Well Deserved Praise

recommended

A Disappointing Continuation

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

The 2025 Futuresport championship game is being played in New Orleans. Meanwhile, the Hawaii Liberation Organization (Hilo) is causing trouble not just in Hawaii but also outside the arena.The L.A. Rush is playing the Berlin Griffins. Trey Ramzey is the top player in the sport and he knows it. That cocky attitude is going to cost his team one of these days.Becker is a rival from Trey's days at Notre Dame, and a member of the Berlin team. Anarchy and Mayhem are teammates of Trey's. Lorelei is Trey's tough-looking short-haired current girlfriend. Alex is Trey's former girlfriend, a reporter who has been taken off the assignment of the Hawaii secession movement to cover the game.What is Futuresport? Years ago, Ramzey was a star basketball player, but a scandal led to the end of pro basketball. Ramzey started playing a similar game invented by Fixx, a Caribbean-sounding dude with dreadlocks. He started as a street player around 2015 but quickly became a professional as the sport became the nation's favorite. The arena is oval-shaped and high on the sides like a halfpipe, with an elevated area in the middle from which a cannonball-sized ball is shot out of ... well, let's call it a cannon. On each end of the court is a hole, and the player's objective is to put the ball in that hole. There seems to be a goalkeeper with a kind of net who blocks shots, but the shots come so fast he hardly ever succeeds. Each team has five players on the court at once, dressed sort of like people do in hockey, but with hovering skateboards rather than skates. They go around the court in a counterclockwise direction. And the sport is coed.What else is different in this world? The entire city of New Orleans looks like Times Square, and some of the display ads on the buildings talk.People have "bedwalls". That's sort of like TV, but in this world, TV, telephones and the Internet seem to be one and the same (a portable version resembles a wristwatch). The game is covered live on Zeitsite. Trey lives in a fabulous apartment run by a computer named Edgar. When he checks his telephone messages, he uses the same screen that appears to be a TV, where he can usually see the caller too. Edgar also screens his calls. He has a personality which is quite appealing, and a sarcastic attitude when one is needed.After the game, Alex wants Trey to use his fame and his Hawaiian heritage to influence those threatening war. Honolulu already looks like Beirut of the 1980s. Pacific nations and the U.S. military are supporting the two sides, if it comes to that. Trey's solution: a game of Futuresport where the winner gets the islands! Trey and Becker end up on the same team, which gives us some much-needed comedy relief. Jet, one of the top Hilo figures, plays for the other team.This isn't a great movie, but it has an interesting vision of the future, which is not always depressing because there are some pleasant moments. There is some violence, which is to be expected, and the weapons are more advanced than what we have today. Also some scenes of couples in bed, bt nothing too explicit.Dean Cain has some good scenes, mostly where he is a bad boy in front of the camera, and where he is more of a Clark Kent type alone with Alex. But he's not consistent.Vanessa L. Williams mostly does a good job. She looks good--if you like her with pink hair.Wesley Snipes is probably the best actor--since he's not Caribbean, to my knowledge, although he is usually sarcastic in his roles.David Kaye is no Al Michaels, but he has his moments as Ronny Vance, the game announcer for Zeitsite. I hesitate to call him a TV announcer because, well, there seems to be no distinction between the web and broadcasting. The visual effects are interesting--Vance sometimes appears on the court, but he's not really there because players pass right through him. Game statistics and even replays also appear right on the court.Most of the visual effects, however, do appear to be just that. New Orleans is quite a different place. This was filmed before Katrina, but it would have been just as big a change regardless.It's an okay movie if you like seeing what the future might be like, and if you like the stars.

In the future the NBA has collapsed to be replaced by Future Sport - a new sport combining skateboarding and basketball. The world order has also changed and the North American Alliance is at war with the Hawaiian Liberation Organisation over territory. Future Sport star Tre Ramsey gets drawn into the conflict and offers the solution - a game of Future Sport where the winning country takes all. However with street rules applying and the HLO team being coached by the game's inventor Fixx the stakes are high.This vaguely similar to Rollerball in it's view of sport in the future - even the game itself is quite similar. However that's where the comparisons end - with Rollerball the plot was quite intelligent, the sport being the way that the ruling forces show the masses the futility of individual action. Here the film starts with some comments about the spirit of the sport being lost since becoming big time and this should be taken as a comment on the NFL, NBA etc. However after this it stops being intelligent and goes into a plot where a sportsman can decide to stop war by declaring a game that both warring factions seem happy to accept. It really is so unlikely that it's hard to even dispel disbelief for 90 minutes....I mean Hawaii versus USA? I don't care how far in the future the film is set but that's never going to be believable.The film itself is visually poor. Special effects look computer generated and don't fit in with the life action and the sport action is almost dull - with some shots of people getting hit used more than once. In rollerball the action was at least a little exciting, here we all now whose going to win and the director moves it all so fast that we don't get a chance to get into the drama of the game.Cain shows that TV is the media he belongs in by giving a cocky performance that lacks charisma. He does try to be a bad guy who turns good but he's not convincing in either - in fairness he does get better towards the end as his character gets more sympathetic. Williams is OK but she's not leading material - in fact the film almost seems to be looking for reasons to keep her round (she interviews him, she is his ex, she gets info on the HLO, she gets kidnapped etc), but she is the most believable of the characters. Snipes is terrible - he clearly did this to get the Ex. Producer credit - he does an awful accent through out and seems to only turn up to say something profound or to save the day.Overall a pretty poor film - go and watch the much better Rollerball with James Cann.

7 Years after Rollerball (2025 AD) - The Sport "Future Sport" ( a combination of Extreme Rolelr Skating and Shot Put) has taken over the world. The Los Angeles teams meets Berlin in the finals in New Orleans and are in fact favored. The game however is a Berlin Upset due to one L A player more intrested in individual records than team work. Yet in the meantime , a Pacific Island terrorist group (with it's own F S team) is planning to withdraw the Pacific Islands from North American soverignty, and actually draw up their own Declaration of Independence, not recognizing the results of the 2024 A D North American Elections. Fixx, the inventor of the game (Wesley Snipes) inititally invented the game after basketball completely and suddenly collapsed (As a way for street gangs to solve their turf battles in a more socially acceptable manner) yet dons the uniform to help the North American Continental Mainland Future Sport Team versus Honolulu. If Honoluulu Wins, Hawaii and the Pacific islands win their own soverignty. No questions asked. Check it out.

This film shows that Dean Cain can play other roles apart from Clark Kent. I thought he was excellent and that this film is amasing. I love the action combined with the romance and the fact that Tre (who starts the film as being arrogant) learns how to become a team player. Dean Cain must have had an enjoyable time making this film as he appears totally relaxed and at ease in the role. Wesley Snipes and Vanessa Williams were good co-stars.