‘2019: After The Fall Of New York’ Review

Well, the Italian post-apocalypse/post nuke genre…a genre that basically spawned from the success of two movies; John Carpenters ‘Escape From New York’ and George Millers ‘Mad Max 2’. Being a big fan of the ‘Mad Max’ series and the post apocalyptic idea in general, I’d always wanted to check out some of these Italian knock-offs, because as far as I’m concerned the more dystopian landscapes and souped-up dusty cars I see on screen the better.

This one has always caught my eye and my ear, from it’s excellent title to it’s rather cool poster art…But, it’s always wise to be weary of poster art for a b-movie with a rather large scale to achieve…How many times in our youth did we rent some ‘Conan’ knock off because the cover featured a bunch of huge guys with swords coupled with a curvy warrior-woman…only to watch and find a bunch of rather saggy looking people who look like they’ve just stepped off the set of a 70’s porno.

Anyway, the story of ‘2019’ is as follows…Rugged bad ass Parsifal (Sopkiw) is called upon by the government of this apocalyptic time, the Pan American Confederacy (when I say ‘called upon’ I mean knocked out and kidnapped), to go on a bit of a mission for them. Due to the fallout of the nuclear war there are no fertile women left on the planet, but word on the street is there is one woman hidden away in New York who can still churn out the babies, and they want Parisfal to head on in there and bring her back to them. He is teamed up with two other fellas; Bronx (Scalondro), who knows the ins and outs of the whole city (hell of a memory on this fella then) and Ratchet (Puppo), a big man with an eye patch who takes out fellas by whacking them in the face with his balls…Metal balls on wires that is.

Of course they’re not going to just waltz into New York, grab her and leave, because New York is controlled by the evil EURACS, the other more dominating government in this future world.

So basically, as you can no doubt tell, this takes its inspiration from ‘Escape From New York’. Parsifal even has the heavy stubble, casual one-liners and gruff demeanour of Snake Plissken…But it seems they didn’t want to rip him off completely, so they stuck the eye patch on Ratchet. But also you may recognise the other half of the story from a more recent movie…’Children Of Men’. Now I haven’t seen it, but from what I’ve read it does seem very similar…and the same Picasso painting appears in both movies. Me thinks that the author of the ‘Children Of Men’ novel is a big fan of this movie…or it’s just a big coincidence.

One thing that sets this apart from it’s obvious inspirations is a more heavy sci-fi element…Not content with the sandy landscapes and rusted down appearance of everything, Martino (credited here as Martin Dolman) decides to whack in laser beams, futuristic aircraft and fancy looking computer terminals. Which I can’t say I was fond of…I like my PA movies to look completely fucked, but I guess when there’s still a government and the year is 2019, you can’t really complain.

Big George Eastmen (‘Anthropophagus’) pops up towards the end of the movie as the leader of a bunch of mutants who for some reason look like monkeys. He calls himself Big Ape and maintains how powerful his ‘seed’ is, all the while dressed like a pirate in a pantomime complete with Sinbad esque sword. Oh yeah, that’s another thing to add the list of differences, it’s quite surreal as fuck at times too…For example, what the fuck was the deal with clown handing out ‘license to kill’ tokens? Was it meant to be a machine or a bloke dressed up? Fucks knows…

The film has a rather funky assed score too, composed by the brilliantly named Oliver Onions…Stage name, I’m sure. I hope….If not I bet school was fun. Whilst I’m on the subject of soundtracks and sound, the one thing that really irked me about ‘2019’ was the sound that the EURACS guns make…fucking annoying as piss it is. And when they’re chasing Parisfal and co or slaughtering a village of innocent people and constantly shooting at them it does start to feel like fingernails are being scraped down a blackboard constantly…Sorta like that one punching sound effect that’s used countless times in ‘3 Dev Adam’…just not as funny.

On top of all that, you have what I think every movie should have, not just the PA genre; A community of midgets. One of which (the imaginatively named, Shorty) becomes one of the heroes of the movie. Another, only seen briefly seemed to look a hell of a lot like ‘Big Pussy’ from The Sopranos.

As far as the look of the film goes, you’d expect this have an air of cheapness about it considering it’s basically a cash-in knock off…But it really looks quite good in parts, the run down locations they managed to find suit the movie perfectly…and there’s never really an outdoors moment where it doesn’t fit the time and place of the movie. The only time the low budget really rears it’s head, as far as the apocalyptic landscape is concerned, is during the opening credits which is full of pretty unconvincing (although detailed) miniature model work of a destroyed New York.

So to sum up, worth checking out if you like b-movies, Italian cinema and films that deal with the world being fucked beyond repair…As long as you can handle George Eastmen dressed up like a monkey.

Stars: Michael Sopkiw, Valentine Monnier, Paulo Maria Scalondro, Romano Puppo and George Eastmen
Directed By: Sergio Martino
Running Time: 91 Minutes

~ by Chris on April 14, 2007.