K2010: L'Arme du futur

This 'movie' is rarely discussed or aired on TV. There is a very good reason why, I'll explain.

Aside from the name in the title and a guy driving a car, this movie really has NOTHING at all to do with the 80's TV series 'Knight Rider'that most of us grew up watching. Instead this movie is more like a low budget Mad Max sequel with cyber-punk undertones. I'll try and sum up the movie for you: In the future earth is barren and polluted, there's this guy with a big truck who smuggles people into the clean air domes (makes ya think of Total Recall, eh?) he meets up with this scientist guy who wants to steal his organs using this soul-stealing crystal thing, the immigrant smuggler guy's girlfriend gets her soul trapped in the crystal instead, immigrant smuggler guy then puts the crystal into a car he built from scraps of a Mustang. The scientist villain guy is thwarted, a joke is made about doing some matrix-ish cybersex interface thing and our heroes drive off into the sunset.

The TV movie before 2010; KR2000 was crud but it at least had some relevance to the 80's series, Team Knight Rider was also terrible but still had ties to KITT and The Foundation. KR2010 is crap. Mr. Hasselhoff and Mr. Larson; if you have any sense, don't let 'Knight Rider: The Movie' be like this. Base it around the pilot ep where Michael Long is shot, please... We're tired of made-for-TV garbage. If Dukes of Hazzard can have a decent theatre movie, can't Knight Rider?

If you think this is going to be an even higher-tech version of the original "Knight Rider" series, um, don't hold your breath. It's still got the "young loner on a crusade" but it's not Hasselhoff, and our hero doesn't even OWN a car until the middle of the movie. Turns out, it's an old, junked-out Ford Mustang instead of the sleek Pontiac Firebird you would expect. There's some mention of an "interface" that looks like a crystalline artichoke (maybe they rescued it from "Cat from Outer Space") that somehow allows the spirit of a young girl to reside in the car. Hrmmm... well, if computers are pretty scarce, I suppose we could go the fantasy-mystical route. But there are better post-apocalypse vehicle films out there -- see "Damnation Alley" or any of the "Mad Max" films if you're into this sort of thing.

This was part of the "Action Pack" series of pilot films, including "TekWar", "Team Knight Rider", and the original episodes of "Hercules". This one didn't measure up, and never got further than a pilot episode.

When the popular KNIGHT RIDER TV series finished, I guess the producers weren't quite ready to give up the ghost because they produced a couple of follow-on TV movies in the years after. The first at least had Hasslehoff to tie it into the series, whereas KNIGHT RIDER 2010 has absolutely nothing to do with the show or indeed even the spirit of the show.

Sure, there's an armoured car with weapons in a couple of scenes, but that's the only scant connection. The rest of this is set in a post-apocalyptic world, with heavy nods to the MAD MAX films, where an evil organisation is presided over by a disabled scientist and our loner hero must use his wits and his high-powered car to rescue a kidnapped woman. Oh, and there's something about illegal organ donation, too. The acting is wooden beyond belief, the lead actor is simply terrible, and the production values are so appalling as to be non-existent which renders the many action scenes laughable. The one thing this has going for it is a villainous Brion James in typically arresting form, but sadly he can do nothing to save the film itself.

I had never heard of this movie until it was played after "Knight Rider 2000" on Sci-Fi recently ... and I had wished I hadn't. It was nowhere near what "Knight Rider" was all about ... needless to say, giving it two thumbs down is not remotely close to how bad this movie was.

Just to clarify the above statement quote"Michael Knight's evil twin brother Garth"

Michael Knight is in no way related to Garth because Michael Knight is an alias created by Garths father(cant remember full name) for Michael Long.

A cop who is nearly killed by a scandal that is outlined in the pilot and as well in later episodes.

I saw the movie as well and i thought it was mildly entertaining although i have to agree that it was overall a bad attempt to milk the TV series.