Sunday, November 16, 2014

Cyborg (1989)

In a post apocalyptic US, Jean Claude Van Damme is a Gibson Rickenbacker, a man who doesn't care about anything. That's because his family was killed by a gang of muscle bound pirates who dress like something out of The Road Warrior.

A number  of years later, Gibson has gotten rid of his ratty looking wig, and is still walking around the city.  He runs into a Cyborg whose partner was just killed by pirates, and tries to save her.  The Cyborg lady was tasked getting a cure for the plague to Atlanta.  She has the potential cure in her brain circuits.   No one shall ask why the scientists don't have any back up of this cure for humanity, or why they sent her with a single escort instead of a convoy of armed guards.

The pirates like to kill everything that moves. So after believing they've killed Gibson, they grab the Cyborg and head out to Atlanta. It's some sort of power move that is never explained, but I guess they figure it's easier to kill doctors than to kill guys with muscles. Since our Cyborg has the potential cure, they're using her as a bargaining chip for.... something.

Just like Gibson, the pirate leader is named after guitars. Our bad guy answers to the name Fender Tremelo. Oddly enough, even though Fender is very distinctive looking, Gibson doesn't realize this is the same man who killed his family until half way through the film when he's crucified by the gang.

This movie is completely disjointed.  Quite a bit of the film is in flashbacks to show what happened to Gibson and his family.  Also surprisingly, based on the title, the Cyborg has little to do with the movie after the initial set up.  Mostly it's just Gibson fighting the pirates, doing well and later getting the crap beaten out of him. Also Fender seems to have a self replicating team of pirates, since Gibson kills off a ton of his men, yet the size of Fender's gang never decreases.

Due to the apocalypse and the questionable intellect of the characters, get ready to hear little or no dialogue, interspersed with Fender screaming, "Arrrrrrrrrrrr!"  That seems to be his response to almost anything, other than occasionally whipping off his sunglasses and making a lame threat. It becomes extremely annoying near the end of the film when every second of the film seems to be filled up with his annoying bellowing.

This is a Canon / Golan-Globus film, which will either make you say yay or uh oh, depending on your preference. I'm always up for watching their films from the 80s since they tend to be ridiculous or fun. Notice that I didn't say good, but usually they're entertaining.

Watch for the scene where a character is kicked onto a hook in the wall. He stumbles back into it, but in the next scene he's hanging on the hook at least a foot off the floor. Hilarious.
Nice wig.


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