If you, dear reader, are convinced that you’re watching something familiar during Urban Warriors, then congratulations. You are a connoisseur of 1980s Italian Mad Max ripoffs. Only someone with knowledge of this strange subgenre of film would recognize that Urban Warriors, the last film from director Giuseppe Vari, shares much footage with The Final Executioner, released three years earlier in 1984. This flick isn’t the only movie to recycle substantial amounts of footage from The Final Executioner. A couple of years later The Bronx Executioner did the same thing, only in a way that destroyed just about all narrative consistency. Urban Warriors has a plot that one can follow.
Brad, Maury, and Stan (Bruno Bilotta, Bjorn Hammer, and Maurice Poli) are doing computer technician stuff in an underground bunker. Right in the middle of the workday, World War 3 breaks out, spreading nuclear apocalypse over the entire world. The power in the bunker is knocked out, so the trio has to make their way to the surface. It takes them days to find a way out, and when they do reach the surface, Vari shows us the ravages of atomic warfare — a rocky yet pristine hillside, and a small office complex whose glass sides gleam in the sunlight. It’s about as low effort as one will ever see in a post-apocalyptic movie.
The main location for the movie is a pit mine and its surrounding facilities. If that looks familiar to viewers it’s not because the footage comes from another film. Pit mines are practically de rigeur in low budget Mad Max ripoffs, from Italy, to the USA, to the Philippines, and anywhere else. The funny thing is, this movie does not present as a Mad Max ripoff at first. After all, it takes place days after WW3. There won’t have been time for post-apocalyptic society to shake out into meek settlements and the leather clad bikers that terrorize them. Yet, that’s exactly the world the trio emerges into. Vari and company, including screenwriter Piero Regnoli, said to hell with a reasonable timeline. They wanted Mad Max-style psycho bikers, and that’s what they put on film. And they are mutants, as well. Viewers are told of this through some audio cassette exposition, but the bad guys don’t have any mutations viewers can see, unless somehow black leather outfits are the mutation.
Urban Warriors makes viewers think about the story, and the wider world in which it takes place. Normally, that would be a good thing. It’s kind of like engagement on the internet. It doesn’t matter if it’s negative or positive engagement, as long as it drives clicks, right? Well, the world of Urban Warriors can create a circle of contradictions, having the bizarre effect of distracting from the action on screen.
The questions just never go away, and it’s all due to this movie’s strange timeline. A post-apocalyptic world needs a little time to mature and develop off screen so that the lore and the mutants make sense. It may not seem like that big a deal in a movie so bad, but one thing done in a confusing manner can fester, making it hard to appreciate everything else.
Perhaps things would have been better with more explosions and gunplay. There is plenty of action in this flick, but the scale isn’t enough to make up for the slow spots when one’s brain insists on poking holes.
There’s nothing new here for viewers. There is also little to draw sickos looking for a familiar kick. Just about every Mad Max ripoff one will find, Italian or otherwise, does it better than this trash. The liberal use of another movie’s footage is a deadly sin that is hard to get past, as well. A little footage cribbed from other sources here and there can be charming in its cheapness. See just about every sci-fi flick produced by Roger Corman in the 1980s. But entire scenes? Neither did it seem necessary from a creative standpoint. Vari and company had enough plot and enough cast to make a whole movie. There couldn’t have been any reason other than budget to shoot only half a movie.
If one is a completist for these flicks, then have at it. Watch and enjoy. For all the other potential viewers out there, it shouldn’t take much effort to find a more entertaining watch. Urban Warriors takes over the #440 spot from Burnout.