FUTURE FORCE

FUTURE FORCE (1989)

In the future, the "Citizen Operated Police Incorporated" (Which does not spell 'C.O.P.S.' even though they say it does) is the only form of law enforcement, and basically they are a

bunch filthy mercenary bounty hunters who hunt criminals for money. David Carradine is Tucker, a C.O.P. with a power-glove and a computer geek partner, Billy, who gets him leads on crooks to round up, so he always stays ahead of the game. This is an incentive for competition among the C.O.P.S. but it also makes them turn into disgusting murderous assholes. All it takes is for the computer to say you're a criminal, and you're dead. Wait a minute...isn't that

how it is now?

Tucker is kind of a old fashioned gunslinger, an old west type of bounty hunter, in a

world of computerized law enforcement. A shady corporate boss wants a reporter dead who is about to do a story that will take him and the company down, so he has his henchman alter the C.O.P.S. computer system and make her a criminal wanted for treason... hey, that's how its done now isn't it? Although nothing in this movie really looks futuristic in any way, the story isn't really a bad one. It's got some bad acting, but the premise and the plot, though predictable and practically a total cliche in movies today is interesting to follow along.

The C.O.P.S. are all a bunch of ruthless thugs who all dress like gang members... they hang a confederate flag in their office, and are generally what you would expect in this kind of situation and Tucker is the most successful one of them all. Billy gets the heads-up on the reporter's bounty, and Tucker picks her up...but they want her dead, he doesn't like killing women, and when he wants to bring her in first to collect the bounty, alive, well, he ends up wanted for murder in the computer system. So the thug bounty-hunting C.O.P.S. chase them all over town, and various shoutouts and car chases ensue. Retro-Alert! A truck drives by with the logo for LIKE Cola! Remember LIKE Cola anyone? Man those were the days. I totally forgot about it, and as a matter of fact, it must have disappeared from the face of the earth without me noticing...probably 15 or 20 years ago...wow. It just isn't 'The Future' without LIKE COLA!

Well I'll give this movie credit for giving a big middle finger to that stupid catroon show known as C.O.P.S. Remember that shit? C.O.P.S. in this case stands for evil ruthless scumbags who have no morals doing the bidding of inhuman corporations, and you know that's the truth, that cartoon was nothing short of fascist propaganda for children. (As so many of them turned out to be in the end). This is by no means a great movie, but by no means is it an awful movie. It tells us that computer systems will one day be used to track us, and these very same systems can so easily be hacked and you can have your identity altered in the system to make you look like a traitor, a murderer, etc, by the corporations which control that system. While we still as yet have no cybernetic power-gloves, the real cops routinely taser old ladies, pre-teen children, and handicapped people on a regular basis in America, so I guess we have that...

Somebody knew that computers would one day change the face of America, and they warned us for years and years and years that evil corporations would use it to control and meddle with people's lives. The 'Mercenary' spirit of corporate capitalism has indeed overcome this country in so many ways, it is almost hard to believe just how rampant it is, and yet, all it takes is for scumbag assholes to 'take a job' and 'follow orders' just so they can get paid a little more than everyone else. The Wild West is still the Wild West, and ultimately, though this movie looks like it has the budget of an A-Team episode, the tone makes it worthy of acceptable watchability.

The action serves the story, so it makes it better than say... the new G.I.Joe... or the new Star Trek movie... the events that take place serve the plot of the film, and that ladies and gentlemen is a real movie. Yes I just said that. Action should not take place for no good reason, constantly throughout a movie and serve "as" the plot, where none exists...which these days inept hacks in Hollywood have been doing so frequently. This is one of those 'late night' films when you have not much else to watch that serves its purpose, and basically only fails because they just simply didn't have money, or didn't bother to work too hard making it look 'futuristic' but on the other hand, at least they didn't make it hokey-futuristic either. I thought this movie would really be worse than it was, and it occurs to me that sometime in the 80s, there were a lot of action movies about 'rampant crime' taking over the entire country and there were all these supercops stories. The fear of this sort of 'rampant' and outlandishly brutal and barbarianistic crime was so prevalent that it almost seems like 80% of the action movies from the late 70s to the end of the 80s was all about ruthless criminals and the 'tough guy' cops that fought them. Not too many of these movies these days, but some people would say...Detroit does in fact look like a post-apocalyptic disaster...but that's because people just left it, and left it empty.

For a movie which tells us that in the future rampant crime will spread and be so bad everywhere, the locations, aside from some graffiti, look pretty ordinary. It reminds me of WIRED TO KILL, where the future, doesn't look like the future in any way, it looks like the 80s. What this movie has that WIRED TO KILL doesn't have is a plot, and a fairly talented leading man, and a purpose beyond selling fear about rampant crime, and it moves along at a decent pace, there's not a lot of sitting around staring out windows nor outlandish screaming imaginary crazed barbarian thugs running around killing people for no reason. FUTURE FORCE should have been called C.O.P.S. but some goddamned toy company must have gotten the rights to that or something, it would have made sense since this movie is mostly about the corporate mercenary police and how it all works, and not necessarily 'rampant crime.' It suggests that such a system will inevitably lead to corruption...and boy has it ever. Following that premise is the primary pursuit here, and while we've seen this done in a lot of movies in the last 10 or 20 years, by people with 70 million dollar budgets, other than ROBOCOP, this movie does indeed serve its intended purpose and ultimately it means something more than usual. I realize that just because it actually has a plot that functions, that doesn't make it great, but I tell you this, I think I have seen 30 movies in the last decade that cost 70+Million dollars that were completely and utterly absent of any sort of plot at all, and even less 'about something.' This one has been done for sure, at least, it feels pretty familiar, bad guys want somebody dead because they have inside information. The whistle-blower story, where the cops or soldiers who are sent to go kill them must find a heart and see the truth. I never get tired of these stories because, evidently the cops and soldiers haven't started realizing this yet. They don't give a fuck. They believe everything they are told. Politicians and white collar criminals have nasty habits of turning whistleblowers and people who know the truth into public enemies, we see it every day folks, and one of these days, you're going to have to decide which side you're on or end up on the most wanted list. I don't care what the computer says...what about your humanity?