5 Questions: Future Cops
One thing that I’ve learned during my tenure on this site is that some movies lend themselves to the 5 Questions format better than others. But Future Cops may have had me asking more questions than any other film I’ve watched in my entire life. To put it mildly, there is a lot to process in Future Cops’ 95 minutes.
And while it was tempting to present the first ever 25 Questions in Bulletproof Action history, I stuck with tradition and limited my Future Cops queries to five. Let’s begin…
1. Why are they called Future Cops in 2043?
The movie begins in 2043 Hong Kong. And if the on screen graphic telling you it was 2043 was not good enough, we see hoverboards with frick’n lasers attached to them, a sure fire sign that the things we are seeing on screen are not taking place in the present day but instead are taking place in the future. But while that is indeed our future, for the characters in the movie in that opening sequence it is their present day. So why would our group of heroes be referred to as Future Cops in 2043? It makes perfect sense to call them Future Cops when they go back in time to 1993. But in 2043, they were just cops.
2. How can the same movie have a character with some of the best hair and a character with some of the worst hair I have ever seen on film?
My favorite character in the movie is known as Broom Man (played by Jacky Cheung, one of “The Four Heavenly Kings” in Hong Kong) Broom Man got his name thanks to his interesting hair style (which looks a lot like a certain Street Fighter’s hair). 20 years from now I may forget a lot about this movie, but I bet I’ll remember good ol’ Broom Man. Not only does Broom Man get a music video in the middle of the movie, he also has a pretty spectacular fight in the parking lot of a convenience store. On the flip side the movie’s school bully, Kei On, has some sort of mutated Elvis hair that may be the most ridiculous thing in a movie filled with ridiculous things.
3. When the General talks why don’t his lips move?
Some would say that the General in Future Cops looks a lot like a General in Street Fighter. But unlike Bison, he doesn’t have his own money (at least from what was observed in this movie) and his lips don’t move when he talks. Was he communicating telepathically? Is he a next level ventriloquist?
4. What is copyright law?
I’m not asking for me, but I’m sure that is the question you’d get if you approached director Jing Wong and asked, “Have you ever heard about this thing called copyright law?” For whatever reason, Jing Wong decided to make nearly every character in this movie one of the characters from the popular Street Fighter video game franchise. He threw in a character from Dragonball Z as well, because if you are going to infringe you may as well infringe on more than one property. And there’s even a scene in Future Cops that brings another popular video game to life. Although I will admit that scene was more entertaining than anything Bob Hoskins or John Leguizamo did.
5. What in the world did I just watch?
Future Cops is a unique movie experience to say the least. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I hit play on this one… The Street Fighter characters being sent back in time to help a student, who will one day grow up to be a powerful judge, reminded me a lot of an often overlooked 80’s teen comedy, The Heavenly Kid (starring Jason Gedrick of Iron Eagle fame)… Characters eating non-food items like shoes, furniture and microphones… The use of the term “quarreling” on multiple occasions… Quotes like “Don’t touch my turtle in the toilet… People punching one another in the back of the head… An apparent infatuation with the Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore movie Ghost… Appearances by Aaron Kwok from China Strike Force and Dennis Chan from the Kickboxer movies… This movie had everything including a malfunctioning kitchen sink and a plumber who thought the woman of the house was trying to break up his happy marriage.
