Many, many spoilers in this trailer. Be forewarned
Ah, Orion Pictures. Before they went bankrupt in the mid-1990s, they would roll out a dozen movies a year of varying quality. The winners were flicks like The Silence of the Lambs, Bull Durham, Caddyshack, and many others. But they also sated the appetites of the shitty movie fan, giving us Cherry 2000, Malone, Remo Williams, Navy SEALs, and today’s film, alongside Davis Entertainment, The Last of the Finest. For the last thirty years the company has been a shell of itself — just another brand in the MGM/Amazon conglomerate. Never forget, though. Movie studios are temporary. Cinematic ineptitude is forever.
1990 was right around peak time for action flicks, and buddy cop flicks in particular. The formula was perfected and standardized by the Lethal Weapon films, and much of those films’ DNA is present in The Last of the Finest.
When two cop buddies won’t do, why not three? Or four? That’s what viewers get with The Last of the Finest, from director John Mackenzie and screenwriters Jere Cunningham, Thomas Lee Wright, and George Armitage.
Frank Daly (Brian Dennehy) is the leader of a crack squad of Los Angeles cops who bust heads and take names. He’s mentor to a bit of a heavy hitting cast in Joe Pantoliano as Wayne Gross, Jeff Fahey as Ricky Rodriguez, and Bill Paxton as Howard ‘Hojo’ Jones. That casting should be enough to raise eyebrows for anyone familiar with movies of the era. How in the world has a movie with that level of talent become so anonymous? Well, they can’t all be winners.
Daly and company find themselves on the trail of Anthony Reece (Michael C. Gwynne), a businessman who is smuggling massive amounts of cocaine into the country for his boss, R.J. Norringer (Guy Boyd). The cops have put a huge dent into Norringer’s cashflow, 
and that becomes a big problem for him, but not in typical movie drug lord fashion. Taking a page from contemporary events, the drug transactions are being used to purchase arms for Central American anti-communists, meaning Daly’s squad is messing around with Reagan-era foreign policy.
This leads to the squad going rogue, as it’s the only way to take down the bad guys. This is not a bad idea for an action flick. In fact, it’s not executed poorly, either. What makes this movie shitty, and also very watchable, is its unwavering adherence to cop flick clichés of the day. Most hilariously, this includes the music, from Michael Hoenig and Jack Nitzsche. It’s as if the two of them watched this scene from Lethal Weapon, and decided to base their entire soundtrack on Eric Clapton’s guitar licks. It’s pervasive. As is the gunplay, the black and white world of cops and criminals, the angry superior officers, the wives and girlfriends waiting at home, and the tragic loss of one of their number.
This is a movie that moves. Its pace cannot be faulted, which is one of the reasons it will be treated well in the rankings below. As a shallow movie experience, this flick works. If a viewer is at all familiar with this subgenre of action, though, there is not a thing that is unique, beyond there being more principal cast members than is typical in a buddy cop flick, but even Lethal Weapon broke the two leads rule by the sequel.
I praised the talent in the film, but it can’t be ignored that Pantoliano is best as a character actor, and Fahey never reached lofty heights. Paxton was still ascendant, but even so, his gee whiz take on his character is tough. Dennehy was a consummate pro, yet I can’t say he showed much range. Whether happy, angry, or grieving (never scared), he wears the same John Wayne-ish scowl, and I’m having a hard time recalling if his character so much as chuckled, even in scenes of character development. So, yeah, Orion signed up some talent, but Mackenzie and company managed to get the most basic performances from them.
There are much better options out there should one feel the need to scratch their ’80s-style action movie itch. But, if one would like to see how a movie can both embrace the excesses of the genre, and cheapness, this is a good watch. The Last of the Finest breaks into the Watchability Index at #119, in between Terror in Beverly Hills and Motel Hell.