Cyber Wars

OK first off, its not a great movie, the acting is pretty awful. But I give a huge amount of credit for the people behind Cyber Wars taking on the rare challenge of recreating a William Gibson post modern cyberpunk genre film. Its rare that we see these ideas put on display and although this movie is very low budget, what they do with the budget is very detailed and imaginative in recreating a Gibson future. Similar in ways to Johnny Mneumonic, it goes deeper really by far into Cyberpunk reality. Its not near as well made a movie, but its a lot deeper and more interesting than Johnny was. Fans of the Cyberpunk genre owe it to themselves to check this one out.

Also under movie references, This movie takes a lot more from Neuromancer and other Gibson novels by far than The Matrix. But that movie took a lot from Gibson too. Like the term "Jacked In" and many many more terms that Gibson coined and people take for granted today like Cyberspace, Virtual Reality, Neural Interfacing, etc.

Even if its not what we would hope to see in every way, it will awaken so many of your greatest memories from first reading Neuromancer. This is a genre we very rarely see and even more rarely, see done covering so many of the cyberpunk monikers as this film covers quite well. Its actually very ambitious of a movie, and you can see it was made by true fans of the genre who really did their best to capture the post modern ambiance, and they mostly succeed! With better actors and better dialogue in parts this would have been really great! But its not awful by any means. Its not like pure junk you find on the Sci-Fi channel usually, or a dumbed down Gibson ripoff, which often leaves people to interpret this film as being pretensious or goofy in ways, but I guess a lot of people still find this genre a little too far fetched even though Gibson has proved himself to be the Prophet of the 20th century by having predicted and even heavily influenced so much of the technology we have now and where we're headed. Its too bad that more people still cant embrace the scope of the ideas of Gibson even today even within their fantasy's.

Perhaps we'd see a lot more films from this arena, So far The Matrix reigns the Champion, and even it was hard for many people to cope with. And the Wachowskis had a hell of a time convincing Hollywood to producers to go with it. Good for them for pushing it on through!

Until we can widen our minds to accept more range in our imaginations, then we will continue to see an over abundance of Hollywood remakes that stick to their recipes and safe margins for getting easy profits off the consumers dolling out easily recognizable franchises taken from Comic Books, Video Games, and occasionally good books that don't push the feeble minds of our world too far to think.

This film was based on William Gibson's SF writing, but he isn't mentioned anywhere in the credits. A challenge to watch, because the dialogue is often muted. If the audio track had been recorded better it would be a better film. The story is not bad, and the ideas are intriguing, but alas, they came from somewhere else...sort of a youth oriented film for younger fans of SF. Maybe a film that would have been better done by a big studio. Better than most trashy Cyber-Punk movies set in the proverbial post apocalyptic garbage can, this future is clean and orderly. The female lead is not that bad, but the film resounds with so many ideas that came from William Gibson it is like watching a mini cornucopia of the SF writers work all rolled into one film, that is written by someone else.

There are basically 2 main problems in this film: the main character and the plot. That said, the visuals are pretty decent, giving a good atmosphere and credibility.

Now, the main character. Letting aside the fact that this "head-hunter" fits perfectly the archetypal mysterious lonesome harsh persona (Rick Deckard anyone?), the actress doesn't do such a decent job, lacking charisma. That, summed to her amateurish movements in action scenes and her toy-looking gun, makes the experience less enjoyable. Perhaps she was just cheap and didn't mind to show a bit of breast and legs.

For the plot, well, what can I say. Expect your typical cyberpunk stuff here, no surprises. That doesn't have to be a bad thing necessarily, although a bit of thinking wouldn't have hurt anybody.

The bottom line: you may like it enough if you are into Cyberpunk, since the FX's are quite OK. For the rest, this could easily be a long episode of a futuristic TV series.

In the early 21st Century, society is connected through the Cyberlink. All communication and monetary transactions occur within its sphere. The Cyberlink records the identities of all legalized citizens. Simplants provide criminal with alternative identities. Ident police and private headhunters track them down.

In Entropolis, the efficient bounty hunter Dash MacKenzie (Genevieve O'Reilly) is hired by the big corporation boss Joseph Lau (David Warner) and his henchman Davinder Sandhu (Michael De Mesa) to hunt down his former employee Edward Chan (Gerald Chew). Edward has vanished after submitting to the state-of-art procedure neuromorphing. While seeking Edward out, Dash stumbles with Ident Detective Victor Huang (Luoyong Wang) and he warns her that someone might want to kill Edward, but she does not pay attention to him. Dash finds Edward but he is assassinated before telling her why he is hunted down. However his mistress Sylvia escapes from the killer. Soon Dash finds a clip and her biotech guru Julius Kui (Kay Siu Lim) stumbles with the truth and finds why Edward was murdered. Dash brings Victor to meet Julius and he shows Megacorp transactions in Sintawan to them. He explains that these five companies make up the total infrastructure and have total control over Cyberlink. They form a powerful consortium and play a game based on the ancient Chinese game Wei Chi. Sintawan is the playing field where they wage corporate war in accordance with the strategies of the five companies, manipulating the course of the society and everyone living here. Therefore the place is an illusion and nothing is what it seems and there is no distinction between the game and reality. Then Dash finds that they are all avatars. What will they do?

"Cyber Wars" is an interesting film with a complex story. The plot has flaws and gives too much new information to the viewer; therefore the best to do is to watch the film again on the next day to understand better the details. Dash is an unpleasant character and Genevieve O'Reilly and Luoyong Wang are histrionic in certain moments and do not show any chemistry, but this combination of Matrix and Blade Runner entertains. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): Not available on Blu-Ray or DVD.

A decent movie with a good cyberpunk theme. A very Gibsonesque world complete with wetwiring, neural links, the matrix and even a holo-dolphin being used as an semi-sentient afterlife avatar. The main character is a tough independent women caught up in a world of technocratic intrigue playing a short hand against tough odds. So the scenery is familiar to fans of cyberpunk and anybody who has read mid 80's Gibson.

Of course the world has moved on and in 2010 the film seems oddly dated. For a more current take on cyberpunk look to Vexille or Paranoia 1.0. This aside I give it kudos for portraying a more honest 80's idea of a virtual world than maybe something like virtuosity. The themes are solid, if a little cartoonish and flat.

Main gripe would probably be the lead role. She just did not seem to engage with the role. The material may not have been there but I have seen good actors giving a lot more with a lot less. She never seemed hurried or overly perturbed even with the bullets flying and people dieing in front of her. A gunshot wound was just another cheap squib and her acting was not up to the task of making you believe it was anything other. The threatening claustrophobia you would expect from a good techno or cyber thriller was absent.

Supports were better and gave a solid B grade performance.

One of the other problems was a noticeable inconsistency in the sound. Some parts were noticeably poorly miked and there were differences in tone and sound continuity. A distraction but not so bad. The music was good and had the right feel.

Also the lighting never seemed right. The whole film was too bright. Cyberpunk is film noir at heart and there should have been more play with shadows and colours. There was plenty of scope for light play. Scenes where subways lights go out could have been played for darkness but they were not.

That being said I still enjoyed it. There are not too many movies of it's kind. A Gibonesque story can be hard to pull off even with the best actors, production crews and serious money to throw around (Johnny Mnemonic). The Matrix as envisaged by Gibson always looks a bit cheesy (think lawnmower man) and as I said in 2010 there are real threats from networks that make the 80's cyberpunk themes seem pale (drone war planes, hikikomori, identity theft, net surveillance, rfids and GPS positioning).

Think of this film as picture postcard from a day at a Gibson beach. Your not really there but it looks nice enough.