Cyborg 2
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In Theaters : 1993 |
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Cyborg 2 Customer Reviews
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Widdle Wawa Cwoft
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In 1993 a producer named Sharad Patel brought together the funding for a low-budget straight-to-video flick called *Cyborg II--The Glass Shadow*. If Mr. Patel still gets royalties from it, he must doing pretty good for himself. That's because there's a big reason for people today to purchase the *Cyborg II* DVD--Angelina Jolie. Uh, she's this Oscar-winning actress who in recent times was voted the world's most beautiful and sexy woman? She played her first film role in *Cyborg II*. (Actually, before this she had a brief appearance as a child in *Looking' To Get Out*, released in 1982.)
Apart from Jolie, *Cyborg II* is totally forgettable. It's a sci-fi movie, the motto of which is "Future Beware." Angelina plays Casella (Cash) Reese, a cutting-edge cyborg of the year 2074. Elias Koteas is Colton Ricks, her human martial arts instructor and lover. Billy Drago plays bad guy Master Bench, a professional killer who chases Cash and Ricks around a nightmarish cityscape enshrouded by a dimly-glowing red night of industrial fog.
*Cyborg II* pretends to be inspired by the novels of Philip K. Dick and William Gibson. I'll bet, though, that Mr. Patel and director Michael Schroeder never heard of Dick or Gibson. Actually *Cyborg II* is really only an imitiation of other movies that were inspired by those novelists. Think *Blade Runner* and *Johnny Memnonic*. But hey, those movies cost something to make. Mr. Patel probably catered samosas to a dozen desi weddings to get the few thousand he needed to pay for this knock-off. Naah, I'm just joking. One has to look for them, but there are scenes that suggest some decent production values were in play. I just can't remember any right now.
*Cyborg II* pretends a logical connection to the original *Cyborg* starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. I wouldn't have noticed that connection if it weren't for a few seconds of Van Damme flashbacks. These flashbacks are downloaded into Cash's artificial brain in an attempt to give her and the viewer a clue to what's going on. The attempt fails, at least as far as this viewer is concerned. But the good news is that Cash has a cyborg's version of a wet dream over the flashbacks. (Did Angie have the hots for Van Damme back in '93? Sure seems like it!) Elias Koteas sorta looks French, so I guess casting him as the male lead is another stab at continuity with the first *Cyborg.* However, Koteas as a martial artist can be compared to Billy Bob Thornton as a musician. At best, so-so.
*Cyborg II*'s plot, what there is of one, is something about cut-throat competition in the cyborg sector between Japan and America. Something about the US techno-giant Pinwheel Corp. beating Kobayashi of Japan in the development of cyborgs with true AI. Cash is the first of this new type of cyborg off the Pinwheel assembly line. Pinwheel also makes this powerful liquid explosive called Glass Shadow that blends with a cyborg's internal fluids, turning the man-machine into a walking bomb that cannot be detected. Cash is pumped full of this stuff. There's something about the Pinwheel scientist who invented Cash and Glass Shadow--he's just a total weird beard. A Nerdosaurus Rex. Dude has his own secret plan to destroy both the Japanese and American cyborg manufacturers. And take over the world. I guess.
Cash was programmed by the weird beard to go to Japan. There she's supposed to wipe out the Kobayashi bigwigs by blowing herself up like an Al Quaeda suicide bomber. But Cash's Pinwheel-trademarked brain has a mind of its own. She falls in love with Ricks, who trains cyborgs for Pinwheel. There's something about a ship, see, that can take Cash and Ricks to Mombasa. Mombasa is the only city on earth where they'll be free of Pinwheel and the weird beard. But to board the ship Ricks first has to kill this maniac Master Bench. See, Bench is very mad at Cash and Ricks because his face is rotting off. From time to time this other cyborg chick in a red Japanese dragon lady outfit shows up to fight with Cash, Ricks, and Master Bench together. She's a Kobayashi product but works for the weird beard.
If that's not wacky enough for you, there's this ancient half-robot dude code-named Mercy who looks like Clint Eastwood but is actually Jack Palance. Mercy plans the escape of Ricks and Cash to Mombasa. Why he does this is not clear. Well, OK, something about him being the leader of an underground rebellion. That, plus he gets his jollies by "interfacing" with Cash when she and Rick get down to hot sessions of hunchy-punchy. See, in *Cyborg II* the word "interfacing" means to do totally unexplainable stuff with electronic communications. Like, from time to time Mercy appears as a weird-looking eye or mouth on any TV screen he likes? Even broken or unplugged ones? He spies on people through the TV and, if he feels like it, he talks to them through it. He can even make a broken or unplugged TV set jump around to wherever he wants it to go. Ricks asks him how he does it. "Black magic!"is Mercy's answer. Kewl! Just like the homegirl down the well in *The Ring*--only *Cyborg II* did it first! Yikes. At least Mercy doesn't come crawling herky-jerky out of TVs to give people black magic facelifts.
Angelina Jolie, who was a teen when she made *Cyborg II*, is a sight to see: a lovely liquid-eyed girl-child with ripened plum-red lips. Her tender features are framed by long flying hair parted in the middle. You just want to hug her and whisper warnings in her ear about funky old Billy Bob waiting for her six years in the future. Having written that paean to Angie the Teen Sweetie, I must quickly add that in *Cyborg II* she comes off as the compleat Goth girl. There's one scene in which Cash goes into a seizure triggered by a signal from the Pinwheel Corp. Angie's face is cast in a strange mixture of light: her skin looks pale blue, accented by orange flickers from a nearby fire. As the seizure takes hold horror fills her eyes. They grow huge and staring. Her mouth drops open. Her body quivers uncontrollably. Like a vampire princess, Angie looks gorgeous and ghoulish at the same time.
She's in a lot of martial arts combat scenes. But she strikes me like some cute kid who saw Tomb Raider and who's now trying to be a widdle Wawa Cwoft. Just. Totally. Adorable. In one love scene with Koteas, Teen Angie gets a little nekkid. But hey, Koteas as Ricks is not molesting a child, he's just having sex with a machine, OK?
Oh, another thing that's prophetic in a very Goth way: after a bullet nicks Ricks in the ear, Angie as Cash dabs her finger in his blood, licks it, and comments. "Not bad. Mine's a little too sweet." Yeah, yeah...flash forward a couple years to Angie using her own blood to write her first husband's name on the back of her wedding t-shirt; and flash a few more years ahead to the phial of Hillbilly Bob's blood hung round her neck.
As an actress Angie is no doubt green in *Cyborg II*. But zips and blips of talent do shine through. My personal favorite scene is when the dragon lady cyborg has removed Cash's head and is reading her optical memory. The dragon lady says, "You've been a naughty girl." Cash's head answers, "It's in my program."
I give *Cyborg II* a generous 3 stars simply because it's so much fun watching a teenage Angelina Jolie rehearse for her future kickass roles. She even ends up in Africa, which reminds me of her visits to that country as UNHCR goodwill ambassador. If not for her, *Cyborg II* would deserve 2 stars. It's not a terrible movie...exactly. It's a 99-minute long sci-fi flick that's about to the standard of an *Outer Limits* episode. Not too bad. But not very good either.
Funny thing about the Trimark DVD. There's some trailers on it for other titles. One of them is a 1992 movie called *Leprechaun* that stars a very young-looking Jennifer Aniston.
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