Plot: After a recruiter sees him winning a bar fight, Tyler Verdiccio (Lorenzo Lamas) is kidnapped and thrown into an abandoned industrial complex which has been converted into the arena. Along with his lover, Jordan, and another kidnapped man, Verdiccio is hunted by mercenaries in a televised death duel which is the main event for a multi-million-dollar gambling racket.
One thing I’ve always enjoyed about Lorenzo Lamas movies is how he tends not to take them all that seriously; he is either wearing ridiculous and unconvincing disguises or just cracking bad jokes.
Final Round (also known as Human Target) is one of my personal favourite movies of his; sadly, there are no disguises, but he does wear dungarees/overalls which is not a cool look whatsoever but hey, it was the 90’s. He still tells crap jokes and spouts one-liners which makes Tyler strangely endearing as a character.
This is Lamas’ turn at a Running Man meets Hard Target type scenario where he is kidnapped and wakes up forced to fight for his life while people bet on the “game”.
It’s around an hour and 20 minutes long so it’s well paced and isn’t short on fight scenes and awesomely over the top kills. This has some quality R-rated violence in it which fans will love with the various opponents Tyler has to face meeting gruesome ends.
The love scene is incredibly awkward as it just never seems to end making it come across as softcore porno rather than an action flick but after that the film is awesome.
Ian Jacklin plays one of the antagonists but it’s frustrating how he gets taken out as I really wanted to see him face off against Lamas which we didn’t get to see.
Also did anyone else notice that during the scene when one of the characters is mentioned their picture comes up with their name but the villain actually says a different last name? Or did I not hear that correctly?
Overall, Final Round is a fun Lorenzo Lamas picture with plenty of fight scenes and violent kills; it also has Lamas’ trademark humour but there is no excuse for his fashion choices in this movie.
