So this is my third low-budget SF film for the week, so the question is obvious: is this a case of third time lucky, or three strikes and you're out?
Well, it's the latter of course. I knew that going in, since this is a David Carradine film from a period of his career when he was sleep-walking his way through roles in such cinematic dross as Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II. The chances it would be good were about as remote as Carradine's if he'd had to fight Bruce Lee for the lead role in Kung Fu.
Future Force posits a future in which rising crime forced the abolition of government-supplied police forces, in favour of a private crime-fighting force. Well, a private criminal shooting force, at least. Because of course we never see the "Civilian Operated Police Systems" (yes, "COPS". really) do anything as mundane as actually investigating a crime. They just get a name and a bounty and go out to collect on it at the end of a gun.
Top dog among these latter-day bounty hunters is John Tucker (Carradine), a straight shooter (pun fully intended) who takes a $100,000 bounty to bring in a news reporter who has been convicted of treason.
Now if you've been thinking that the 'legal system' I described above sounds like a recipe for disaster, well, take a gold Sheriff's star, pilgrim! Privatising 'justice' has simply made a new market for crime, and the head of COPS is aggressively positioning himself to be the new kingpin. The news reporter had threatened an exposé about his illicit activities, and rather than handle it quietly this dingus chose this method of handling it.
Badly written, and even more badly acted, Future Force's few moments of entertainment are wholly inadvertent (the news reporter's attempts to portray fear during a car chase, for instance, are comedy gold).
Oh well, I guess they can't all be Death Race 2000.
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