Well, let's be brutally honest here; It has to be said that Fabrizio De Angelis's The Last Match proves overall to be a very, very underwhelming affair but one that unfortunately typifies the overall failing fortunes and diminishing quality of output from the Italian movie industry at the time of it's making.
It's a decidedly lazily constructed effort suffering uninspired direction, some poor editing, a bad script and even a particularly dreadful musical score to further sink proceedings.
Having said the above, the film does on the other hand boast a few points in it's favour, most notably the great assemble cast of B-movie stars including Oliver Tobias, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Napier, Martin Balsam and Henry Silva amongst others. It seems that a number of these big names knew full well that they were saddled with a stinker however and gave somewhat lacklustre performances in response. Just take a look at the usually excellent Martin Balsam for instance, who appears in this film to be squinting to read his lines from a cue card(!) so much so in fact that I at first thought his character was supposed to be blind or something!!!
OK so there is the admitted novelty of an entire American football team launching an all out assault on a jail (decked out in full game gear no less!) but even these sequences which should have been the stuff of trash movie heaven are handled so ineptly that one hardly cares, much less laughs. To be fair there is at least one cool scene towards the end whereby one enterprising player puts a grenade into a football before drop kicking it at an airborne helicopter and blowing it out of the sky(!!!) but in all honesty, such a classic crappy scene comes just too little too late to lift this snooze fest.
OK so that's the review; To summarise, despite the films admittedly ridiculous sounding plot (a trash classic plot in fact) the film never even nearly lives up to its potential and furthermore ostensibly and unforgivably takes itself utterly seriously(!!!!!)
Why am I still rambling on then you might well ask? Well I've just got to say this; There is a character in this film that induced in me a bizarre and uncontrollable urge to kill him in the most violent manner possible!!! Who was this person? His name was George, the boyfriend of the hero's daughter. Words simply cannot describe what a geeky, floppy haired, creepy son of a bitch this character was! Damn, it's making me mad just thinking about his scenes now!!! The guy had the most annoying nature about him I think I have ever witnessed in any film. Am I making any sense here? Do you think me insane perhaps? OK, well if you want an example of why I hated this cretin so much, just check out the scene near the start where he is sitting in the back of a taxi with his girlfriend. He is staring at her point blank range in the most disgustingly, sickening and downright cringe inducing manner imaginable! Not only that but he does it for the whole damn journey! Literally he doesn't move his bloody head - he just stares right at her in this horrible, bloody irritating manner the whole time!!!! OK, OK......I'll go and lay down now but just check out this guy for yourselves......I promise you'll desire to bring about his abrupt dissolution after viewing him to!
It's a decidedly lazily constructed effort suffering uninspired direction, some poor editing, a bad script and even a particularly dreadful musical score to further sink proceedings.
Having said the above, the film does on the other hand boast a few points in it's favour, most notably the great assemble cast of B-movie stars including Oliver Tobias, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Napier, Martin Balsam and Henry Silva amongst others. It seems that a number of these big names knew full well that they were saddled with a stinker however and gave somewhat lacklustre performances in response. Just take a look at the usually excellent Martin Balsam for instance, who appears in this film to be squinting to read his lines from a cue card(!) so much so in fact that I at first thought his character was supposed to be blind or something!!!
OK so there is the admitted novelty of an entire American football team launching an all out assault on a jail (decked out in full game gear no less!) but even these sequences which should have been the stuff of trash movie heaven are handled so ineptly that one hardly cares, much less laughs. To be fair there is at least one cool scene towards the end whereby one enterprising player puts a grenade into a football before drop kicking it at an airborne helicopter and blowing it out of the sky(!!!) but in all honesty, such a classic crappy scene comes just too little too late to lift this snooze fest.
OK so that's the review; To summarise, despite the films admittedly ridiculous sounding plot (a trash classic plot in fact) the film never even nearly lives up to its potential and furthermore ostensibly and unforgivably takes itself utterly seriously(!!!!!)
Why am I still rambling on then you might well ask? Well I've just got to say this; There is a character in this film that induced in me a bizarre and uncontrollable urge to kill him in the most violent manner possible!!! Who was this person? His name was George, the boyfriend of the hero's daughter. Words simply cannot describe what a geeky, floppy haired, creepy son of a bitch this character was! Damn, it's making me mad just thinking about his scenes now!!! The guy had the most annoying nature about him I think I have ever witnessed in any film. Am I making any sense here? Do you think me insane perhaps? OK, well if you want an example of why I hated this cretin so much, just check out the scene near the start where he is sitting in the back of a taxi with his girlfriend. He is staring at her point blank range in the most disgustingly, sickening and downright cringe inducing manner imaginable! Not only that but he does it for the whole damn journey! Literally he doesn't move his bloody head - he just stares right at her in this horrible, bloody irritating manner the whole time!!!! OK, OK......I'll go and lay down now but just check out this guy for yourselves......I promise you'll desire to bring about his abrupt dissolution after viewing him to!