Far From the Mountain
I remember back in the 80s there were a few movies about people ending up stuck in a dangerous city at night being chased around by criminals and "Final Jeopardy" is another one. Sadly whilst it stars a youngish Richard Thomas and Mary Crosby there is nothing about this made for TV which makes it stand out from the crowd. Actually that's a little lie as unfortunately this is one of those movies where Richard Thomas over plays his part with too much enthusiasm and that is what ends up being memorable about the movie.
Marty (Richard Thomas - Battle Beyond the Stars) and Susan Campbell (Mary Crosby - Sharing the Secret) are out of towners, small town folk who are in the big city for 24 hours for Marty's business meetings. Whilst Susan window shops Marty heads off to his meetings but not being from the city ends up in the wrong place. To his surprise the bar he is in shuts at 7 and then he sees the parking lot where he parked the hire car is also locked up for the night as are all the shops as the streets empty. When Susan arrives by taxi it leaves before they can stop it and quickly discover that hiring a taxi is not straight forwards. In an area they don't know with no one around they are forced to walk but have no idea what sort of trouble they are heading into.
So as I said "Final Jeopardy" is another one of those movies which delivers a storyline about some naive out of towners stuck in a big city late at night. As such we watch as Marty and Susan have various run ins from security dogs to a gang who spots the pretty Susan and start after them. All of it is extremely typical and having an 80's style now makes it a little cheesy.
Having said that some of the moments of drama are not bad with some reasonably exciting scenes as you fear that Marty and Susan are going to be caught by the bad guys. Yet at the same time you find yourself seeing too many gaping plot holes and asking yourself why didn't they just follow the lights and the traffic.
But the thing about "Final Jeopardy" is that it stars Richard Thomas and this is Richard Thomas from the mid 80s when some of his performances were tinged with enthusiasm which now feels incredibly cheesy. Thankfully Richard Thomas is such a likeable actor that you kind of allow some of the enthusiasm to slide. Fairing a little better is Mary Crosby who as Susan delivers the naivety but with out the over enthusiastic acting,
What this all boils down to is that "Final Jeopardy" is not the greatest example of this sort of movie where we have out of towners stranded in a scary city but it is entertaining for both the right and wrong reasons.
