Virtual Combat (also known as Grid Runners in the United Kingdom) is a 1995 action cyberpunk movie.
20 Minutes into the Future, virtual reality is commonplace. A Corrupt Corporate Executive discovers a way to download VR girls into clone bodies to sell them to rich clients. This technology is soon used by a virtual reality villain who finds a way to access reality and sets out to free the rest of his allies.
This film provides examples of:
- Card-Carrying Villain: Dante, with his obviously evil voice, evil laugh, and evil demeanor. Unsurprising, since he is a literal villain developed as the Final Boss for a virtual reality fighting game who found a way to escape into reality.
- Commie Land: The bad guy briefly mentions a foreign state known as the "People's Republic of England".
- Covers Always Lie: The VHS cover depicts the female lead in a white uniform that she doesn't wear at any point in the film.
- Dirty Cop: The hero turns in his badge to track down the people who killed his partner. The *only* person he is shown to keep in touch with is Da Chief, while the bad guys keep finding him wherever he goes. Obviously, it turns out the Chief is actually The Mole, though the hero doesn't figure it out until his boss attacks him with a knife.
- Dominatrix: One of the virtual reality sex programs downloaded into a clone body happens to be a dominatrix.
- Evil Sounds Deep: Dante has a really deep voice. He's actually voiced by Michael Dorn.
- Have You Told Anyone Else?: A variation, where the hero cop keeps in touch with Da Chief about the corporate conspiracy he tracked down to a neighbouring city. The Chief is awfully insistent all of a sudden that the hero talks to nobody in local law enforcement (claiming that they don't know who to trust) and keeps asking him for his location. Any sufficiently savvy viewer would immediately guess that he's The Mole.
- Herr Doktor: A scientist working for a corrupt company who invents a way to download their virtual reality sex programs into artificial bodies is clearly Austrian.
- It's Personal: While fighting Dante is already personal enough for David, given that he's been beaten by Dante in VR many times, things get even more personal after Dante kills his partner.
- Kiss Me, I'm Virtual: The movie takes place in a near future where virtual reality sex programs (and combat games) are commonplace. A Corrupt Corporate Executive starts downloading the girls into artificial bodies for more profit. The hero falls in love with one of the girls, but she later dies. The last scene shows that he keeps visiting her program at a virtual reality arcade.
- Shock Collar: A Corrupt Corporate Executive whose company sells virtual reality sex programs discovers a way to download the virtual girls into artificial clone bodies. He also forces them to wear electric collars to better control them.
