Who would have thought the movie could go this long? No, really. People had to wonder where the demand for these films was coming from. The budgets did not get any better and the scripts did not exactly get any better. Is Tim Thomerson just that good at playing an Alpha Male jerk? Regardless, they made more and I am going to review them...dammit. Let us jump right into the muck that is...
You know how much I love pun titles/subtitles by now. This one is just...well, silly.*
In the present of 1992, the action has died down and Jack Deth has become a private eye. Unfortunately, during the break between movies, his marriage to Helen Hunt (I'm not going to say her character's name EVER) is on the rocks. As we will learn later, Jack has bad luck in the gap between films. Why must his love life be the biggest victim of lazy screenwriting? After stopping a liquor store robbery a la Cobra/Black Cobra/Best of the Best 4, he is knocked out and taken to the future by a big, ugly robot. In this future, the Trancers have risen back to power...somehow. With both former leaders dead (Whistler and his brother in 1 and 2) and no new leader shown, how did this happen again? Oh yeah, McNulty died at some point before Jack showed up too. At least his dead-now-living-wife-in-another-body is there still.
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The Council has big plans for Jack: send him back to 2005 (but forward from where he was and, aw screw it!) to stop the new uprising. How did this uprising happen before and they not know it? Good question. Anyhow, they send him there and he has to find out what the source of the new trancers are. His question is answered pretty quickly in a scene set in, you guessed it, a strip club. A bunch of military men are in on an experiment that enhances strength and power. One of them goes a bit overboard and an American Ninja II-style bar fight breaks out. To put an end to the fight, the man has to be killed, but not before he 'trances.' This scares off the newest recruit, who runs to the nearest press she can find. Guess who that is.
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Jack meets up with Helen Hunt again, only to find that she is re-married and has a kid. All of this because he never came back. Of course, given how time-travel works, he could easily jump back and undo all of this. Anyhow, she is hiding the young woman, who agrees to lead Jack to the compound. Incidentally, said compound is located in the same building as the strip club. Way to be inconspicuous. The leader of the experiment is a strange general who is also a Southerner and a scientist. Man, that guy is a triple-threat. He is played by Andrew Robinson, who you will either know as a guy from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or the Scorpio Killer from Dirty Harry. He was also the lieutenant in Cobra, so this film is clearly the high-point for him. He tries to be both quirky and menacing, but tends to only pull off one of them. Feel free to guess which one I mean.*
Jack and the lady break into the base, only to be captured. The villains dare to try and convert Jack into a trancer, which is a big no-no. He escapes and the pair proceed to walk down the hallway shooting...and shooting some more. This goes on for about five minutes before the young woman begins to transform. Jack kills her without question, although the movie tries to spin this positively. Just in time, the lizard robot shows up again and helps out Jack. Unfortunately, his batteries die...for some reason before the final fight. Don't worry, they come back on the second the fight ends. In the interim, our hero manages to get cornered by the villain and saved by another soldier. Um...my hero? He goes back to the future/present and begins a new leg of his journey: a time-jumping defender. Of course, that barely mattered by the time Trancers IV comes out. The End.
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Well, we're halfway there. Are we living on a prayer? Only time- and David Nutter- will tell. Stay tuned...
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