Leofwine_draca Review of Final Score

Final Score (2018)

A hark back to the Die Hard rip-offs of yesteryear

[6/10 · 10 August 2020]

Once upon a time, cinema was awash with DIE HARD rip-offs, but the genre has died out recently. FINAL SCORE, a British thriller set almost entirely in a football stadium, attempts to hark back to the glory days of yesteryear, offering a riff on the Van Damme flick SUDDEN DEATH (itself a blatant DIE HARD copy) while copying various bits and pieces - and even dialogue - from the Bruce Willis classic. The hulking Dave Bautista plays the uncle of a teenage girl who gets drawn into a stand-off at a football match carried out by Russian separatist and all-round bad guy, Ray Stevenson (possibly the only guy to match Bautista in height if not bulk). What follows is paper-thin and cliched, with sometimes awful dialogue, but it works - at least in part. As an action lover I can report that the early fights in the lift and the kitchen are the highlights here, the latter gloriously sadistic and violent, but this is a film that peaks early. Later on, with stunts and motorbike chases, it all gets a little too generic and Hollywood lite, but still held together with a fast pace and no-nonsense approach. A minor film, for sure, but a fun one with it.