Underplayed Gems

Ten Zan: The Ultimate Mission (1988)

Ten Zan: The Ultimate Mission poster
Original title
Missione finale
Directed by
Ferdinando Baldi
Genre
action film
Country
Italy
Runtime
1h 31m
Rating
4.9 of 10 from 10 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

A group of fighters undertakes a mission in a futuristic version of North Korea. The film was shot on location there and portrays the country as an ideal society.

low-budgetcampydatedcheesybizarreslowunintentionally funnystrange

What happens

Ten Zan: The Ultimate Mission (also known as Missione Finale) is a 1988 science fiction action film written and directed by Ferdinando Baldi under the pseudonym "Ted Kaplan". The film stars Frank Zagarino, Mark Gregory, Romano Kristoff, and Sabrina Siani. It was Baldi's final film before his death in 2007. The film, an international co-production between Italy and North Korea, was filmed on-location in the latter country. To date, it is one of the few Western-produced non-documentary features to be shot in the country, and one of the only films made there to feature American actors. The film portrays North Korea as a futuristic utopia, a decision which Baldi later explained as "a conscious avoidance of reality" foisted upon the production by the local regime. Ten Zan was one of eight North Korean films to be shown at the Udine Festival of Far East Film in 2000. In a report of these screenings for Asiaweek, Richard James Havis regarded the film as "truly lamentable", saying: "The acting is worse than that of the propaganda movies, as is the plot." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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