| In a plot that borrows more than a little from the Sean Connery movie Outland, Final Test has Chin Siu-Hou as a security guard sent to take over a dangerous mining colony. It seems a powerful drug being pushed by the plant's foreman (Blacky Ko, subscribing to the low-budget rule that villains have to have bad hairdos) is making the workers go nuts. Chin sets out to stop this, but finds no support from the plant's manager (Yuen Wah, almost unrecognizable without a mustache) or the inept staff, and so sets out dispensing his own brand of justice until he gets to the bottom of the mess, which happens to be a plot involving androids enslaving humans.
Hong Kong is not normally known for producing very many science-fiction movies, mainly because the low budgets they must work with do not allow the film-makers to work effectively in the genre. Final Test is a good example of this. Here's a rundown on some of the low-budget "goodness" that awaits you: uniforms which are re-used from the US TV miniseries V, music liberally stolen from other movies like The Terminator and Escape from New York, horribly bad Terminator-style makeup for the androids (in fact, I think I wore the same costume for Halloween one year), examples of "futuristic" technology which include huge floppy computer disks, the video game Space Invaders and crossbows (not laser crossbows or anything, just plain old crossbows), and just overall poor production values and bad-looking sets.
Still, I had a surprisingly good time watching Final Test -- it was fun making jokes about the movie's shortcomings (it it just bad enough to still be enjoyable) and there is some pretty decent action sprinkled throughout the movie. Final Test isn't really a "good" movie by any means, but for a no-brainer cheeseball action sci-fi movie, I've seen a lot worse. At least Final Test doesn't seem to take itself too seriously and that helps make it more digestable, whcih is helpful since the ingredients aren't that good to begin with. |
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