Customer Reviews

Cyborg Cop [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The eight-year movie career of action star David Bradley hit half-life with this unremarkable low-budget sci-fi outing. If nothing else, "Cyborg Cop" proves that both he and director Sam Firstenberg should've stuck with doing ninja movies, for when their efforts are directed towards anything greater than kicking, punching, and sword-fighting, enjoyable campiness and B-movie charm disintegrates into a sloppy mess of half-realized ideas and technical deficiencies. If there are any fans of Terminator rip-offs out there, pick this one up quick, but everyone else really doesn't need to waste their time.

The story: ex-DEA agent Jack (Bradley, American Samurai) receives an emergency message from his brother/fellow agent (Todd Jensen, Breeders), whose team was ambushed during a mission in the Caribbean islands by the forces of the nefarious drug runner and mad scientist Dr. Kessel (John Rhys-Davis, The Lord of the Rings trilogy). Inexplicably teaming with a feisty reporter (Alonna Shaw, Double Impact) along the way, Jack must not only confront a small army of mercenaries but also a powerful cyborg engineered by Kessel(Rufus Swart, Dust Devil) if he hopes to save his brother.

Isn't that a solid B-movie cast? Even Rhys-Davis, who was always an underrated actor even before he played an axe-wielding dwarf, comes off as a weirdo by flying an exploding model airplane into an agent and exclaiming such gem lines as "Science is cybernetics and I am its prophet!" Nevertheless, he's more entertaining than all the other performers, who come off as completely overblown...in an awkward, not-fun-to-laugh-at kind of way. The worst offender is actually Rufus Swart as the cyborg: despite not having any lines at all, he fails to even supply the presence that a killer robot is supposed to have - simply looking like a crew-cut moron in a stuffed shirt who makes big, awkward motions but whose victims must stand still before he can kill them.

Short of the cyborg slayings, the rest of the action is a bit better. Two large-scale shootouts with plenty of explosions are the action highlights of the movie but fail to live up to the scenes in Rambo they're obviously styled after. Bradley's three short hand-to-hand fights against a handful of minions feature extremely uneven and erratic choreography, making him look more like fellow ninja Michael Dudikoff than the karate champion he is. However, nothing beats the eventual showdown between the cyborg and Jack's brother - (SPOILER) who has also been turned into one by the end of the movie - for sheer awkwardness and lack of pacing. It's as though director Firstenberg fixed their joints with superglue and gave them each a wedgie before sending them in front of the camera to do battle - that's how stiff they look.

The robotic special effects are kind of cool (I especially liked the clawed fingers), but like the production quality as a whole, it's a big step below Schwarzenegger fare: the movie was filmed in the cheaper regions of South Africa and looks like it, not to mention sounding like it as well when shots from handguns are synched with cannonfire. You get your basic B-movie cliché package that includes a rushed and completely unfounded romance between Bradley and Alonna, whose only reason for being in the film was to supply boobage and get captured near the end. While she had limited purpose, action fans the world over will have even less reason to watch this film when there's much better David Bradley flicks out there. It's kind of hard to rent these days, so try to borrow it from someone before considering a purchase.

There's a few rules of thumb when searching for a good action B that must be followed. First off you have to wait til sometime around or after midnight to really start searching. Second you have to try a find something typically in the late 80's or early 90's that was a straight to video release, or just did piss poor in the box office. Lastly it has to have a catchy title like "Cyborg Cop" ensuring you that their is absolutely no way it can be enjoyed other then for a great laugh. Once you've followed these steps you can know confidently move forward with the next hour and a half of your life knowing it will have been wasted for a great purpose. Honestly when it comes to 90's action movies everyone one was trying their hardest to compete with the spellbinding Death Ring, which is why most of them are so good. Sure they pale in comparison to the ultimate action masterpiece but certainly earn themselves a Sid watch for attempting to be just as great.

Cyborg Cop starts agent Phillip who is going out on one last mission to the Caribbean to try and shut down a drug ring to be captured and turned into a cyborg. Yeah it's a really strange twist but stick with us here. Now that Phillip has been missing for a couple weeks his brother Jack must go to the island of St. Kieth to try and find out what happened. Upon his arrival he strategically plans how to save his brother to find out he's now a robot. Yeah a robot, awesome. Beyond that there really isn't much else but hilarious action, crazy gun fights with explosions, and uncomfortable romance situations between Jack and some reporter lady he befriends after they first hate each other. It is the stereotypical 90's action movie that seem to have all used the same plot with just a few twists, like killer cyborgs.

