FUTURE FORCE (1989), FUTURE ZONE (1990)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1 *fair,* (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

You have committed a crime and are presumed guilty. You have the right to die. --John Tucker, FUTURE FORCE.

If the writer of FUTURE FORCE had concocted more brain-fried lines like this one, the film might deserve inclusion in the Edward Wood Hall of Fame. Certainly the basic idea is more ambitious—albeit in a dumb way—than dozens of other direct-to-video flicks, both with and without David Carradine. It’s because of that idea that FORCE even earns a “fair” mythicity rating, though the execution is no better than it has to be.

Tough future cops with “Dirty Harry” delusions of grandeur were nothing new even in 1989, but FUTURE FORCE, rather than directly imitating some popular model, inverts its chosen template. The original ROBOCOP of 1985 was noteworthy in that it gave viewers a futuristic conflict between a government-sanctioned police force and an ambitious corporation seeking to privatize police services. Director David A. Prior, scripting with another writer, ignores this sociological conflict and posits a near-future setting in which sanctioned cops simply don’t exist any more. What’s taken their place are COPS—Civilian Operated Police Services—which are nothing more than bounty hunters, generally dressed in the grungy fashion seen in contemporary reality-shows about the profession. Prior’s script has no interest in asking how such an organization can be deemed in any way accountable to society, for this is just a particular incoherent take on “frontier justice” transferred to a not very futuristic setting. The first ROBOCOP played to this myth-trope as well, but it did so with intelligence, as did the British comics-series JUDGE DREDD, whose penchant for instant justice also resembles the attitude of Carradine’s hero John Tucker.

There’s no evidence that Carradine had any special regard for the project: throughout the film he’s a pretty lame hero, looking paunchy, wasted, and bored. But Prior, though unable to spring for a robotized cop on his budget, does give the private cop a rather memorable assert: a robot glove. When John wears the glove, he can shoot laser beams and other rays at his opponents (mostly low-life crooks). And near the film’s conclusion, after John’s been knocked silly by a big plug-ugly, the hero manages to pull out a special remote, looking like some fancy TV-control, and summons his glove into battle. The sight of Carradine lying on the ground and working the remote while the glove flies to his aid, both punching and strangling the thug, is the film’s one memorable scene.

Prior also directed the sequel FUTURE ZONE, and this time he borrows from THE TERMINATOR rather than ROBOCOP. John, who suddenly has a wife this time out, is going about his bounty hunting business when Billy, a twenty-something hunter, joins the force and starts pressing John to become his partner. The older man responds to the younger one’s enthusiasm by insulting and slugging him. But Billy won’t take subtle hints, and eventually John lets the guy work with him. Little does John realize that Billy is his own grown son, who’s not been conceived in the film’s present, and that he’s somehow traveled back in time to prevent John’s being slain.   

Overall the film is better shot and directed, and Ted Prior (brother of David) is a good enough actor that he seems to enliven Carradine as well. But the external threats to the father-and-son team are even more forgettable than the first film’s villains, and minor appearances by old pros (like Charles Napier) fail to alleviate the overall tedium.