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5
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Guest
Review by Troy
Howarth |
In
a plague-ravaged 2012, a lone man (Yul Brynner) does battle
with marauders and assists an idealist (Max Von Sydow) in attempting
to rebuild a better world...
Fear
of the potential for apocalyptic holocaust has yielded an entire
subgenre of movies, ranging from serious polemics such as On
the Beach to good old-fashioned cheesefests like 2019:
After the Fall of New York. Robert Clouse's 1975 film
The Ultimate Warrior falls somewhere
between the two extremes.
Director Clouse (Enter
the Dragon), who also wrote the screenplay, clearly has
his eye on making a statement about human nature — in both its
noble and less-than-noble extremes. On the one side, the forces
of good, represented by Max Von Sydow's patriarchal character,
fight selflessly to provide a better tomorrow for their children;
on the other, the forces of evil, represented by William Smith's
colorful baddie, are all about self-gratification at any cost.
The character of Carson, played by Yul Brynner, represents a
bridge between the two. Brynner's character is much too enigmatic
to read in purely heroic terms — he is something of a mercenary,
and his exposure to the horrors of the landscape have left him
callous and indifferent to suffering. Nevertheless, in aligning
with the Von Sydow character and putting his life on the line
to protect everything he has worked for, Brynner ends up as
a force for good — and if the film stops short of providing
real closure, one is still left with a message of hope for the
future.
All of this moral
posturing to one side, The Ultimate Warrior
also has its eye on entertaining the audience — and this Clouse
does by loading up the film with plenty of action. Regrettably,
the cheapjack production values work against the end product.
The film looks cheap and drab, and while some of this works
into the film's post-apocalyptic aesthetic, it doesn't make
for compelling cinema. Some of the action scenes have flair
— notably the final showdown between Brynner and Smith — but
much of the film is slow and halfhearted. The real kiss of death,
however, is an appalling soundtrack by Gil Melle. Melle's monotonous
synthesizer doodlings are droning when they're not unintentionally
funny, thus destroying the last vestige of atmosphere.
Despite Clouse's generally
flat and listless direction and overly simplistic moralizing,
he is well served by a trio of central performances. Brynner,
one of the screen's most charismatic performers, is impressive
in the lead role. His interpretation of Carson is devoid of
mawkish sentiment and he really zones in on the character's
tunnel-visioned sense of purpose. He makes the character accessible
to the audience, thus enabling one to root for him, but retains
an air of mystery throughout. Despite being in his mid-fifties,
he's in remarkable physical shape and looks to have performed
some dangerous stunts himself. William Smith (Invasion
of the Bee Girls, Fast
Company) is well cast as his adversary, a murderous bandit
with the unlikely name of "Carrot." Smith doesn't have a great
deal of depth to his role, but he clearly relishes playing a
bastard and he does so with wit and finesse. His fight scene
with Brynner is all the more impressive because they're both
so imposing and are clearly more than evenly matched. Max Von
Sydow (The Exorcist),
a titanic acting talent in his own right, brings the right balance
of weariness and moral strength to his character. Regrettably,
the same cannot be said of the remainder of the cast, which
ranges from blandly adequate (Joanna Miles as Von Sydow's pregnant
granddaughter) to the downright amateurish (this basically encompasses
all of Smith's gang, for example).
Despite its flaws
— and there are clearly many of them — The
Ultimate Warrior still holds one's interest and is an
interesting entry in a subgenre seldom noted for its thoughtfulness
or attention to character.
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| The
Ultimate Warrior
makes its DVD debut as part of a double bill with the über-cheesy
British sci-fi flick Battle
Beneath the Earth (1967). Warner has taken a lot of flak for
their Best Buy exclusive double bills, though they can also be
found at various online retailers. It would seem they felt more
comfortable dumping some of their more questionable cult titles
onto barebones double feature discs rather than giving them proper
stand-alone releases. Even so, it's great that they opted to release
them at all as opposed to allowing them to rot in their vaults.
The 1.85/16x9 transfer is acceptable, though it could have used
a bit more work. The source materials are in decent shape, with
some grain and speckling in evidence. It's hard to tell if the
transfer is pale or if this was part of the cinematography, but
ultimately the film isn't noteworthy for its stylish imagery.
The transfer looks reasonably sharp, and the film seems to be
uncut. The mono English soundtrack is of the same caliber —
it gets the job done but isn't particularly dynamic, and its age
is evident in the limitations in rage of the soundtrack. Extras
are nonexistent. 9/14/08 |
| NOTE
Issued this summer as an "exclusive" available only
at Best Buy stores, the disc will be given a market-wide release
on October 7, 2008. |
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