The stamina shown by participants in this futuristic fracas is impressive, and an 800-number on the videocassette hawking karate sparring gear indicates its priorities.

"No one took the environment too seriously until it was too late..." begins the voice-over narration by Jason Storm (Billy Blanks), a hardworking "Tracker/Communicator," or TC 2000, in the 21st century, when the rich and powerful stay in vast underground shelters while the poor and outcast subsist above, under a ravaged ozone layer. A TC's job: to fend off marauders from SurfaceWorld trying to infiltrate UnderWorld. But in fact, Earth's atmosphere has healed itself, and now the shelter bosses are planning to invade SurfaceWorld. First they want to eliminate the current occupants, and a convenient chemical doomsday weapon resides in the Terminal Station, well guarded by surface forces. That provides the rationale for arranging the on-duty demise of Storm's partner Zoey (Bobbie Phillips), a la ROBOCOP, and resurrecting her as sexy, invincible android slut TC 2000-X. Miss X charms surface gangster Niki Picasso (Jalal Mehri) into using his mob to penetrate Terminal Station, and the deadly launch sequence for the doomsday weapon (a series of cheapo bottle rockets) is begun. Only Jason Storm, hounded from his job and exiled to SurfaceWorld, with a crew of volunteer surface warriors mustered by the peerless master Sumai (Bolo Yeung), can save the disenfranchised rabble from genocide.

All action pictures need weapons, but TC 2000 is stingy in this regard; combatants in the year 2020 instead rely on the lightning hands and flying feet of karate. Much of the movie--the whole climax, for that matter--is a kinetic exhibition of apocalyptic martial-arts mayhem, filmed around high-tech settings with schlock-electric energy imparted by writer-director T.J. Scott. In large doses this sort of thing can be tiresome, and there are scenes in which Storm and Sumai seem to be fighting the same opponent at the same time in separate boiler rooms.

TC 2000 star Billy Blanks is something to see, and the film takes every opportunity to spotlight his chiseled physique in action. Phillips, on the other hand, is just inaction; after her transformation from demure cop to camp cyborg siren, she does very little, despite a big public intro before a crowd of UnderWorld photographers (who wield old Kodak Brownie cameras with flash bulbs, in keeping with the film's Goodwill-store production design and costumes). Co-star Bolo Yeung's fanciest move was getting cast as a good guy (not just here but also in 1993's SHOOTFIGHTER); the muscular Hong Kong star had been stereotyped as a kung-fu villain for years. TC 2000's best visual effect is not its chintzy fireworks at the end but pitting Yeung against a succession of Goliath opponents who actually make him look diminutive.