Final Justice Reviews

Made in 1994 but unreleased until it came to home video in 1997, this repulsive revenge melodrama should have been left in the can. Miscreants Red (Brent Huff) and Bobby (Rick Marotta) attack a young couple in the woods. After Bobby is shot by the young man (who is then killed by Red), they hide out in an empty lakeside cabin. While Red is away, the cabin's owners arrive. Lawyer Alan Massard (James Brolin) and his very pregnant wife Amy (Annie Fitzgerald) are spending a last weekend there before selling it. They have invited their friends Charles (Beau Billingslea) and Liz (Cecelia Thompson), an interracial couple, and Bill (Rob Roy Fitzgerald), who arrives not with his wife but with his girlfriend, Sheri (Shawn Huff). Badly wounded, Bobby remains hidden until Red returns that evening. Initially pretending to be woodsmen involved in a hunting accident, the two soon reveal their true colors. Red revels in tormenting his hosts by going through their things and exposing their personal secrets. When they try to fight him, Red gets angry and rapes Amy. Afterward, Alan manages to turn the tables; Bobby is killed and Red is trapped in the basement. The three couples argue over whether they should call the police or kill Red: as a criminal lawyer, Alan argues that Red will be back on the streets in a few years. Liberals Charles and Liz want to call the police, as does cowardly blowhard Bill; Amy and Sheri, who was raped as a teen, vote to kill him. Through the night, the balance of power changes several times, as Red escapes more than once and attempts to kill his captors. While Red is trying to overpower Alan, he is killed by Charles, who hits him in the head with a hammer. Amy gives birth, and Alan buries Bobby and Red's corpses. "Some people just have the devil in them--they're born evil," says one character, laying out a simple-minded ideology which the film reiterates to numbing effect. This wouldn't have been so bad as a simple thriller, but writer-director Brent Huff is more interested in mocking his characters' liberal pieties and showing just how bad someone with "the devil" in him can be. (Apparently there is a devil for bad acting, as Huff overacts outrageously in the role of bad guy Red.) FINAL JUSTICE belongs on the same rack with LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1973), CLASS OF 1984 (1982), AN EYE FOR AN EYE (1996), and other repellent films that provoke and exploit a desire for revenge. (Graphic violence, nudity, sexual situations, adult situations, substance abuse, extreme profanity.)