Here it is, folks, a movie that is one hundred percent "deus ex machina." Roger Ebert speaks of the Idiot Plot, or a story that goes on because the characters are too stupid to resolve it. "Quest of the Lost City/The Final Sacrifice" (pick your poison) goes one better: the characters are too stupid to keep the plot moving, but it does anyway through sheer coincidence and dumb luck.
So we've got this scrawny kid named Troy, who as our story begins is rummaging through some junk his late father left behind (Dad, we learned in the pre-credit sequence, got shot seven years ago by a group of thugs in ski masks). Troy uncovers what someone on the production design team thought looked like a mysterious and ancient map. No sooner does he locate the map than the ski-mask thugs break into his house and demand it, having apparently taken seven years to accomplish the rather simple task of finding the dead guy's address and/or family. The thugs are led by a pale guy named Satoris. Satoris wears black and speaks in a deep voice. Presumably this makes him scary; in truth it makes him look like Professor Snape's third cousin and sound like a bad Darth Vader impersonator.
Troy elludes the thugs by hopping into the back of a rusty pickup truck, driven by the boozy and bitter Zap Rowsdower. (Why is he named Zap Rowsdower? My guess is the writer was going for a cool, memorable name like "Indiana Jones" and failed miserably.) Rowsdower happens to know a lot about the thugs (a cult bent on world domination, we are informed), having been one of their number some years back. Apparently, if you are being pursued by a cult and jump into the back of a random vehicle, odds are pretty good that the driver of the vehicle will be a former member of the cult, whose seeming reluctance to help you will conceal a real empathy for your plight.
So Troy and Rowsdower flee the cultists, until Rowsdower's truck unsurprisingly breaks down, thus ending their journey. BUT WAIT! Troy goes off in search for water, and in his random trek comes across a distinct rock formation. The rock formation is on the map! Rowsdower's truck must have read the script, since it conveniently broke down within an easy walking distance of one of the map's landmarks. There's also a tunnel with a copy of the map painted on one of the walls (why don't the cultists just look there?), and a translation guide belonging to Troy's father (which has held up pretty well despite seven years in a damp tunnel). But they can't stay to linger, since the cult has finally caught up with them, so it's off to another chase sequence.
Zap and Troy hide out in a weathered cabin, elluding the cultists and ending the chase. BUT WAIT! The owner of the cabin is none other than Troy's dad's old partner Mike Pipper, hiding in the wilderness from the cult these seven years (cue dramatic music). Pipper looks like a very seedy Jim Henson, and talks like a cross between Yosemite Sam and (speaking of Henson) the "News Flash" guy from the Muppet Show. He also provides more backstory on the cult, who are survivors of a race called the Ziox. Apparently the Ziox started worshipping an evil idol and were punished by having their city sink into the earth, proving that the Ziox have read up on "Great Flood" archetypes and the myth of Atlantis. Satoris wants to sacrifice someone to the idol in order to become invincible, despite Pipper's assertion that the idol isn't located where the map says it is. Pipper also drops a warning in Troy's ear about Zap: "He was with Satoris the night your father was killed." Troy's so shocked he doesn't even bother to ask how Pipper knows this, since a) all the cultists wear ski masks and b) nobody else was around when it happened.
So, somehow Satoris manages to kidnap Troy and take him to the location of the lost city--proving that he did not need the map at all, despite breaking in Troy's door earlier--where the idol waits, having eluded Pipper's searches. (I'm guessing Satoris carts the idol around with him, keeping it in a storage locker in between rituals) Rowsdower pursues, there's a fight, Satoris is killed (don't ask me how) and the Ziox city pops up out of the ground. And all ends well, except for Troy's aunt and caretaker who didn't know about any of this and had a heart attack when she came home to find her house trashed and her nephew missing. Well, maybe not. But it could have happened.
One final note: This film was made in Canada, but I cannot bring myself to ridicule my neighbors to the north because of it. After all, one who lives in a country which has produced "Battlefield Earth" should not throw stones.