Within the first 5 minutes of this one you will be blown away by the amount of explosions once Phillip reaches the drug lords base. The fighting action is something that makes you want to pound your head through the wall. There as so many WTF moments it will leave you in pure shock. Not to mention a huge amount of unnecessary shoulder roles and springboard leaps with plenty of dummy's meant to look like actual people. It supposed to be set in the islands but clearly is nowhere close. The only way they try to portray this is by having some poorly acted rasta-men prancing around on an island plagued with Cyborgs. For the icing on the cake, as if there wasn't enough already, the main character Jack was played by David Bradley who was in the fantastic American Ninja 4. This movie has so much going for it you simply must rent it. We don't feel the need to warn you of that fact it's not a legit movie though. If you couldn't gather that from the title then you need a physiological examination.

I remember seeing this movie on the shelves of my local video rental store when I was a kid. At the time, the cover made it look intriguing and the plot summary on the case was even more inviting. I stumbled across this movie recently, now as an adult, and oh boy. This movie resembles every movie a high school student has ever made, with the exception of having a budget.

This movie is rife with cliches from the very beginning, and they continue all the way through the movie. Think of every cheesy plot device used in the last 50 years; if you can think of it, it's probably in this movie. In many cases, you can spot them coming seconds before they even happen: in one scene, after a police car crashes into a river, the driver gets out and angrily throws his hat into the water. Our hero meets a woman and bickers incessantly with her; by the end of the movie, they're in love.

Even better than the hundreds of B-movie cliches are the extremely hokey special effects. Every hand grenade detonates in a massive 15-foot fireball and throws people through the air like they were made of paper. In one scene, a "bad guy" is set on fire by one such grenade, and we're treated to a particularly delightful scene of someone thrashing around while on fire - and we don't even need to TRY to see the flame suit he's wearing, it's so obvious. In true B-movie fashion, vehicles explode violently from gunshots and collisions. Perhaps best of all, the film uses only three or four different sound effects for gunshots, which are recycled ad-nauseum throughout the lengthy fight scenes. In an attempt to break the monotony, the sound mixers randomized which sound would play, which means a handgun making a light "pop" one moment might make a deep, shotgunny "boom" less than a second later.

As the title clearly implies, this movie is about cyborgs, though it has very little to do with cops. True, the main character is an ex-cop, and his brother (also a cop) was turned into a cyborg, but this has very little to do with the plot of the movie, as it takes place almost entirely in the country of Not America, which we assume to be Jamaica based on the three Rastafarians we see through the film's plot. Jamaica is apparently the best place for a vaguely-scottish wealthy man to set up his base of operations, in which vaguely-German doctors install "program CPUs" and "motronic drivers" into the bodies of men in order to turn them into cyborgs. If this seems murky and difficult to follow, you already have an idea of what it's like to watch this movie.

The movie has a few scenes which are obviously intended to evoke emotion, but due to the complete lack of character development or likability, these scenes come off even cheesier than they should. Scenes which are supposed to be tense are merely boring and lazily drawn-out, and scenes which are supposed to tug at our hearts are laughably executed. Remember how you didn't care that the guys in "Predator" were being slaughtered, because their characters were completely shallow Hollywood cliches? "Cyborg Cop" has it beat. In a few scenes, I found myself wishing that the protagonist would get splatted so we wouldn't have to hear him spit out another overused one-liner.

In the end, "Cyborg Cop" is one part Robocop, one part Predator, and one part The Terminator, and zero parts interesting. It stars nobody and offers nothing, except an hour and forty minute laugh festival because of how poorly executed it is. It suffers from the same problems that every other 80s action movie suffered from. Unfortunately, it was made in 1993, with a budget they tried to stretch way too far, and no acting talent to make up for the film's inherent flaws. If it wasn't for how laughably horrible it is, this movie would rank half a star out of five; however, all of its terrible elements somehow mix into a movie that is enjoyable purely because of how awful it is.

Rent it, don't buy it, and don't watch it alone. It's best to share this experience with friends. I know I did!

This movie is pretty good for a B movie. But I recomend that you rent it not buy it

if your looking for great acting and a very deep plot line dont look here if you want noting but action tehn look here. it really isnt that bad considerring its title name but it ahs some pretty nice action scenes it it that make it a worth while watch.