“The only thing you get from feelings is dead.”

Drake’s rating: And a one-two, step-kick, step-kick, pivot and turn!

Drake’s review: I’ve had a pretty lucky run with movies lately. I’ve gotten in a few silent pics, a pre-code melodrama, an ‘80s teen romcom, and a Hong Kong gun-fu flick. Not a bad start to the year! However, just like caramel corn or cold November rain, and unlike Justin’s irritation whenever I drop a new silent movie review in his inbox, it couldn’t last forever. But sometimes you just have to take a chance, y’know? You can’t just assume that something called Future Kick is going to be bad, right?

Right…?

Of course, the New Concorde logo at the start tipped me off, and I would have hit the stop button right then and there, but my cat took the opportunity to bat the remote off of the table and under the couch, and then blinked innocently at me before wandering off to have a nap. So it was either get up and root around under the couch for the remote, or just let the movie play on. I chose the lazier option, although it probably wasn’t the wisest one.

So in the far-off future of 2025, Earth is a mess. While the wealthiest humans have scampered off to live a life of luxury on the moon and indulge in virtual reality games to keep themselves entertained, corporations have taken over global control from national governments. To make sure no one messes with their corporate interests, they created bio-mechanical men called Cyberons to enforce their rules. But when the Cyberons figured out that the corps were the real criminals, they were in turn hunted down and destroyed by the corporate police.

And I am 100% sure that all of the no doubt considerable costs in these programs were passed on to the consumer to protect the shareholders.

Walker (Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Batman Forever) is one such Cyberon, but he’s no pushover. In fact, when the corporate police try to apprehend him, he kicks them. In fact, since this is 2025, he future-kicks them. Working as a bounty hunter, Walker gets mixed up in a corporate plot to steal body parts. This brings him into contact with Nancy (Meg Foster, They Live), whose husband was investigating the crimes before he was killed. It also brings him into conflict with the killers themselves, Hyne (Eb Lottimer), a Wolverine wannabe who carries around a weird three-bladed knife (because just one isn’t enough) and Bang (Chris Penn, Footloose).

So, yes, you can assume that there’s a bit of shooting, a car chase or two, a lot of punching and no small amount of kicking. Not just normal kicking, of course, but future-kicking.

Future Kick is a ‘90s a cyberpunk movie, so every scene is shot at night, everyone wears sunglasses even though it’s dark, and all the locations are back lit with a blue light. And because it’s a Roger Corman production, filler footage from other Corman movies of course sneaks its way in to pad out the runtime. Even at a mere 72 minutes though, Future Kick is a bit of a slog. The draw, of course, is Don Wilson’s martial arts prowess, which is impressive. A true kickboxing legend, Wilson was a B-movie icon throughout the 1990s, churning out one martial arts flick after another, and his work here is indicative of why he was such a draw. Although a better martial artist than actor, Wilson nonetheless portrayed characters with a quiet, calm confidence that made him a solid screen presence.

That Future Kick is even halfway decent is attributable solely to Wilson. The martial arts bits are worth watching this one for, but if you hit the fast-forward button between the fight scenes, it’s an understandable decision. Heck, I would have considered it myself if the remote hadn’t been under the couch. I should probably dig it out, but it might be easier to just buy a new one.

Justin’s rating: How to program your Dragon

Justin’s review: Prior to watching Future Kick, I had no idea who Don “The Dragon” Wilson was. Apparently he used to be a big cheese down at the kickboxing factory and hoped that, like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan before him, he might be able to leverage his finely tuned martial arts skills into a film career. And it must’ve worked, too, because he — and I am not joking — ended up starring in Bloodfist VIII and Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power.

But this was more near the start of his cinema run, back when he was merely in Bloodfist II and Empire of Ash III. So it’s like witnessing the birth of a martial arts B-movie legend. So please show some respect as you pay homage in the comments.

As the eloquently named Future Kick implies, it is the future. It’s also a future where the director saw The Terminator, Total Recall, and Blade Runner that one time and dearly wanted to improve on that formula with a 72-minute masterpiece.

