So did we. Barely released in the United States, liberal, overly sensitive film critics sneered at its point of view, as staunchly pro-government and right-wing as any John Wayne movie.....
Let 'em sneer all they want......."The Final Option" is one brutally efficient thriller, peppered with the ugliest of terrorist violence and a stunner of a finale action sequence. Slickly put together and showcasing a can't-take-your-eyes-off-her performance by world class actress Judy Davis, we can easily understand why Reagan and Kubrick admired it so.......Reagan, for its politics....and Kubrick for its single-minded craft.....
Who knows.....in this modern era of global terrorism, a revival of this movie could turn it into a cult classic.......today's even-handed, watch-from-a-distance filmmakers would never dare to make a movie that so shamelessly begs for an audience to cheer........as they watch Britain's elite Special Air Service troopers take on a bunch of homegrown Brit terrorists and kick their asses six ways to Sunday......
The terrorists,funded by a mysterious young Arab and led by the fiery and flame-haired Frankie Leith (Davis) have been hiding in plain sight amidst legitimate anti-nuke peace groups. While plotting an imminent attack on an Embassy dinner, the group is infiltrated by an undercover SAS stud, Peter Skellen (Lewis Collins)....
Now here comes one of our favorite parts of the plot.......Skellen, who adores and dotes on his sweet wife and adorable baby daughter, wastes no time in charming Frankie into the sack.......the movie makes nothing of this, so we suppose it's considered another terrible sacrifice that an SAS officer must make for Queen and country in the line of duty......to tap Judy's booty.....
The rest of Frankie's gang smells a double-agent in Skellen, especially the monstrous Helga (Ingrid Pitt, as frightening and worthy as any James Bond villainess.) To insure Skellen's cooperation during Judy's Embassy siege, Helga invades Skellen's home, seizing his wife and infant as hostages.....
But not to worry, folks........SAS commandos start closing in on both the Skellen home and the Embassy, where Frankie, fetchingly outfitted in evening gown and Uzi, engages in hot debate with the American Secretary Of State (Richard Widmark) and an enraged army General. (Robert Webber).
Judy Davis really gets to strut her stuff in these scenes.........Frankie, a deranged, unhinged True Believer, demands, in return for the hostages' lives, a nuking of a Scottish submarine base......to prove to the world how nasty nuclear bombs are, as if we hadn't figured that out already. Slaughtering innocents or irradiating Scotland gives her no qualms whatsoever......as long as it serves her agenda, what's a few thousand fried Scots here or there.........
Widmark manages to score a few debate points with Davis, confusing her a bit with sanity.....but no matter......in a spectacular finish, with real SAS guys doing the stuntwork, Skellen and his brothers-in-arms put a difinitive finish to all political arguments with machine guns blazing.
And on the way to the big showdown......so many loopy sequences to savor.......Frankie's demented, anti-American nightclub act, in which she plays a guided missile surrounded by backup dancers...(honest, we didn't make that up).......a peace rally deliberately turned into a blood soaked riot by skinheads hired by the Arab bankroller.......and our personal favorite, a satisfying, no holds barred, living room floor smackdown between Skellen's wife and madwoman Helga......
Rousing, suspenseful and exacting in the level of its violence, we still think, 35 years later, that the "The Final Option" is a bloody good show........only its depiction of 'committed to world peace' terrorists dates it.......(in reality, terrorists have no such benevolent thoughts of humanity, since they've allowed their beliefs to transform them into something closer to insects than humans).......so we'll repel down on ropes and fire off 3 stars (***).....to paraphrase the SAS slogan used as the film's alternate title......they dare....and they win.
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