Final Jeopardy

A movie with tension from beginning to end, with an interesting method of fading to still black and white image every time there is a scene change or the location is changed.

This works all but once, when it is used in the middle of a busy chase scene towards the end.

If you like a movie set almost entirely at night, with some very lost and scared protagonists on the run and trying to make it back home, then this is one to check out.

I saw this at some point in the 80's, likely staying up late in school holidays or something. I remembered an exciting suspense filled movie - that I throughly enjoyed. As time (and my life) went on, on pretty much forgot about it, but would occasionally reflect on the unique presence of the film - wondering what its name was. 40 years later, a random internet search, a hit on Quora and Final Jeopardy and I are reunited!!

Alas, the romance was much better as a memory....

It's an interesting premise/plot and it actually starts off pretty well, but as the night sets in and the various dangers of the night are encountered by our leads... it soon becomes evident it's a pretty loose plot - with not much holding it together. It's available on YouTube for anyone out there with a nostalgic bent like I (thought) I had for this flick.

But seriously... consider washing your neighbours cat as a better use of time.

Hard-working Martin Campbell (Richard Thomas) and his charming wife Susan (Mary Crosby) hit the big city for crucial business meetings which could make or break his career. She goes shopping and they plan to rendezvous for dinner later.

For his final meeting of the day he shows up at the wrong address. It also happens to be in the worst part of town and the joint closes at 7pm. Then Martin gets hit with another unwelcome realization - the parking lot he left his rental car in closed up even earlier.

His wife shows up just in time to be stranded with him as the cab driver who brought her speeds off. The cabbie and seemingly everyone else in the movie knows the area to be bad news for every kind of reason. For the unlucky tourists it is something they will discover the hard way as locals of a malevolent intent detect their presence and elect to give them a hard time for ill-begotten fun and profit.

A cinematic cliché used far too often is the one where city dwellers get stranded in a rural setting and get brutalized by demented inbreds. The juxtaposition wherein small-town folks find horror in the big city is far more believable and I speak as a city dweller who dreads going certain places downtown. Numerous big North American cities are host to large critical masses of people on illegal drugs or off of necessary prescription drugs or both.

Eventually after a nightmare of an evening Marty comes to blame himself because it is accurate that he is at fault. Susan tells him the mistake he made was one anybody could have made. In the year in which this film was produced it might well have been a mistake anybody could have made. But we have cellphones now, Google maps, GPS etc now.

The suspense depicted here seems very real. Richard Thomas - long typecast as a wholesome farm-boy from his years on 'The Waltons' gave one of his better performances in this production.Not only are there solid performances by the leads but the supporting cast is particularly convincing. Michael Cavanaugh, Jordan Charney, Jeff Corey and Jonathan Goldsmith were always great.

My father showed me this film when I was a teenager, and I have liked it ever since, the atmosphere is fantastic going from busy streets in the daylight to absolute silence and empty streets at night. Its about two out of towners stranded in a dilapidated part of Detroit full of hoods and people who only look out for themselves. There may be many mistakes in the film but overall its still a very enjoyable urban thriller.

Kudos to whoever put the great-looking restored version of this up on Youtube. This is one of those TV movies (the 80s had plenty of them) that were good enough that you'd remember at least part of them as an adult. Final Jeopardy is like a tense version of The Out of Towners, or some such fish out of water type story. It involves a yuppie and his wife visiting some big American city (not sure they even named which one, but it mostly seemed to be Chicago) for a job interview and maybe a nice dinner before heading home to some unknown suburb to get back to reality. Maybe it wasn't an interview. On second thought, the guy may have been just looking for an investor for a business venture. Anyway, it hardly matters by about 10 minutes in. The first guy he meets isn't interested, and the next guy he is supposed to meet never shows up at the bar he expected him to be. Oh, well... maybe he can meet up with his wife and have a nice dinner... oops. This is before American cities started with urban renewal and having any sort of entertainment open downtown after about 7:00 pm. No sooner does our couple rendezvous, then they quickly realize they are stuck downtown with no hotels/buses/cabs available to them. It gets worse as four-person gang of muggers begins chasing after them. Will the couple be able to find a safe place to hide for the night? Can they even find a cop? Someone helpful? Anything?

Although many details of how this couple becomes isolated are contrived, and a bit hard to believe, the tension is successfully established early on. You have to keep in mind that many cities might have been this deserted at night back then. Since I've been an adult, every city I've been in has at least some kind of nightlife downtown until at least midnight. Later on the weekends. But back then who knows. So I will reserve intense criticism for the mostly-deserted streets they encounter. The little street gang is not terribly intimidating. How one meek-acting yuppie and a limping wife can keep them at bay is one of this film's credibility issues. Everyone else they encounter is either rudely indifferent, clueless, or hostile. The gang appears and disappears randomly when the script needs to increase tension. The direction is above average and the acting is generally excellent for such an endeavor. Richard Thomas is particularly good as the yuppie protagonist. He's had a long career. You may chuckle when you initially see him, though. He looks like a young Principal Ed Rooney from Ferris Bueller's Day Off! The wife is well-played by the attractive Mary Crosby; one of Bing's many children. Some interesting casting for peripheral characters. The guy playing the bartender in an early scene is "the most interesting man in the world" from the Dos Equis commercials. Too bad the yuppie didn't order one of those! Nobody played a Chicago cop like Dennis Farina, but his role is way too small. I love any scene in the movie with a train in it, even if the one here is impossible to believe.

If you have time to check this one out, go ahead and do so. After a few minutes of it, you may find you remember it from 1985. Seeing it again as an adult reminded me of being stranded outside of Madison Square Garden during an August blackout in 2003. My first day ever in NYC and THAT had to happen! Lots of indifferent people there too, but at least there were lots of cops. I was told by more than one official to check with Port Authority to see if they could get me where I needed to go. What the heck is that, anyway?? 7 of 10 stars.

The Hound.