The late 90s were a wasteland of action stars starring in crash-and-burn duds beset by production problems, low budgets, and multiple name changes. I can name ten such movies off the top of my head and The Last Patrol is but another.
Set in California after an earthquake has isolated it from the rest of America (via footage stolen from Dante's Peak) there is a mild allusion to pre-millennium doom before settling in with a ragtag group of survivors in a desert outpost led by Dolph Lundgren. There is a muddled plot about a plague killing off the population while occasionally cutting to a secondary plot involving a heroin farm operated by a death row inmate freed from the electric chair at the moment of the quake. None of it stitches together very well, though the material is more ponderous than I anticipated but it has ideas well beyond its meagre budget. It seems to be going for a Mad Max vibe but with a slightly goofy, oddball tone.
The Last Patrol could have benefited from a re-write by a more experienced writer but the executive producers wouldn't allow their own script to be altered. Director Sheldon Lettich, who was a low-level mover and shaker in many Stallone, Van Damme, and Lundgren movies of the era, capably directs what little action there is with no particular flair. There are a couple of striking shots in there but its mostly all very flat with no thought given to camera blocking or composition. It was actually shot in Israel, and you might recognize a couple of locations from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. David Michael Frank (a once talented composer who seems to have just disappeared) provides an okay score that sounds a helluva lot like Uru: Ages Beyond Myst but precedes it by four years. There's a couple of oddities in the casting too. Sherri Alexander ended up giving birth to her first child at the age of 45 a decade later, and a few months after the death of her husband, who never got to see his child come into the world. That man was Michael Crichton! Also, the actor who plays the villain was assassinated in Palestine for corrupting the local Islamic youth by bringing theatre and and performance art into their community. Pretty heavy stuff! Other than that there's nothing notable here.
I don't think this movie even got released in the UK. It certainly never showed up in Blockbuster during my 5-year tenure in the 2000s. The end credits imply that it was intended for cinema exhibition but it's clearly not marketable any territory. I can't imagine anyone giving this a second viewing and it has rightfully ended up in obscurity.
Set in California after an earthquake has isolated it from the rest of America (via footage stolen from Dante's Peak) there is a mild allusion to pre-millennium doom before settling in with a ragtag group of survivors in a desert outpost led by Dolph Lundgren. There is a muddled plot about a plague killing off the population while occasionally cutting to a secondary plot involving a heroin farm operated by a death row inmate freed from the electric chair at the moment of the quake. None of it stitches together very well, though the material is more ponderous than I anticipated but it has ideas well beyond its meagre budget. It seems to be going for a Mad Max vibe but with a slightly goofy, oddball tone.
The Last Patrol could have benefited from a re-write by a more experienced writer but the executive producers wouldn't allow their own script to be altered. Director Sheldon Lettich, who was a low-level mover and shaker in many Stallone, Van Damme, and Lundgren movies of the era, capably directs what little action there is with no particular flair. There are a couple of striking shots in there but its mostly all very flat with no thought given to camera blocking or composition. It was actually shot in Israel, and you might recognize a couple of locations from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. David Michael Frank (a once talented composer who seems to have just disappeared) provides an okay score that sounds a helluva lot like Uru: Ages Beyond Myst but precedes it by four years. There's a couple of oddities in the casting too. Sherri Alexander ended up giving birth to her first child at the age of 45 a decade later, and a few months after the death of her husband, who never got to see his child come into the world. That man was Michael Crichton! Also, the actor who plays the villain was assassinated in Palestine for corrupting the local Islamic youth by bringing theatre and and performance art into their community. Pretty heavy stuff! Other than that there's nothing notable here.
I don't think this movie even got released in the UK. It certainly never showed up in Blockbuster during my 5-year tenure in the 2000s. The end credits imply that it was intended for cinema exhibition but it's clearly not marketable any territory. I can't imagine anyone giving this a second viewing and it has rightfully ended up in obscurity.