Some of the scenes and dialogue in the film and truly inane. There is the scene where Michael Madsen is working undercover with some dope dealers when ex-girlfriend Brenda Swanson happens by and insists on having a domestic and the dialogue is twisted wholly out of shape in order to contrive to have her blow his cover by mentioning he is a cop. There is an equally awful scene where Michael Madsen and Lisa Bonet meet for the first time in a bar and he bold-facedly demands she buy him a drink – it is dialogue that seems capable of being uttered by human mouth. In the most amazing scene of all – one had to stop and rewind the tape in disbelief – the asthmatic Madsen takes a puff of his inhaler and in the very next move, indeed within the space of the same shot, takes a drag off a fellow cop’s cigarette. One is not able to detect any trace of irony in such a shot – the filmmakers do not seem to realize its incongruity.

The script at least holds a couple of effective surprise – when the truth of Lisa Bonet’s identity becomes apparent and the discovery of the killer in Michael Madsen’s apartment. But that is balanced by the script’s brainlessness in every other regard. Moreover, the script explains nothing at all about the killer. There is no explanation of why he is obsessed with boxing – indeed, the boxing angle is of no consequence to the story whatsoever, excepting perhaps in that the role of the psycho is cast with former British boxing champion Gary Stretch.

For that matter, the film’s title – Final Combination – bears no relevance to the story at all – it makes it sound more like a film about safecracking. The alternate titling Dead Connection sounds equally unconnected – like something to do with mediums or telephone calls.