Extremely R-Rated 80s Sci-Fi Action Flick Has No Conscience, Takes No Prisoners

By Robert Scucci
| Published 1 hour ago

Every so often, I stumble upon a forgotten sci-fi action film that makes absolutely no sense and has absolutely zero likable characters. I normally find these on Tubi, the only streaming platform brave enough to host cinematic punishers like 1989’s Future Force, a movie that doesn’t have a critical score on Rotten Tomatoes and only a 14 percent approval rating on the Popcornmeter across more than 100 ratings. Normally, I watch movies like this because most of them don’t deserve the hate, but Future Force absolutely does in every conceivable way.

You Have The Right To Die

Future Force boasts a sloppy narrative centered around a protagonist who’s a total jerk on his best day. It’s incredibly hard to root for David Carradine’s John Tucker, a bounty hunter working for an organization known as C.O.P.S. (Civilian Operated Police Systems), for a multitude of reasons. The most egregious is his signature catchphrase when he’s out on patrol: “You have committed a crime and are presumed guilty. You have a right to die. If you choose to relinquish that right, you will be placed under arrest and imprisoned.”

That’s how our protagonist operates. He gets a ping on his communications device from his wheelchair-bound sidekick Billy (D.C. Douglas), tracks down somebody accused of a crime, and assumes they’re guilty until proven innocent. He doesn’t ask questions. He just does his job. The problem is that his job involves being a fascist who takes the law literally and never thinks for himself. Deep down, he probably knows this, but he just goes through the motions, wearing a prosthetic laser-shooting arm and murdering people who either commit petty crimes or simply happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When he’s not fighting crime, he spends his time at a strip club with other bounty hunters like Becker (Robert Tessier), or as I like to call him, “Bargain Bin Plissken,” sitting around with a scowl permanently plastered on his face. By the time John Tucker learns that the C.O.P.S. organization is run by a corrupt man named Adams (William Zipp), you have no reason to believe he’ll suddenly do the right thing. In this case, the right thing involves protecting a reporter named Marion (Anna Rapagna), who’s preparing to expose the advanced police force for being hopelessly corrupt and cooking the books so they can arrest anybody they want.

It’s worth noting, though, that Tucker doesn’t really care about any of this until a bounty is put on his own head and he has to figure out how to save his hide.

No Glove, No Love

The biggest problem with Future Force is that we have to root for a guy like John Tucker. He doesn’t feel morally conflicted at all, and we’re not getting a Dredd-style treatment here. Instead, we bear witness to a man who simply does his job and collects a paycheck. He’s not a tragic hero trapped in a system he disagrees with. He’s cynical about this fictionalized police-state version of 1993, but only enough to squeeze in some R&R at a nudie bar while shooting the breeze with other officers who operate exactly the same way he does.

What’s truly baffling, though, is John Tucker’s weaponized glove that he constantly uses to shoot first and ask questions later, assuming there are any survivors left to question. Normally, an officer doesn’t take their eyes off their weapon, or their sidearm (get it?), because they have to be extremely careful. If a criminal gets their hands on an officer’s weapon, that’s obviously a very bad thing, especially when you’re as trigger-happy as this guy.

Instead of wearing the prosthetic arm all the time, Tucker casually removes it and tosses it into the back of his often-unlocked Jeep Cherokee Chief. He schleps it around town like it’s an empty Gatorade bottle or a pile of fast food wrappers instead of some insane piece of future tech. The mental image of this thing sliding around in his trunk and accidentally popping off rounds while he’s hitting up a drive-thru is honestly the only thing that kept me watching Future Force. Our hero is practically begging for somebody to jack his gear and use it to commit crimes against humanity. Then again, that thought probably never crosses his mind because he’s already one of the primary people committing those kinds of crimes in the first place.

There Needs To Be A Likeable Protagonist

Listen, I have no problem with flawed antiheroes doing what they do, but there has to be some sort of arc or evolution that gives the character depth or an honest shot at redemption. Or even better, make him so kickass and cool that I end up rooting for him, even though I know I shouldn’t. What bothers me to no end here is how John Tucker does all these horrible things, and we’re somehow supposed to sit back and say, “Yeah, he’s on the right side of history.” He never convincingly has that “come to Jesus” moment where he realizes he’s actually the bad guy. Without that kind of self-awareness, the entire thing falls apart.

Future Force could have been satire, but it isn’t. It could have been a commentary on how people raised inside a broken system eventually realize everything they know is wrong, but our hero never gets there. He just scowls his way through every scene, causing an unthinkable amount of collateral damage while wondering why the tables suddenly turned against him. And instead of getting introspective and realizing he’s part of the problem, he just keeps doing what he’s always done.

As of this writing, Future Force is streaming free on Tubi. If I’m being honest, the movie does have a certain amount of charm in its action sequences, but nearly everything else about it is irredeemable. If you’re a fan of B-movie sci-fi action, it’s probably worth a viewing, but don’t say I didn’t warn you about how stupid this one is.