Sadly Over-hyped

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This film is not great, and it does have flaws, but it is not at all that bad. It centers on an ex race car driver, who through certain society changes and circumstances can no longer operate an automobile. Cars and plane have been outlawed. Majors and outsider Makepeace disobey the rules and take a racing porche on a journey cross country. One of the flaws is the government guy talking to the character of Morley, he calls him Morgan in one scene. The film director should have yelled cut and did another take, but I guess this was overlooked. Still this movie is worth two and a half stars, at least for Burgesses Meredith's performance as the old army pilot.

After watching this on the MST3K episode, I have to wonder how many movies this film borrows from. It seems to combine elements of Logans Run, Farenheight 451, Final Sacrifice and at least several others. At one point I was really expecting Cris Makepease to call Lee Majors ROWSDOWER. I wonder if the director has any clue how many holes there are in the plot. like the fact that, even though gas is unavailable, there is plenty of it in abandoned gas stations, and the stations are located close enough together to keep an F1 race car going all the way across the country.

Following a lethal plague which has wiped out millions of people and a severe oil crisis that has caused driving to be outlawed, an authoritarian government has come into power and set up restrictive, rigidly enforced codes of proper conduct that have made individual freedom a thing of the past. Stubbornly rebellious former race car driver Frank Hart (an appropriately stalwart and rock-like Lee Majors), frustrated with the fascist society he can't comfortably acquit himself to the stifling dictates of, decides to drive his red Porsche to the still liberated California, taking equally recalcitrant electronics whiz kid Ring McCarthy (winningly played by Chris Makepeace) along with him on a perilous trek across America's desolate abandoned highways. Shrewd regime toady Hawkins (finely essayed to smug'n'smarmy perfection by George Touliatos) assigns batty old ace Air Force pilot J.G. Williams (a delightfully spunky Burgess Meredith, howling like a crazed bloodhound and clearly having a grand old time mugging it up) to track Hart down and kill him.An on-target celebration of rugged individualism and a frightfully prescient pre-90's prediction of mass bureaucratic conformity taken to a hideously repressive extreme, "The Last Chase" really cuts it as a rip-roaringly exciting and effective futuristic sci-fi/car chase action thriller movie ode to "stand up to the Man and to hell with the System" status quo defying rebellion and independence. Director Martyn Burke (who co-wrote the nicely thoughtful script with Roy Moore and C.R. O'Christopher), aided by Gil ("Blood Beach," "The Manipulater") Melle's jaunty, swelling score, keeps the pace rattling along at a crisp, steady tempo, occasionally pausing for moments of quiet introspection and character development which ensure that the film has plenty of heart to spare (the rapport between Hart and McCarthy is especially breezy and appealing). Moreover, this feature's portrait of a seriously uptight, anal retentive, overly rule conscientious no-fun near future society has uncanny parallels to nauseatingly stuffy 90's political correctness, thus giving the picture a topicality and resonance that's sadly still quite timely even today. An extremely good, pleasingly provocative and rather scarily prophetic science fiction film.

Have seen this movie and think it's terrific! Here's what Laszlo Uriel "laszlo-laszlo" (San Francisco, CA USA) has to say about it. It sums up my thoughts as well.One has to wonder whether this movie was the inspiration for Al Gore's desire to ban internal combustion automobiles. In any case, this movie shows the kind asinine totalitarian regime Socialists seem to be trying harder and harder to turn the United States into. It gives us a taste of the sort of top-down, "obey the rules or else", brainwashing type of society we could find ourselves in if we're not careful.Having been 'convinced' over the years to submit to authority and preach the 'goodness' of the new oligarchical system compared to the 'badness' of the old individualistic system, Lee Majors' character, an ex-race car driver, find encouragement in a few short pirate television transmissions. "Radio Free California, calling America" inspires him to dig up and reassemble his hidden race car, and flee the defacto prison the east coast has become.In true neo-Democrat/Socialist style, he is ordered stopped at any cost, preferably by being killed. A single Vietnam War aircraft and its pilot (Burgess Merideth) are pulled out of mothballs and a bottle, respectively, for this task.Other means are also employed along the way to try and stop the car and its occupants, including a Stalin/Mao-esquire slaughter of a group of innocent people who took them in to give them medical care.Now in 2005, since California is literally going broke spearheading the Union away from individual rights and toward Socialism, the idea of "Radio Free California" returning to machines and to personal liberty takes quite a leap of faith, but it's a fun 3000 mile trip across the country nonetheless.As the story goes, the Social dystopia was able to take hold after a disease wipes out much of the population. Since the time the film came out, 1980, the likelihood of such massive devastation from disease has only increased. And never has the proverb "Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely" been any truer than it is today.I don't agree for a second that the point of this movie was to encourage the worship of the internal combustion engine or petroleum products. But yes, in the case of Lee Majors' character and the race car, it was a gasoline engine that was the appropriate, if not the only tool capable of escaping tyranny.If this movie is one big ad for big oil companies, does that mean every movie about police who use firearms to help arrest evil-doers, or which shows someone defending their own life with a firearm, is just a big ad for Colt or Glock? Loners who are ticked off at the system trying to pound them into behaving like everyone else will like this movie. I loved this movie! But if you're into that whole "ride public transit or go to jail" thing, you'll only like the first 15 minutes of this movie...so have your Michael Moore tapes ready.