When
I first saw this film’s poster I thought to myself “I needed to watch
this movie like yesterday.” It took me more time to get around to it,
and by that time I had seen the trailer and became aware that it was
directed by that B-movie genre maestro Albert Pyun. I confess that I
have only seen Pyun’s “Captain America” when I was so much younger than
today, but I had read enough about his reputatio:
directing an unholy amount of films per year, a lot of story and
technical ambition and a sensibility that skews towards cyborgs and
sword and sorcery. So, my kind of guy. Reading bits and pieces about
“Nemesis” (released in Japan in 92 and in the rest of the world in 93) I
discovered that the film’s visual effects supervisor was Gene Warren
Jr., who was also the visual effects for “Terminator 2”, a heavy
influence on this movie. These reviewers said that the effects felt
really short compared to T2, but I don’t see them as detrimental to the
film as they do (I’ll get back to that in the end of this review).
However, the convoluted storyline and confusing character motivations do
a bit of damage, overpowering what I felt was a cracking shoot-em-up
with some awesome stylish elements.
The film is set in Los Angeles, 2027. It is a cyberpunk hellscape, with enhanced humans, people who use their bodies to smuggle data and very human looking and behaving androids. Cyborgs also exist, including our film’s morally ambiguous protagonist, Alex Raine (Olivier Gruner) an LAPD agent/assassin who is really good at his job. He is introduced in the middle of a violent standoff with members of a terrorist group called The Red Army Hammerheads. He is more machine than man now, as pointed out by the leader of the cell of Hammerheads he mostly succeeds in killing, before she shoots him down. Repaired and reconstructed, Raine later leaves the service and tries his hand in the black market in Brazil, only to be captured and compelled into service for the LAPD (which has way too much power and jurisdiction here) once more by his old superior, commissioner Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson) who plants a time bomb in Raine’s heart to convince him. Raine has to track down the leadership of the Hammerheads and his former superior/lover, Jared, an android, who has smuggled some data about the security of a meeting between the United States and Japan, who are planning on merging into a single country. But once Alex is in Java, he uncovers more twists and turns.
The plot, like I said, is ridiculously complicated and the film shifts character motivations at the drop of a hat. What’s worse, named characters are introduced and killed or dropped in a flash (including the hero’s dog, which seemed to be more important at first). There are also some really odd choices, like having a white female character speak in pidgin Japanese with no discernible reason or textual justification. The script definitely needed some paring down, because following these people around is a bit frustrating. It is obvious that the film is bursting with some great ideas such as the nature of humanity, the effects and possibilities of trans-humanism, duty, etc. On the flip side, I greatly enjoyed the atmospheric, golden-hour look of the film and the image of badasses in suits and ties (and even a mini-dress!) and hi-tech sunglasses firing Desert Eagle pistols (and similar heavy and futuristic variants), shotguns, machine guns, rocket launchers and so forth. This is a futuristic Heroic Bloodshed film and the choreography is great and it has some delightful over-the-top moments: two bad guys shoot through a wall by drawing silhouettes with their machine guns, something I’ve only seen in cartoons; Alex does the “shoot the floor” trick to get away from some baddies a whopping five or six times in a row (we watch him go down while he keeps firing through every floor). The bullets never run out. There’s every combination of weaponry, martial arts and kickassery imaginable. And the women are all jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The actresses include Marjorie Monaghan, Deborah Shelton, Jennifer Gatti, Merle Kennedy and Blair Valk, most of them regulars of 90’s Star Trek TV Shows. The supporting cast includes Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Brion James (doing a bonkers German accent), Yuji Okumoto and brief appearances from Sven Ole-Thorsen, Thomas Jane and Jackie Earle Haley.
The visual effects are pretty good for a film of a lower budget than Hollywood (it was produced by Imperial Entertainment, but it had been on Pyun’s head since working for Cannon in the mid-80’s, although in different versions than this one) and the final confrontation with an exoskeleton is pretty well done. Actually, I find it even more commendable, considering the budget. There are a lot of splendid set pieces that involve an insane amount of explosions (everything explodes when fired at in this movie, kind of like in 90s videogames) and even an industrial chimney falls down and almost crushes our heroes. Pyun is also good at staging conversation scenes in a manner that you don’t even see nowadays, with some really nice tracking shots throughout. There’s also body horror galore (cybernetic eyes and pulled out to be inspected) and lots of gore: cyborgs and androids, when they get shot, turn into awful messes, and we see disembodied torsos and faces torn apart, half muscle, half metal, and really bloody. The film takes a lot of elements from a wide variety of movies like “Robocop”, T2, “Blade Runner” and “Escape From New York”, and it mostly works, although I think Pyun got confused because the terms cyborgs and androids are used interchangeably (that is to say, androids, which are robots with human skin and blood, are called cyborgs, which gets confusing, especially because they are also capable of sexual activity). Another fascinating aspect of the film: male characters have traditionally female names (Michelle, Angie, Marion) and female characters have traditional male names (Jared, Max, Julian).
