“It’s true what they say about grid runners — you’re just scum chasing scum.”

Justin’s rating: Green ooze can do anything!

Justin’s review: After watching perhaps too many old school scifi movies, I’ve come to realize that the ’90s use of virtual reality shares a lot of similarity with the ’80s use of robotics. Both time periods were infatuated with these respective techs, and both incorporated them in movies as quasi-magical elements with near-limitless potential.

This does seem silly in retrospect when you look at actual products of the time, such as Nintendo’s Virtual Boy — a headache-infusing device that could only portray graphics in hellscape red. Heck, it’s 2025, and even we barely care about VR today after numerous lackluster (but expensive) attempts.

But history… history could’ve gone a different direction. Perhaps if science and product designers were more on the ball, we would’ve had a future more like Virtual Combat (sometimes known as Grid Runners). Here, not only is virtual reality practically indistinguishable to the actual world — save for cool laser backgrounds — but it’s actually possible to take characters out of the machine and form them into flesh-and-blood people.

Somewhere back in 1985, Weird Science is yelling, “You’re stealing my ideaaaaa!”

When an actual video game boss (voiced by Star Trek’s Michael Dorn but not actually played by him) crosses that barrier into this slightly futuristic world, it’s up to spin-kicking “grid runner” cop David (Don “The Dragon” Wilson) to go on a date with a cybersex model. Oh, and track down the boss before he can free a bunch of other baddies. I mean, what if we had Bowsers and Metroids running around the world? It would be chaos! And pretty rad!

Putting aside a whole lot of questions about AI, machine learning, and how a virtual reality dominatrix with a whip can emerge from a tank of green ooze with just a few taps of a keyboard, Virtual Combat plays out as a Terminator clone with a super-strong killer rampaging and a mortal human (albeit one with fantastic muscles) tasked with taking it out.

I’ll admit that the addition of the two female VR characters gives some extra depth, especially as they’re seen as pawns for some corporate theft and intrigue. Dante grabs the dominatrix to be his assistant, while the other girl ends up being the new partner/love interest of David.

I know that Don Wilson has a devoted following, which has to be for his flexing and martial arts ability alone. This must be the case, for he is — and I say this without any rancor — a laughably bad actor. He’s so terrible that I kept thinking I was watching a parody. Every scene where he has to spit out some tropish dialogue or summon up a basic human emotion, I was tapping my foot and muttering, “Get to the spin kicking already! Can’t you kick that coffee cup off the counter? Just to tide me over?”

Fortunately, there are a good amount of fights where everyone seems to be OK putting their laser guns aside to settle everything with some mixed martial arts. So sayeth the Dragon. This is the meat-and-potatoes of this movie, apart from some light scifi world-building, and I’m happy that it delivers this well.

Virtual Combat is a mixed bag that has me split on it. On one hand is the awful acting, paper-thin plot, and completely unnecessary nudity. On the other hand, the fights are good, there’s some fun future tech at play, and the short runtime keeps everything moving at a good clip. If you’re a scifi B-movie lover or a fan of Don Wilson, it’s probably a no-brainer. For everyone else, I’d point in the general direction of Virtuosity — by no means a classic, but still much better than this cheap affair.

Intermission!

• Check out the use of the Terminator 2 font!
• You know you’re hot stuff if the opening credits uses both your real name and your nickname
• Michael Dorn as the voice of the machine!
• Fighting in silhouette against smoky laser fog is never not cool
• How does being on a giant gyroscope help you function in a virtual world?
• And now the movie tries to sell you on the virtues of cybersex
• Boxy futurecars that look better than Cybertrucks
• That’s a giant cellphone/communicator
• In this future world, we still use bulky CRTs
• Shock collars and learning AI
• David’s so grumpy that he can’t beat level 10? He sounds like whiner.
• The skinny bald guy has way too bushy a goatee for his head shape
• Whole lotta neck-breakin’ in this movie
• How is she controlling the whip from under the door?
• So if their clothes were made of this cyberslime, does it ever turn back when they take it off?
• Nice cutaway from a love scene to a whole bunch of downcast people in a homeless shelter