Matty endures a dud Pierre David production that’ll leave you as lifeless as star Gary Hudson’s spectral detective.

Long disproven (TL; DR: different producers, unrelated projects from the off), claims THE FORCE was meant to be the fourth entry in the Maniac Cop franchise are likely rooted in the presence of Jacques Haitkin. The late, great cinematographer had, of course, lensed the ultra-troubled Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (1993), and his work on The Force is among the film’s few pleasures. There’s a bit of street level immediacy – a gritty, hustling, bustling style – befitting of the procedural aspects, and several images strike a chord – specifically, the moment in which the spirit of a murdered maverick detective (Gary Hudson) takes over the body a young rookie (Jason Gedrick) in order to solve his slaying and comfort his grieving wife (Kim Delaney) [1]. However, The Force is torpedoed by a horrendous script. Crap characters, terrible dialogue, and laborious scenes blitz the imaginative ‘Ghost (1990) meets NYPD Blue’ set-up, leaving the film broken and stranded in bad movie oblivion. Interestingly, Haitkin went on to shoot three more flicks co-scribe Randall Frakes had a hand in: Blowback (2000), Bad Karma (2001), and Instinct to Kill (2001). All came via Mark L. Lester’s American World Pictures, and all, alas, run the gamut from barely passable to awful.

One of five Pierre David joints the eminently watchable Hudson appeared in across a single eighteen month period [2], The Force marks the sole English language production of Hong Kong mogul William Kong. The president of Chinese shingle Edko Films, Kong forged a cordial working relationship with David in 1988, and the two formalised a distribution pact at the 1993 American Film Market, whereupon Kong agreed to issue the Canuxploitation icon’s wares in China. Eight years later, Kong received an Academy Award nomination for his best-known opus, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). 

Began under the stewardship of first-timer Mitch Marcus – who’d subsequently helm a trio of amusing DTV creepers at the turn of the millennium: Knocking on Death’s Door (1999), The Haunting of Hell House (1999), and Boltneck (2000) – The Force ended up being tackled by Mark Rosman. Though Rosman’s creepy and charismatic debut, slasher staple The House on Sorority Row (1982), is a classic of its kind, he drops the ball here, and the overriding feeling when watching The Force is that it plays exactly how you’d expect it to when studying the film’s place within his CV:

It’s awkward and out of shape, and quite clearly the result of a director returning to features following a hiatus (and, before that, an extended stay in television).

Thankfully, come January 1994, four and a half weeks after The Force wrapped, Rosman was calling ‘action’ on a superior offering — the sturdy sci-fi caper Evolver (1995) — for Blue Rider Entertainment who, as it happened, were also in post on The Paperboy (1994): a David co-production of their own. 

The Force was released in the U.K. in December 1994 by First Independent subsidiary Reflective, the same British label that also issued David’s superficially similar police opus, Scanner Cop (1994). It hit U.S. video through Republic Pictures on 21st February 1995, and was in rotation on Cinemax by the summer. 

USA/Germany/China ● 1994 ● Horror, Thriller, Romance ● 94mins

Jason Gedrick, Kim Delaney, Gary Hudson ● Dir. Mark Rosman ● Wri. Steve Kallaugher, Mitch Marcus, Randall Frakes 

[1] Incidentally, co-star Denis Lipscomb tread near identical terrain as the lead of Guy Magar’s solid supernatural revenger, Retribution (1987), and the keen-eyed will notice that a couple of The Force’s locations reappear in John Eyres’ thematically twinned – albeit wholly stronger – action-horror romp, From Beyond the Grave (1996).
[2] The others: Martial Outlaw (1993), Scanner Cop, The Wrong Woman (1995), and Serial Killer (1995).