Final Justice



""The story of a large sweaty man who goes to Malta to sweat.""

- Satellite News

Final Justice is a 1984 movie directed by Greydon Clark and starring Joe Don Baker.

One dark and stormy night, Palermo and his brother Tony, two mob hitmen, are blundering around South Texas trying to get across the border to escape the heat from their last job in Dallas. They end up gratuitously shooting a motorist they crash into; then, needing wheels, they decide to try hotwiring a police car in front of a police station. Of course, they're discovered, but they manage to kill the sheriff of the town. His deputy sheriff, Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III, chases them all the way to and across the Mexican border, where he kills the younger mobster for trying to pull a gun. Palermo, outraged at his brother's death, swears vengeance on Geronimo, but refuses to rise to the challenge of a showdown; instead, Geronimo just knocks Palermo out and drags him back.

Well, for some reason Geronimo is asked to escort Palermo back to Sicily as a publicity stunt. Of course, this is all part of an Evil Plan, as the mafia's already arranged to fake a malfunction on their flight that requires an emergency landing, bringing Geronimo and Palermo to Malta instead. There, operatives are ready to help Palermo get free. But neither Geronimo nor Palermo are willing to just let it end like this...

Will Geronimo whizz the case? Will there be lots of repetitive actions and pointless chase sequences? Yes, yes, and holy crap, YES.

For the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode see here .

Final Justice contains the following tropes:

 * AcCENT Upon the Wrong SylLABle: Palermo has Maria hostage at gunpoint and threatens Geronimo with "I'll blow her brains OUT!"
 * Action Girl: Maria, in an upgrade from nearly Neutral Female.
 * Anti-Hero
 * Arson, Murder, and Lifesaving
 * Artistic License Geography: The flight from America to Sicily gets rerouted to Malta. Which is farther south and (depending on where they were headed) farther east.
 * Awesome McCoolname: Thomas Jefferson Geronimo. The Third.
 * Badass Boast / Catch Phrase: "You think you can take me? Go 'head on. It's your move!"
 * Geronimo actually subverts his own line at the end.
 * Bad Cop, Incompetent Cop: Geronimo's dealings with the Malta police are in a class of their own.
 * Bad Habits
 * Black and Gray Morality: Unintentionally.
 * Boring Failure Hero: Geronimo. PROTIP: It really undermines your movie's hero's effectiveness when you show him getting thrown into jail again, and again, and again.
 * Not only that, but Geronimo essentially fails every task and objective given to him, except for the last seven minutes of the movie.
 * Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Geronimo. It's quite an experience to make you actually start to pity a Jerkass Cowboy Cop with a case of Plot Induced Stupidity.
 * Car Chase: And for a bonus, there's not one, but two boat chases.
 * Combat Pragmatist: Geronimo subverts his catch phrase at the end by cutting it short and blasting the main villain in the head as he's distracted. Quote Servo: "Our hero; a big, stinky cheater!"
 * Fridge Brilliance: "Go head off!"
 * Cowboy Cop: Literally! Even so, Geronimo has the nerve to be offended when a friendly cab driver jokes about him knowing John Wayne.
 * Creator Cameo: Greydon Clark as the sheriff with a case of Retirony.
 * Curse Cut Short: In the TV print "son of a bitch" has the last word wiped.
 * Determinator: What Geronimo lacks in grace, skill, intelligence, talent, physical fitness, looks and likability, he almost makes up for with his bull-stubborn determination to solve the case when both the Maltese and American law enforcement forbid him to do so. Almost.
 * Donut Mess with a Cop: According to Geronimo's sherrif, donuts are Geronimo's Trademark Favorite Food and the source of his weight problem.
 * The Faceless: For some reason the movie goes out of its way to avoid showing the face of Wilson's lady friend.
 * Failed a Spot Check: Accounts for at least two of Geronimo's failures.
 * Fair Cop: Maria
 * Fatal Family Photo: Results in a case of Retirony for Geronimo's partner!
 * While looking at the photo, Geronimo says "You're a lucky man, Bob." Not ten seconds later, the man is dead.
 * Follow the Leader: Dirty Harry, Walking Tall, and Mitchell, all wrapped into one putrid package.
 * Genre Savvy: Don Lamanna, though it doesn't do him any good because his chief stooge Palermo is utterly Genre Blind.
 * It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY": "That's pronounced 'Hey-ronimo'." Eventually Geronimo stops bothering to correct people, though.
 * Jerkass Sue: Sheriff Geronimo makes Mitchell look like a big, cuddly Teddy Bear. He's sexist, a bully, occasionally rock stupid, and he looks like three hundred pounds of cottage cheese in an oilskin bag. But he's treated like the Only Sane Man by the film.
 * Lawful Stupid: Mifsud.
 * Named After Somebody Famous: Geronimo is an actual descendant of the Geronimo, but his first and middle names are "Thomas Jefferson".
 * Palermo is also the name of a city in Sicily.
 * New Powers as the Plot Demands: Geronimo is trapped in the Big Bad's dungeon, so naturally he draws on his Native American ancestry and appears to communicate telepathically with a woman he met earlier, who then comes and frees him.
 * No One Could Survive That
 * Pixellation: The TV prints put an obvious blur over the chest of the stripper in the red vest.
 * Reassigned to Antarctica: Geronimo, before the beginning of the story.
 * Spanner in the Works: Geronimo
 * Stating the Simple Solution: Don Lamanna as he chastises Palermo for abducting Geronimo but not killing him, leaving him in the mansion's basement. Guess what happens! Palermo tries to justify his decision by saying he wants to make Geronimo squirm, but this is still an idiotic move on his part.
 * Unwitting Pawn: Geronimo's planned role in breaking Palermo out, since he's clearly not qualified to escort a prisoner.
 * You Fail Law Forever: Par for the course for a Dirty Harry ripoff, but why in Sweet Jesus wasn't Geronimo deported immediately, especially after he's threatening to seriously maim your citizens? He'd be out of his jurisdiction in a different county, much less a different country - across the Atlantic ocean. Face Palm.
 * They were trying to deport him, but flights in and out of Malta at the time weren't very regular, so they just did their best to keep him under wraps until they could kick him out.
 * If that's the case, putting him in jail was a good idea. It's all those times they let him out where they screwed up.
 * You Look Familiar