What do you do when you are given a budget of $300? Decide to make a science fiction film, with cyborgs, dinosaurs and space battles of course! Future War melds talentless actors, horrible story, special effects that are anything but special, or effective, and a location that is basically a warehouse filled with cardboard boxes.

Starring the versatile Daniel Bernhardt and Robert Z'Dar this movie grabs you right from the start and doesn't let go...unless you have something better to do. Before I continue, I need to focus on these two actors and give you some background history. Both looked very familiar to me, in fact Robert Z'Dar I recognized from Tango and Cash. He played the prisoner Stallone electrocuted on the roof of the prison while trying to escape. Z'Dar's filmography on IMDB.com is truly impressive, in fact I have think Future War may have been a gateway to a cornocopia of bad films! Daniel Bernhardt looks like a clone of Jean Claude Van Damme (minus the acting ability), and in fact was Van Damme's predecessor on the Bloodsport sequels (YES THEY MADE MORE THAN ONE!!!). I do have to stop an give the man some credit because he did play an Agent in the Matrix sequels....ok the respect stops there. So given the quality of actors in this film you would have to assume recipe for success right? Absolutely!

Although Bernhardt is the star of Future War, the focus of the movie is on a drug addict prostitute turned nun, turned adventurer who serves as the narrator and helps weave this wonderful tale for us. Bernhardt plays a 'runaway', who (ok get ready) was kidnapped by cyborgs from the future in the past, and manages to escape to the present. Phew! The cyborgs also went back in time and kidnapped dinosaurs who they trained to be trackers....okay.

The dinosaurs in this movie are brilliant. How they were able to perfect the rotating head on a single axis while pushing these rubber messes on a wheel barrow is baffling. The ability to portray realism by just having the sound guy shake a big rubber puppet lends to the beauty of this epic. ILM could learn a thing or two from these cgi wizards!

Aside from his acting, Bernhardt's greatest asset is his mastery of the martial arts, which he employs frequently as he is hunted down by cyborgs and dinosaurs. Luckily he runs into the whore/nun, who befriends him, and along with some friends from church, some new nun friends, her old pimp (i swear i'm not making this up) and her old whore friends band together to help the Runaway defeat the forces of evil.

The final showdown between the Runaway (Bernhardt) and the Master Cyborg (Z'Dar) takes place as the whore/nun is taking her vows to become a full fledged nun (she was obviously an NIT - Nun in training). However while contemplating her final vows, she has a momentary pause while spying a glance at the glistening form of Bernhardt.....but before we get her decision....BAM...Master Cyborg attacks! What ensues is completely unpredictable.

What I really love is the attention to detail in this film. Cyborgs from the future would most certainly sport 70's porn style moustache's, and when a cyborg is destroyed.....I expected it to sound like a case of wine falling down a flight of stairs. Nice touch. The dinosaurs. Not since Carnosaur 3 have we been introduced to such realism.

To sum up, I think Future War has Top 5 potential, and is worth the hour and thirty minutes that you will have to purge in order to view this. Give Future War a chance....your past may depend on it! YEAH! Anyone?

Hamlin Grade : 6

Timothy Dalton is the one true James Bond,
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