Albert Pyun really likes making movies about cyborgs. His entire career as director owes everything to THE TERMINATOR and ROBOCOP, as he seems obsessed by throwing in as many special effects of half-human half-robot creations as possible into his movies. This post-apocalypse action outing is no different, as it sees Olivier Gruner (the poor man's Van Damme) battling an endless succession of cyborgs who seem to have it in for him. The plot of this film is somewhat ridiculous, and the running time seems to entirely consist of robotic people being shot at or blown up.
Still, something stopped me turning it off, and towards the end I realised something odd: I was actually enjoying this movie. It may be the fast-pacing or the cheesy earnestness of the special effects, but I think this may be Pyun's best movie yet; at least it's one you can sit through without succumbing to boredom. The low rent effects are cheap and dated looking, but I got a real kick out of seeing them and especially the effort (if not originality) having gone into their creation. Take, for instance, the preposterous, ambitious climax, in which our hero battles a robotic skeleton hanging off the back of a plane. It's an obvious attempt to recreate and outdo the climax of The Terminator that fails on every level, but it's still hugely entertaining.
Although Gruner is never more than a solid block of wood as this film's hero, Pyun has assembled quite the supporting cast of B-movie players. There's Tim Thomerson, voraciously chewing the scenery as a corporate bigwig, and an oddly underused Brion James struggling with an appalling German accent. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is there as another sneering example of brutality and even RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD's Thom Mathews makes a brief showing as a robotic assassin. Yes, the film may be trite, ill-conceived, ludicrous and a rip-off, but it actually has style – and I found it more entertaining than Richard Stanley's much-talked-about HARDWARE.
