646f9e108c An elite group of vice cops are fired from the L.A.P.D. for being over-zealous in their war against drugs. It is immediately apparent that some of their superiors are involved in the drug ring. Banded together, four of the banned cops (which quickly becomes three when one is killed early) band together to fight the drug ring undercover. They gain capital for weapons by ripping off minor drug dealers. Then well-armed they go after the kingpin (Boyd).
"The Last Of The Finest" didn't do a great deal of business when it was first release, possibly because the studio tried to market it as an action movie (it really isn't), and Dennehy, best known for playing heavies, possibly didn't fit audience's idea of a hero. Actually, Dennehy is pretty good playing his atypical role, believable as a cop who is honest and tries to do the right thing. The supporting cast is also pretty good in their roles. But the central conflict, dealing with bad guys in high places trying to interfere with the conflicts in Central America, is pretty standard stuff. I think that if they had tried to make this more of an action-oriented movie, it would have played a lot better. It's not a bad movie, just somewhat flat as it is. You will find it more entertaining if you watch it on commercial TV, however, because the ludicrous dubbing to remove the extensive foul language is unintentionally funny.
Run-of-the-mill cop turns vigilante and beats the bad guy on his own terms. The only standout point being it's 4 cops, and they're against pretty much everyone up the foodchain.<br/><br/>A narcotics team that for some reason only consists of 4 cops, screw up a bust when they fail to wait for backup.<br/><br/>They get put on suspension, but like any good movie cop, they don't let that stop them, and force a pimp to use a hoe as bait to get intel. This backfires, the pimp gets killed, the hoe gets killed, and now they're down to 3 cops. (Hojo (Paxton) gets killed by an iron fence railing through the chest).<br/><br/>Their leader refuses to get fired and quits instead, and gets the other 2 to quit as well.<br/><br/>To fund their vigilantism, they raid a dope house by driving a dump truck through the wall (score ~$29k).<br/><br/>They then follow their one lead to where it gets most interesting, but it's a plot point that isn't explored any further: the drugs are obtained by selling weapons to overseas cartels under the guise of arming rebels against dictatorships, so the guns are backed by government agencies, so we find that the corruption goes all the way up. From the cops, the DEA, the FBI, the state department, to the senator who is not only organizing the shipments, but gaining funds from fundraisers.<br/><br/>They learn of the next shipment and head out to the docks, where again they screw up, but escape in a stolen truck which just happens to contain the payment for the next shipment of drugs: $22 million in untraceable small bills.<br/><br/>They decide to keep the money as they can't trust anyone to hand it over to, and hide the money in a septic tank in sealed plastic bags. But it turns out their ex-captain is in on it, so they hide their family (after saving them from a kidnapping/assassination) and agree to turn over the money in exchange for safety.<br/><br/>Obviously, both parties have no intention of keeping that promise, which leads to the final shootout, that they organize to be RIGHT WHERE THEY HID THE MONEY, the money that they weren't going to hand over? Yeah, then they tell the bad guys exactly where the money is, and it gets blown up with the bad guys.<br/><br/>They get reinstated even though they're incompetent and committed alot of felonies, and make an anonymous donation to their local baseball/football park (presumably they managed to keep some of it).<br/><br/>Starring:<br/><br/>Michael Hoenig - Music, best known for the music of all the Baldur's Gate PC games<br/><br/>James Gavin - Helicopter Pilot, played a helicopter pilot in 60 movies/TV shows. Was the first ever to do a loop-the-loop in a helicopter.<br/><br/>Larry Carrol - newsman in over 30 shows/movies. No surprise he's been typecast, he also had a tiny role of an extra in the football game in the beginning of the movie, where he glanced directly at the camera no less than three times, and all he was doing was walking off the field.<br/><br/>Xander Berkeley - pimp who gets brutally murdered, John Connor's stepdad in T2 who gets brutally murdered, George Mason from 24 who gets exposed to radiation then flies a plane with a bomb into the desert that explodes brutally self-murdering him, Percy from Nikita where she drops him off a ledge (not really brutally), and Gregory from The Walking Dead that I haven't watched, so I don't know what happens to him there<br/><br/>Henry Darrow - backstabbing Captain who murders an old friend, famous in the 60s for The High Chapparal, played Don Alejandro de la Vega in 3 different incarnations of Zorro in the 80s and 90s<br/><br/>Bill Paxton - Hojo Jones, doesn't do much in the movie, bit of a hothead, gets killed about 1/3 of the way in<br/><br/>Joe Pantoliano - lousy sniper, wasn't a very good shot in The Matrix either (Cypher)