Interesting futuristic sci-fi action flick
When this movie came out as a direct-to-video rental vhs back in 1995 I rented it since I liked its combination of sci-fi and detective crime action. I watched it once and thought, oh, so, so, and returned it to the store. I did like its cloning subplot.
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Today in 2010 I can recommend watching this forgotten gem if for anything, I enjoy seeing how old movies came close to predicting the future. TERMINAL JUSTICE tried to extrapolate how the future would look like in 2008-2010 in a large, presumably West or West Coast metropolitan city.
It wasn't a bad attempt. I could among other things, this 1995 sci-fi action thriller accurately predicted the bluetooth earphone device. I thought I saw one of the bad guys using what looks to be a 2006 Razor cell phone. I thought I could discern some blade runnerish elements to this crime drama. Some of the technology is still too far into the future. Picture video home phones still have not materialized. The computers shown in the movie are at once both ahead futuristically and still in some ways backwards when compared to with today's 2010 technology. The rest of society looks pretty much the same in the 2008-2010 setting as it does in real 2010. By the way, video games are very popular in this futuristic 2008-2010, but not what we actually have today. The video games the movie envisioned were based primarily on virtual reality, which meant using headsets. As a result of the intrinisic privacy of virtual reality gaming, sex virtual reality games are popular. A beautiful actress, Pamela (Kari Wuhrer) is the hottest hit around in movies and video virtual games in this movie. There's also elements I perceive, from the 1984 sci-fi movie, 'Runaway' in here, such as the computer voice that responds to any homeowner asking what time it is.
The plot of the movie intervenes two crimes. The obvious one is futuristic drug trafficking involving advanced narcotics and a new twist, an electronic device that simulates getting high. The main character, detective sergeant (Lorenzo Lamas, at this time in 1995 on an acting career downslide) discovers that underneath the presumably drug trafficking by a powerful narco-tech corporate businessman, is an insidious crime syndicate/corporation scheme to clone beautiful women who can be sold as disposable sex slaves. A mad scientist has been creating attractive female clones of himself, that's right, FEMALE clones of himself, which he provides to the vicious psychotic ceo of a high-tech corporation which doubles as a crime syndicate of its own. The clues become obvious when the cops uncover two dead young women, raped and tortured, who look to be identical twins, but there is absolutely no history of them in any data base. The dangerous ceo wants to kidnap a beautiful female actress whose image is widely used in widespread virtual reality games ranging from R to XXX. If the corporation can extract cells from the actress (Kari Wuhrer, doing both movie and tv acting in 1995) then unlimited clones of this beautiful actress can be manufactured and sold illicitly on the black market for huge sums of money.
It's not a great movie in itself, but all the futuristic sci-fi which was meant for our own actual time today in 2010, makes it worth watching for entertainment. Another sci-fi movie, made-for-television back in autumn 1997, tried to extrapolate what 2010-2012 would look like in Seattle, Washington State. That movie is titled, CLONED.