All and all, a film that, despite some frustrating aspects, is a lot of fun to watch, and at its thrilling speed you don’t even feel the time go by. For fans of cyberpunk, heroic bloodshed, corporate/political warfare, retro-futuristic fashion and the human form. Recently released on Blu-Ray by MVD Visual, which includes 3 different cuts. Also, the poster really is a gorgeous piece of work that I want on my wall.
The film is set in Los Angeles, 2027. It is a cyberpunk hellscape, with enhanced humans, people who use their bodies to smuggle data and very human looking and behaving androids. Cyborgs also exist, including our film’s morally ambiguous protagonist, Alex Raine (Olivier Gruner) an LAPD agent/assassin who is really good at his job. He is introduced in the middle of a violent standoff with members of a terrorist group called The Red Army Hammerheads. He is more machine than man now, as pointed out by the leader of the cell of Hammerheads he mostly succeeds in killing, before she shoots him down. Repaired and reconstructed, Raine later leaves the service and tries his hand in the black market in Brazil, only to be captured and compelled into service for the LAPD (which has way too much power and jurisdiction here) once more by his old superior, commissioner Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson) who plants a time bomb in Raine’s heart to convince him. Raine has to track down the leadership of the Hammerheads and his former superior/lover, Jared, an android, who has smuggled some data about the security of a meeting between the United States and Japan, who are planning on merging into a single country. But once Alex is in Java, he uncovers more twists and turns.
The plot, like I said, is ridiculously complicated and the film shifts character motivations at the drop of a hat. What’s worse, named characters are introduced and killed or dropped in a flash (including the hero’s dog, which seemed to be more important at first). There are also some really odd choices, like having a white female character speak in pidgin Japanese with no discernible reason or textual justification. The script definitely needed some paring down, because following these people around is a bit frustrating. It is obvious that the film is bursting with some great ideas such as the nature of humanity, the effects and possibilities of trans-humanism, duty, etc. On the flip side, I greatly enjoyed the atmospheric, golden-hour look of the film and the image of badasses in suits and ties (and even a mini-dress!) and hi-tech sunglasses firing Desert Eagle pistols (and similar heavy and futuristic variants), shotguns, machine guns, rocket launchers and so forth. This is a futuristic Heroic Bloodshed film and the choreography is great and it has some delightful over-the-top moments: two bad guys shoot through a wall by drawing silhouettes with their machine guns, something I’ve only seen in cartoons; Alex does the “shoot the floor” trick to get away from some baddies a whopping five or six times in a row (we watch him go down while he keeps firing through every floor). The bullets never run out. There’s every combination of weaponry, martial arts and kickassery imaginable. And the women are all jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The actresses include Marjorie Monaghan, Deborah Shelton, Jennifer Gatti, Merle Kennedy and Blair Valk, most of them regulars of 90’s Star Trek TV Shows. The supporting cast includes Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Brion James (doing a bonkers German accent), Yuji Okumoto and brief appearances from Sven Ole-Thorsen, Thomas Jane and Jackie Earle Haley.
The visual effects are pretty good for a film of a lower budget than Hollywood (it was produced by Imperial Entertainment, but it had been on Pyun’s head since working for Cannon in the mid-80’s, although in different versions than this one) and the final confrontation with an exoskeleton is pretty well done. Actually, I find it even more commendable, considering the budget. There are a lot of splendid set pieces that involve an insane amount of explosions (everything explodes when fired at in this movie, kind of like in 90s videogames) and even an industrial chimney falls down and almost crushes our heroes. Pyun is also good at staging conversation scenes in a manner that you don’t even see nowadays, with some really nice tracking shots throughout. There’s also body horror galore (cybernetic eyes and pulled out to be inspected) and lots of gore: cyborgs and androids, when they get shot, turn into awful messes, and we see disembodied torsos and faces torn apart, half muscle, half metal, and really bloody. The film takes a lot of elements from a wide variety of movies like “Robocop”, T2, “Blade Runner” and “Escape From New York”, and it mostly works, although I think Pyun got confused because the terms cyborgs and androids are used interchangeably (that is to say, androids, which are robots with human skin and blood, are called cyborgs, which gets confusing, especially because they are also capable of sexual activity). Another fascinating aspect of the film: male characters have traditionally female names (Michelle, Angie, Marion) and female characters have traditional male names (Jared, Max, Julian).
All and all, a film that, despite some frustrating aspects, is a lot of fun to watch, and at its thrilling speed you don’t even feel the time go by. For fans of cyberpunk, heroic bloodshed, corporate/political warfare, retro-futuristic fashion and the human form. Recently released on Blu-Ray by MVD Visual, which includes 3 different cuts. Also, the poster really is a gorgeous piece of work that I want on my wall.
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