Freejack is a 1992 sci-fi/action film that's based in the future. A future that we've arrived at today. This happens so rarely that we thought it fitting to put a microscope to the predictions that Freejack foresaw for November 23, 2009.

We present for you here, the results, in a pictoral look at Today According to Freejack.

Even with all the technological advances we've achieved, we are far from the accomplishments of Freejack's 2009. The major conquest is of a medical nature. If you have enough money (about $17 million) you can requisition a body for retrieval from the past to replace one ravaged by lack of an ozone layer and the resultant ill effects of carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, mercury, lead, benzene and nuclear waste.

You can snatch a healthy body and transfer your mind, which has been kept in storage within the Spiritual Switchboard (a large computer), into the new host body, thereby granting you a 'ticket to immortality', should you repeat the process infinitum.

The procedure itself is fairly simple, provided you know the exact time and place a death occurred.

All the tools and personnel needed are mounted on or contained within a fleet of tank-like vehicles. They are positioned at the death site, and lasers form a web-like grid.

Now, an image, say, video footage, of a fatal accident is required. This is easier for very public events, such as car races. The car (on film) is targeted.

Then the image is locked on and frozen and converted to a 3D model.

The model is manipulated.

And again.

And a bit more, to where the 3D model driver can be fixed on. Then, just at the precise millisecond prior to impact, the driver is snatched from the car...

And transferred to a waiting medical team in protective tin foil.

The snatched body arrives healthy and unharmed.

The Lobotomizer makes easy work of subduing the new arrival, should the acquiree prove uncooperative. Very handy.

Another medical advance worthy of mention is one where images can be snapped as people pass a checkpoint, simultaneously scanning them for viruses.

Assisted suicide is a well advertised business.

Also remarkable, a single palm press onto a glass plate can reveal whether or not a person is telling the truth.

It's surprising, then, in light of these achievements, that more work hasn't been done in the way of scar treatment, as poor Ripper (Esai Morales) spends the length of the film in a pretty messed up state.

Moving on to transport, the 2009 of Freejack has police and citizens getting about on a sort of scooter-car hybrid that looks a lot like a Dyson vac on training wheels.

Other vehicle designs include the bubble car.

Bubble cars have TARDIS-like qualities, appearing very spacious on the inside, despite their exterior dimensions.

That brings us to another curious change, which we're puzzled by. Apparently, in the Freejack universe it's unacceptable for any man to be seen with a woman taller than himself. This is, evidentally, permissable from a distance.

But it absolutely is not tolerated up-close and some auto-correction is made by means unknown to us. Special manipulatory reflective air molecules surrounding the offensive couple, perhaps? Or maybe they emit some hallucinogenic pheromones as they get closer to observers?

Whatever's being used, its clear that height, in general, has become a taboo measurement by 2009. So much so that height records have been completely obliterated from citizens' vital statistics.

Other things are less restricted - and less impressive. This establishment makes much of the fact its nudes are 3D. Maybe we're missing something here, but our non-Freejack world has been making that claim since time - and nudes - began.

Another revealing image shows us the location where the escaped freejack must meet a friend from the past. According to Freejack, 2009 is not the Age of Subtlety.

Yes, for all its advances, we're not sure the leaps ahead are worth the downsides. There's gun-toting nuns for one thing.

And something on the menu of the local diner called 'Doe Toe'. Maybe that's a name like 'hot dog' and doesn't really represent the recipe, but we suspect it's most likely deer feet.

Further evidence that this amazing present-future is not all it's cracked up to be lies with the fact the mega-corporation that runs and owns the city, the McCandless Corp., fashions both its 199th floor penthouse and the very mechanism that makes mind transfer possible, on a children's game all but abandoned since the 60s. Jacks.

That may be a kinda-clever play on the film title, but hardly instills confidence.

Perhaps the most depressing thing about the 2009 of the Freejack universe is that the new agers were right. What powers the incredible transfer of stored minds into plucked doomed humans from the past? A frakkin big magic crystal.

But, no, wait. We can top that. Because, most contrary to all the scientific, medical and technological achievements, another look at the neon date sign shows what our 2009ers surely didn't fail to notice: that no one from the production team bothered to look up what day November 23rd 2009 actually falls on.

You'd think calendars and math were nonexistent in our Nineties.

Freejack is a decent enough film, with a few good ideas, but we'll go on record that we prefer our own version of November 23rd, even if it is a bloody Monday.

• The History of The Near Future