The Final Battle
Review by Pedro

The Final Battle is PJ Flip’s latest film here at HTG and released by his studio with his brother, The Flip Bros. I was looking forward to this film, but I was a little disappointed with how it turned out.

PLOT: The plot follows the unity, which is basically humans from the town and the Knights, who follow Dracula (Johnny Depp). The battle seems to be sort of a final battle between them. We can tell by the way that the humans and these beasts have hatred for each other, that this battle has waged on for a long time. What we really notice though is the love of Jon Bishop (Jake Gyllenhaal) for Emily (Kirsten Dunst). The battle continues to wage on, Dracula is killed in the end, but not before leaving a present for Emily. These final battle type plots have been done before, and the plot is just not all that interesting or unique.

FINAL PLOT GRADE: 35/100

DIALOGUE: What dialogue? There hardly is any dialogue in this film. Most of the movie is just sequences of action and description. Usually when people save dialogue and don’t use it very much, when they finally do speak, it’s very good and serves a point. The dialogue was pretty mediocre. The William Bishop dialogue at the beginning was not too bad, and served a point, but the dialogue gets worse as the film goes on. This film definitely would have benefitted if most of the characters had just shut the hell up. When Charlie’s first line of dialogue is a scream, which could have been written as a scream, and Jon’s first line is No God no as Emily is being bitten, you know the dialogue is suffering. Jon’s facial expressions during this sequence could have told so much more and we would have known exactly what he was thinking. So basically the bottom line for most of the dialogue is, there was no use for it. However, props to William Bishop’s dialogue though.

FINAL DIALOGUE GRADE: 20/100

CHARACTERS: I wasn’t too keen on the characters in this movie. First of, Charlie (Michael Clarke Duncan) is just a horrible cliche character in this type of battle film. He is the heavy black man with lots of power in his fists. I also didn’t buy Emily and Jon’s relationship as you don’t see them together very much, as the film is shorter than it needed to be. Dracula too could have been more mysterious and I would have liked to have seen more of him as well. William Bishop, too me was a pretty interesting leader type of character, sure his character has been done before, but his character was interesting. Unfortunately, he dies early on in the film, and that’s not saying much, because this whole film is short.

FINAL CHARACTERS GRADE: 20/100

CASTING: The casting was pretty good in for this film. I thought that Jake Gyllenhaal and Kirsten Dunst were cast well in their roles. I just wish that their real life chemistry could have come through more in this film. I really didn’t buy their relationship in this film. Michael Clarke Duncan is also the right person to play this role as Charlie, but my God, when will he play another soft spirited role? Stop casting him in these tough guy roles, he can do other roles. Ridley Scott is also the right choice for director, he definitely directs movies like these. I don’t like him very much though and I don’t like a lot of his films. One cast member I have a problem with is Dennis Quaid as William Bishop. Yes, the role is a very important one, but he’s fourth billing. Michael Clarke Duncan had a bigger role than Quaid. If you paid the full money for Quaid, you got ripped off. This was more of a cameo role and should have been treated as one, or you should have cast someone else.

FINAL CASTING GRADE: 90/100

PACING: I was honestly bored with this film and wanted it to end. The film was short, but the pacing made it seem longer than it should have been. I found myself bored in the battle sequences, and there were quite a few of them. There wasn’t too much of a film to work with either though, the whole film is battles that are either paced too fast or too slow. It seems like the writer got bored with this film and tried to end it too fast. I really would like to see better pacing in PJ’s other films. I know that he has it in him. The pacing, however, was not as atrocious as some of the other parts of the film.

FINAL PACING GRADE: 35/100

ADVERTISING: The ads for this film were amazing, really just top notch. They weren’t perfect, but they were nearly there. The ads really set up the mood and the feel for the film. I especially liked the posters of Johnny Depp as Dracula and the one with Emily and Jon in the graveyard. The ads really sparked my interest in seeing this movie. I was so excited to see this movie, and I was disappointed when I actually saw it. This is yet another film where the ads overshadow the film. The last film that I read on here, My Life As I Know It was like this as well. The ads for this film were really great though, and I have to give PJ props for that.

FINAL ADVERTISING GRADE: 95/100

WRITING: The writing of this movie seemed a bit sloppy to me. I remember hearing nothing about this film and then seeing the graveyard poster pop up one day. Was the film even written when this ad came up? It seems that PJ may have had an award that he just decided to use on this movie, so he wrote the movie to match the award. This is how the movie plays out and how it seems. People often complain that I don’t spend much time on my films, and it is obvious that PJ didn’t spend too much time on this. The many type-os in this film prove that he didn’t spend a great deal of time on the film. The film was shot and I noticed quite a few type-os. He possibly just relied on Spell Checker to check out his mistakes and this vastly hurt his film. I think that the film could have been longer and spent more time on. The writing definitely is not up to par, and I hope that PJ’s next film is better than this one.

FINAL WRITING GRADE: 25/100

OVERALL GRADE: 46/100