly comic book parts. Everything is captured in a deathly serious manner with nary an ounce of pomp or ceremony. Julian Laxton’s robust score works overtime trying to keep the excitement at fever pitch, but he’s let down by DiLeo’s anonymous point-and-shoot stylistics. Fact is, if you’ve got a maniacal Bo Hopkins and an albino John Saxon chewing the scenery as villains – more gimmicks with inherent appeal – and a mountain lion springing about the place and your finished film still feels like a slog, something’s gone horrifically wrong.

Nevertheless, The Final Alliance is worth watching for the plot and performances, and remains contextually fascinating. It serves as a bridge between two of the DTV revenge movie’s biggest influences, marrying the violent, wish-fulfilment fantasy of Death Wish (1974) with the western licks of High Plains Drifter (1973). In turn the blend positions the film as a tether between the Bronson and Eastwood classics’ other cut-price offspring – ‘The Exterminator (1980) meets The Stranger (1995)’, if you will.

Preceded by the makings of Purgatory (1988) and Wild Zone (1989), The Final Alliance is the last of three films to be shot virtually in tandem by the short-lived International Media Exchange. A sort-of/not quite offshoot of The Cannon Group, the IME was the brainchild of Martin J. Barab and Ami Artzi; an attorney and Cannon production exec, respectively, who’d join Cannon bigwig Menahem Golan’s later outfit, the 21st Century Film Corporation. Lensed in South Africa in September 1988 — just over a month before Cannon announced they’d cease shooting in the country following industry backlash and intense pressure from anti-apartheid activists — The Final Alliance was picked up by Epic Productions at the 1989 AFM, and, alongside Wild Zone, was issued on cassette in the U.S. by RCA Columbia per their output deal with Epic (Wild Zone landed 13th June 1990, The Final Alliance landed 17th October 1990). Both The Final Alliance and Wild Zone surfaced on tape in the U.K. through Entertainment in Video and their long-standing pact with Epic and their predecessor, Trans World (see: The Curse (1987), Deep Space (1988), I, Madman (1989), Mom (1991), The Ambulance (1990)).