Terrorisme en haute mer

FINAL VOYAGE is a hilarious DIE HARD-on-a-ship type film that comes to us courtesy of Z-grade movie specialist Jim Wynorski. This one throws a mixed cast into a story that happily copies the likes of UNDER SIEGE et al with the only difference that this is a B-movie through and through; expect trite dialogue and wooden acting throughout. Plus any large-budget scene is typically stock footage stolen from an older and better movie.

The film's unorthodox hero is Dylan Walsh, playing a bodyguard caught up in a hostage situation. Walsh is best known for playing geeky scientist types in the likes of CONGO so his heroic turn here is a little odd. He's given support by Ice-T, playing himself as always, as the chief bad guy, and Claudia Christian as a memorably hot femme fatale. Erika Eleniak plays EXACTLY the same role as she did in UNDER SIEGE except without the nudity. Stephen Macht is the ship's captain and the hulking Michael Bailey Smith one of the henchmen.

It says something about Wynorski's talents as a director that I can call this one of his better films despite it being low par throughout. At least the pacing is fast and the action scenes are fun if laughable, so you can sit back and enjoy the cheese. It also helps that I have a high tolerance for DIE HARD rip-offs so it doesn't take much to entertain me. There's no denying that FINAL VOYAGE is a cheap and cheesy film though.

Two of the best actors in the business, Stephen Macht and Ice T, are put throught their paces in this sorry excuse for an action film. Its ludicrous scenes galore and at times pretty absurd acting which destroy this one. Its a pity Macht's excellent performance in 'Stephen King's Graveyard Shift' didn't materialise into better offers. If you like cheap, pathetic films, buy this one. If not, then stay away.

I saw this film about 5 years ago and I have to say it is one of the most unintentionally funny films I have ever seen. Practically everything in the film leaves you slack jawed with incredulity, from the "crashed" plane at the beginning (the camera was put at an angle to achieve the effect), to the number of shots fired from each gun without reloading, to my personal favourite the ships engines.

Final Voyage is either the worst film ever made, or paradoxically the best example of a B movie stinker ever made which fully deserves a 5 star review.

Enjoy!

This movie made little sense. The acting sucked and the story needed a overhaul. The few things I did like about this film where wasted. First the cast. Claudia Christian's a babe and her character was pretty good as kick ass hitwoman. Erika Eleniak also a babe but she's done this gig before(in "Under Siege" and is 1000 times better than this). Next the production. It pi**es me off to see dumb movies wasting good FX and vehicles. I don't know how but they had a C-130 cargo plane to parachute from, during the day(Gees sutle). A night drop would have been much more stealthy. Hey, if you watch closely during the drop, one of the parachutist looses his diving mask. I won't go into tactical FUBARs in the theives operation(which there are many). I never saw theives dress in matching uniform either. Damn that ship sure came apart after the first explosion. Too many explosion for no reason. And the ballroom explosion was footage from "Deep Rising". Bottomline: with some work this could have been a good movie instead of stinker.

How to make a bad action/adventure flick:

Step one:

Take out all of the ingredients that made Die Hard and Speed good movies (character development, plot twists, etc).

Step two:

Hire a list of completely untalented, unknown actors and then tell them to overact in typical Shatner conviction (only not as amusing and intelligible).

Step three:

Throw in typical terrorist plot (in this case, 12 terrorists take over a HUGE ocean liner (don't know how they could take over a place with around 250-1000 people) who want money in the vault when they could just rob a bank

Step four:

Throw in a couple annoyingly stupid characters

Step five:

Take out things like choreography, bullet dodging, or anything that would make someone watch an action movies

Step six:

Make sure to include totally one-dimensional characters

And the result in one hella bad, boring movie. It sure wouldn't be hard to make a good action movie, even include a little joke or something, but the filmmakers took all of the ways to make a good movie and did the opposite. There is absolutely no way I can recommend this mediocre piece of shazbot (sorry).

If you see it in a store, warn people of it's presence and tell them not to be fooled by Ice-T's presence in the flick (even Mean Guns is better than this tripe).

1 out of 10.