Futuresport

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General		Extras
Category	Science Fiction	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - 1.33:1, non 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1998	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	86:54 minutes	Other Extras	Filmographies
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	2,4	Director	Ernest Dickerson
Studio Distributor	Columbia TriStar	Starring	Dean Cain Vanessa L Williams Wesley Snipes Rachel Shane Adrian Hughes Bill Smitrovich
RRP	$34.95	Music	Stewart Copeland

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Dolby Digital	2.0
16x9 Enhancement	Yes	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0, 256 Kb/s) French (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 256 Kb/s)  German (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 256 Kb/s) Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 256 Kb/s) Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 256 Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	No
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    F-U-T-U-R-E-S-P-O-R-T.

    Well I suppose I really ought to get on with the plot synopsis, as painful as that may be. However, I am still awaiting the postmortem results to see if they managed to locate one.

    Oh, they did ... sod it. The year is 2025, the NBA collapsed after a points shaving scandal in 2015 and out in the streets of the slums of the City of Angels arose a new sport by the name of Futuresport, which effectively replaced gang wars. It rose to prominence quickly after its invention by the streetmeister of the Drop Zone (as the slums are called), Obike Fixx (Wesley Snipes) and was given national exposure by telejournalist Alex Torres (Vanessa L Williams). It is now the numero uno of sports and the Wayne Gretzky of the sport is Tremaine Ramzey (Dean Cain). It's championship time and the big game has been targeted, or at least more especially both Alex and Tre have, by the Hawaiian Liberation Organization for action. Both manage to survive the terrorist assault but Tre does not win the championship with his team, the L.A. Rush. He promptly loses his image conscious girlfriend, regains ex-flame Alex and suffers further terrorist attack, as the HLO become more militant. To cut a painfully long story short, Tre suggests a game of Futuresport between the two sides of the political fence to settle the fate of Hawaii, without the need for war. Naturally the good guys win and Hawaii does not get its independence.

    This is nothing if not 1950's Cold War McCarthyism shoved forward 70 years with sport replacing the military, and that is as frightening a basis for a movie as anything. The plot lacks any sort of substance, the characters lack any sort of character and this reels from one improbability to another. After Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, you would have thought Dean Cain would know better, but he is still out there trying to prove that he can act. Yeah, right. Vanessa L Williams at least manages to look pretty, whilst grappling with a pretty weak role. Wesley Snipes, who was also executive producer for this effort, was his usual self, but this time with the worst rasta-style accent ever heard - and quite why someone from the City of Angels would be rasta-based I have still to work out (Latino or hispanic surely would be more logical?). The whole thing is thrown into a melting pot that is poorly stirred by Ernest Dickerson. Some of the sets are so patently false, painted mattes that one could almost cringe. Surely television deserves better than even this .... effort.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and it is 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is nice and sharp throughout and very clear. The only let down is a brief section between 1:51 and 1:53 where focus goes really haywire. At first I thought it may be a serious oversaturation of the blue colour at that point, but repeated viewing causes me to suggest that it is an inherent focus problem. This is a very sharply defined transfer and shadow detail was very good throughout.

    This is a reasonably vibrant transfer, with some nicely vibrant colours. The colours have been consistently rendered, although the city exteriors are a little dowdy.

    It would appear that there are some instances of MPEG artefacts in the transfer, mainly in the form of loss of focus in panned shots. Not especially distracting but consistently noticeable. There were no apparent film-to-video artefacts. Film artefacts were present throughout the film, but they were not especially noticeable and did not detract from the film.

Audio

    There are five audio tracks on the disc, all Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded efforts except for the default English soundtrack! The other soundtracks are French, German, Italian and Spanish. I endured the English default soundtrack.

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout.

    Audio sync did not appear to be a problem with the transfer.

    The music score comes from Stewart Copeland, which started out quite well but seemed to peter out towards the end - almost as if the enormity of the effort started getting to him. He has done some good things in other films, and this is definitely not his best work.

    Since all we have is straight stereo, this is a sadly underwhelming effort. This really cried out for at least a surround encoded soundtrack, to bring life to the violence of the game - some of the hits would make any ice hockey enforcer proud. As it is, the whole thing is a damp squib that really does not convey any sort of emotion at all. A brief sample of the other soundtracks certainly indicated a bit more life to the soundtracks that helped the film a little.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

• Pan & Scan version of the film
• Unseen footage

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is quite average, but should have been so much more.

    The extras are about as underwhelming as the film.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris
3rd November 1999