Future Force

Producer David Winters reached deep into his pockets for the first time and secured a famous face for his sidekick David A. Prior, the self-taught direction from Action International Pictures. It is appropriate to recall that David Carradine had never actually been a star and the roles he played under the direction of Hal Ashby and Ingmar Bergman were anomalies in his otherwise strictly trash career. At the end of the 1980s, he would take absolutely any role and his sluggish acting and conspicuous beer belly successfully overshadowed the last remaining memories of the dubious fame he had garnered from the series Kung Fu. Prior sets out here beyond his favourite groves and even aims at a high-concept mix of action and dystopian sci-fi, but apart from his lofty words, he remains faithful to his creative signature. So, even though he doesn’t play army with his brother and friends this time, his boyishly naïve vision and intuitive direction again create an absurd spectacle with sudden Brechtian flashes of meta reflexivity. True to his juvenile fantasies, Prior resorted to the second most common genre replicated in boys' games, i.e. the western, in an urban setting. His version of a dystopian future thus lends itself to reviving the tradition of sheriffs and bounty hunters, who in this merciless world represent the roles of cops, as well as the combined role of judge, jury and executioner. At times, the lines that issue from Carradine’s mouth bring to mind Judge Dredd, but unlike the subversive British comic book, Prior is being serious. The master’s narrow vision is again asserted by his radical work with the framing, which comes across as even more tenacious in the urban environment. Budget constraints were never an obstacle for the Peter Pan of action movies when it came to spinning fantastic adventure yarns, so this time, following the example of children’s games, he stages his crazy dreams with no regard to his surroundings. In larger shots, the characters move around in obviously uncoordinated scenes shot without a permit in the usual commotion going on around them. A highlight is the sequence involving a shootout during a car chase, which is transported by means of a cut from the streets of the city’s outskirts to a natural quarry, where the protagonist pushes his adversaries’ car off a cliff, and then immediately back to the city. In addition to that, Prior lives up to his unrecognised status as the inspirer of future greats when he foreshadows John Wick, or at least key aspects of that franchise. Future Force’s world of the dystopian future of the 1990s is inhabited by cops in fine clothes who meet in a neutral place where drawing weapons is prohibited. Except in the case of this low-budget trash churned out by AIP, that place is not a classy hotel frequented by luxuriously dressed distinguished gentlemen, but a sleazy strip club packed with guys in denim vests decorated with patches and pyramids. (14.02.2021)