Wing Jong’s film ‘Future-X Cops’ is truly, truly something else. There was a point while watching this movie that I muttered under my breath ‘oh… just kill me now’, with the scary thing about that is that I actually started experiencing chest pains like two minutes later. I had to immediately let the unseen Powers That Be know that I was only joking about that because as bad as ‘Future-X Cops’ might have been, it wasn’t worth dying over. Besides if I did expire then this would make ‘Future-X Cops’ the last movie I ever saw. I’m no saint but I don’t deserve that.

In the year 2082 the world is amazingly advanced and a most wonderful place to live thanks mainly to the genius of Dr. Masterson (Jingwu Ma). Today Dr. Masterson is giving a speech unveiling something or another, but top future cop Detective Kidd (Andy Lau) has gotten word that there is an assassination attempt on the good doc’s life which will be spearheaded by a bunch of really weird looking cyborgs. They might have told us why these things want to kill Doc Masterson, but if they did, I missed that part. Kidd is briefing his crew of Future Cops on the security detail for this op, including his lovely wife Mille played by the phenomenally beautiful Bing Bing Fan. Kidd tells Mille that she should go home and take care of their daughter but she wants to be a cop for a change and do some cop stuff. Kidd agrees, they embrace, he tells her how much he loves her and begs her to take care of herself. Seriously, he should’ve just shot her dead right there to save us the trouble of having to watch her die later on.

Sure enough this gathering is invaded by these bizarre looking cyborg creatures led by the completely evil Kalon (Sui-Wong Fan). If ever there was a crew of future cops unprepared for something that they knew was about to happen, these were the cops. These creatures slaughter, butcher and murder pretty much the entire future police force, including Mille of course. The thing is while Team Kalon pretty much killed everybody, they failed to kill the one guy they were supposed to kill. No problem though because the bad guys have a time machine so they’ll just go back to the past and kill Dr. Masterson, Terminator Style, when he’s twelve. I’m just telling you what the movie told me.

Well we can’t allow this to happen so the broken hearted Detective Kidd is retrofit with some state of the cybernetics and sent to the past to find the child Dr. Masterson and protect him from an upgraded Kalon and his equally evil wife Fiona (Yifea Tang). I was thinking while Kidd was going through his awesome cybernetic retrofitting process that it sure would’ve been nice to have some of this fancy tech to stop all those cops from getting slaughtered but hindsight is 20-20 they say.

Now, sixty years prior, but still the future to us here in 2010, Kidd is just a goofy street cop and doting father to the adorable Kiki (Jiao Xu) awaiting the arrival of Kalon and Fiona who are arriving at another time cleavage point. I think that’s what they called it. While we wait, Kidd has to avoid falling in love with his colleague Miss Holly (Barbie Hsu) because him falling in love would mess up future events. The problem is he can’t find young Dr. Masterson anywhere. Where in the heck would a twelve year old boy be hiding out? Sure there’s a really cute twelve year old boy in this flick that we can’t get rid of but his name isn’t Masterson. The only person named Masterson is the Super Handsome Single Police Captain and yeah the little boy has a sad Super Attractive Divorced Mother, but still… Where is the young Dr. Masterson?

Eventually Kalon and Fiona will touch ground in 2020, cause a ruckus, and kill more helpless cops. So you mean to tell me my man can’t fall in love with a pretty girl because it would mess up the future but these crazy cyborgs from the future can go back to the past and kill every cop in existence and that doesn’t mess up the future? Regardless, never fear because Future-X Cop is on the job and he will save… well, he doesn’t save any of those slaughtered cops and he can’t save Dr. Masterson because he doesn’t know where Dr. Masterson is. You would’ve thought Dr. Masterson would’ve told him where he was considering it’s his ass he’s sent back in the past to protect, but whaddyagonnado? You will do nothing except continue to watch and pray for it to end and you will be rewarded with end credits for your patience.

My first question would be who is this movie designed for? It’s seems like a kids movie with the cute kids floating around and the Power Ranger style battles but doggone is this movie a downer. More people die in this movie than in Saving Private Ryan and most of them die horribly. Bloodless, but horrible nonetheless. Maybe it’s a romance, but that’s a downer too. It does kind of work as a comedy because watching the character of Fiona and her evil cat motions was absolutely hilarious. Rowrrrr. Even Halle Berry thought that was silly. I guess it could be classified as an action movie and there was action aplenty but the special effects, to be kind, were suspect. Particularly Future-X Cop himself which was supposed to be the Coup de Gracie.

My second question would be ‘what’s up with Andy Lau?’ I’ve said it before and it bears repeating but I will never chastise an actor or actress for whatever role they take because I’m not paying their rent, car note or child support… but Andy, seriously? This cat had to work like a dog, starting with ‘Infernal Affairs’, to overcome the knock that he can’t act and he achieved this. ‘Warlords?’, ‘House of Flying Daggers?’, ‘Resurrection of the Dragon?’ But this? I hope they took good care of my man because this… well… it wasn’t very good.

But it is funny. Unintentionally so, but it is pretty darned humorous. I wouldn’t want anybody to see this movie just to see Yifea Tang’s catwoman or Andy Lau’s face superimposed on a silly CGI robot or the gut busting Death by Porcupine Man Sequence…. It’s complicated… but it will help get you through ‘Future-X Cops’ if you do choose to take this on.