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Cyborg
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| Year: |
1989
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Director: |
Albert Pyun
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| Stars: |
Jean-Claude Van Damme, Deborah Richter, Vincent Klyn, Alex Daniels, Dayle Haddon, Blaise Loong, Ralph Moeller, Haley Peterson, Terrie Batson, Jackson 'Rock' Pinkney, Janice Graser, Robert Pentz, Sharon K. Tew, Chuck Allen, Stefanos Miltsakakis
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| Genre: |
Action, Science Fiction |
| Rating: |
  3 (from 2 votes) |
| Review: |
It is the future, and civilisation has gone badly wrong thanks to a deadly plague which has wiped out most of the population and left the others to wander the wasteland as scavengers - but not everyone is upset at this turn of events. A woman called Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon) is trying to escape the clutches of a gang who are tracking her and the companion she is with, and when they catch up with them their leader, Fender Tremolo (Vincent Klyn), makes it clear why he is so keen to have Pearl around. She is in fact a cyborg and holds the key to curing the plague...
Aren't we forgetting someone? That's right, Jean-Claude Van Damme, here starring as the hero in a film that holds a small place in history as the final effort to be released to cinemas from that titan of eighties action on a middling budget, Cannon. It was originally supposed to be a sequel to their Masters of the Universe cash-in, but the deal fell through and as there were scenery and costumes all set to go, the studio decided to have a new script written (Kitty Chalmers gets the credit) to essentially create yet another Mad Max rip-off.
The eighties enjoyed an abundance of these things, so that by the end of that decade movies like Cyborg were not exactly looking too fresh, and with the Cold War reaching an end, moviegoers were apocalypsed out to some extent. Still, Van Damme was the fairly big new star on the action movie block and there were then, as there are now, enough people keen to see this to make it a cult production if not a runaway blockbuster. Odd thing, though, that the Belgian muscleman did not play the title character, as seeing him as a Terminator-style hero might have improved its fortunes.
Instead, the robo-person is Pearl, played by softcore erotica star of the seventies Haddon, though here she keeps her clothes on; confusingly, the actress who plays Van Damme's wife in flashbacks looks just like her, which may have you getting mixed up and wondering why she ended up as an android when she was human before. The whole film has a thrown together feel, of which that aspect is only one of many where a little more time spent on this might have paid dividends, but as it is we get plenty of atmospheric shots of the world in ruins and a perfunctory plotline to go with them.
Van Damme plays Gibson Rickenbacker (do you see what they're doing with the character names here? Clever, eh?), a wanderer since his family were attacked by Fender who opts to save Pearl and therefore the world, although you do not get much of a sense of the planet being in jeopardy, just the abandoned buildings that the film was shot in. He has a daughter he thinks might be dead, but she is in fact tagging along with his nemesis for a plotline that doesn't lead anywhere much. This is mainly about the fighting, then, and Jean-Claude goes through the motions with some level of accomplishment, doing his usual highkicking and head-punching. He also gets crucified at one point, for the accustomed spot of sadomasochism that the heroes in this era's action movies had to endure. Cyborg all feels too half-baked, half-finished even, but is undemanding viewing in spite of that. Music by Kevin Bassinson.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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