With all of the wealthy people living on the moon, the earth has turned into a criminal cyberpunk dystopia where robotic “Cyberons” go about “terminating with extreme prejudice” while wearing those gigantic wraparound sunglasses that your grandmother wore in 1997. I was hoping that we’d be past prejudice in the future, nevermind the extreme variety, but here we are.

Wilson plays Walker, a scrappy Cyberon who loves to — as the title of the film implies — future his way out of conflicts with the corporate police. Also, he kicks them. With extreme prejudice. To fund his expensive hobby of gigantic sunglasses, he teams up with steely-eyed Meg Foster to bring her husband’s murderer to justice. Considering that she finds out he cheated on her, I don’t quite understand why she continues her pursuit of this, but we wouldn’t have much of a movie without it.

They find out that “New Body,” which provides organ replacements, isn’t getting those organs from altruistic sources. And since the local law enforcement is too overworked and desensitized to, um, crime? They have to go it alone to find the organ thieves. And these are some bad hombres who like to cut people open with Wolverine claws. At least it gives The Dragon plenty of opportunities to spin-kick his opponents while wearing sunglasses.

I have two thoughts on this film, one bad and one good. My main criticism is that the director has a sleazy habit of constantly inserting topless pole dancing clips at any opportunity. Two characters might be talking about pretty important stuff, and the camera kind of veers off to go check out the ladies for a while. About none of it is essential to the plot, but it is distracting in a way that makes me think of Showgirls’ uniform awfulness.

Yet Future Kick isn’t a loss. I give it credit for not doing the bare minimum and going instead for the bare maximum. If that makes sense. There’s a massive amount of backstory, world building, and even decent talent (did I mention that Chris Penn is in this too?). It’s so crammed full of stuff, including some cool cyberpunk settings, a lethal video game, virtual reality, and even a legitimate spaceship battle, that I don’t know how they pulled it off in just a shade over an hour of runtime. There’s even a twist ending that I legitimately did not see coming.

I’ve seen a lot of Future Kick’s contemporaries, and trust me, there’s plenty that would’ve taken this idea and done it a whole lot more lazy. They cared here, and it shows.

Intermission!

• Nothing like putting the actor’s entire martial arts resume on the screen as part of the opening credits
• Those credits and theme song are trying to hard to be Terminator
• Oh Andrews, we hardly knew ye
• “Ultradream” VR program is a bit nudey and violent
• Meg Foster! Chris Penn!
• “Howard, go to earth!”
• This is obviously back when CDs were seen as so futuristic
• Spaceships from the moon have wings because… well, we have no idea, there
• New Body recommends you change your organs by the time you’re 45
• Dude is cheating on his wife. What a sleaze.
• Exotic danger with a hangman’s noose? OK.
• How to make a floppy disc look more futuristic: Put rhinestones on it
• DOCTOR DESTRUCTION
• That’s the weirdest murder weapon
• The video game where you try to send a lethal spark to the other player
• Everyone in this arena loves to wear sunglasses. At night. Inside.
• They have more than 100 murders in their precincts every day.
• That’s one teeny tiny shark
• “Where the hell do you expect me to get water?”
• Barney is quite the creep
• RANDOM LADDER DECAPITATION
• “I got two things I’m going to take: Your body and your soul.”
• Yeah, send the oldest security guard ever to investigate the killers in your room
• I don’t think you have time in this movie for a huge backstory flashback, but you’re going for it anyway, aren’t you?
• FLASHBACK SPACE BATTLE
• “You don’t owe me anything. Except 500 grand.”
• “New Body isn’t new, it’s just old-fashioned murder.”
• Kick into an exposed electrical wire ends up with someone exploding
• “Well, what do you think of my new program?”
• I don’t know who told Chris Penn that he should start working in martial arts movies, but they should be ashamed of themselves.
• Don Wilson won multiple martial arts titles in a variety of weight classes, including a whopping 11 world titles. Still an active martial artist, there is yet the potential for him to kick someone in the future.
• Wilson also made eight (!) movies in the Bloodfist series for Roger Corman.
• VR being a big part of this movie’s storyline is so ‘90s.