THE FINAL SANCTION (1990) **

After having so much fun with Deadly Prey, I decided to give another David A. Prior movie a shot.  Like that immortal classic, The Final Sanction stars his brother Ted, who gives another memorably over the top performance.  Sadly, it falls well short of Deadly Prey’s high standards, but the supporting cast is great and it’s just weird enough to stand out from the sea of low budget early ‘90s Direct to Video actioners.

Russia and the United States exchange nuclear missile attacks which looks like it will signal all-out nuclear war.  In lieu of WWIII, it is decided to instead pit each nation’s leading soldier against the other in a designated neutral battleground to determine a winner.  America’s man is a military prisoner (Ted Prior) who has a communication device implanted in his body so a Lieutenant (Renee Cline) can keep tabs on him and feed him intel during the duel.  The Russian fighter (Robert Z’Dar) is a ruthless killing machine who was trained via brainwashing techniques by a sadistic Major (William Smith).  Naturally, only one man can walk away victorious and give his country bragging rights to the war to end all wars.

Remember in Rocky IV when Rocky said, “In here, we got two guys killing each other, but I guess that’s better than twenty million”?  The Final Sanction is an eighty-minute version of that sentence.  Whereas Rocky IV was a parable about two men ending nuclear war between America and Russia, this is the literal iteration.  There’s even a scene late in the film that blatantly rips off Rocky IV where the two combatants gain each other’s respect, leading the Russian to defy his superiors and shout, “I fight for me!”

Rocky IV this ain’t though.  Heck, it isn’t even Deadly Prey.  While Prior is fun to watch, there’s nothing here that comes close to matching the non-stop thrills of that classic.  His brother David’s staging of the action is rather lackluster too, although Prior and Z’Dar’s final mano y mano brawl is a solid capper on the film.  

Prior is at his best when he’s having conversations with Cline, but he’s basically just talking to himself and doing a one-man show.  These scenes kind of play out like a poor man’s Innerspace and Prior proves he’s adept at displaying a comedic side.  I just wish David went all in on the silliness the way he did with Deadly Prey because ultimately, The Final Sanction was just dumb enough to pique my interest, but not dumb enough to sustain it.