Cyborg 2: David Shea’s review
Future Beware: The soul is in the software
Rated R for sci-fi style violence, sequences of strong sexuality, and for language.
Starring Elais Koteas, Angelina Jolie, and Jack Palance’s mouth.
Viewed 2005-08-03 by mike, susi, dshea, dane, and dcantrell
The premise of the cyborg series is a thought that occurs to most science-fiction writers who spend more than a few minutes thinking about artificial intelligence: what would society be like if computers were just like humans? I suspect that at least one of the writers involved in the making of this movie had lofty intellectual ideas for this movie. At least I hope that the sex scene in the beginning where the robot woman explodes was meant to be more thinky than titillating.
This movie uses a lot of cliches to avoid having to spend too much time establishing the setting—there are cyborgs that have become ingrained in every facet of society, from soldiers to hookers; there is a gigantic American corporation, Pinwheel, that controls everything and is competing with a corporation in Japan that does the same thing; cyborgs are almost human but still lack a full understanding of the intricacies of human emotion—but then squanders its 99 minutes on disjoint, colorless scenes where nothing is explored besides the thin storyline. This style of this movie reminded me a lot of Universal Soldier: The Return in that each scene had no purpose other than to connect the one before it to the one following. There is never any suspense or any emotion evoked by any of the characters. There’s really nothing at all to hold the viewer’s interest. Will there be an explosion in this scene? Will someone be topless? Is it over yet?
Chief among the details that didn’t make any sense was the presentation of Jack Palance’s character. He always shows up on a television screen, and the characters talk to him through this. Televisions are presumably still one-way devices in the future, but this doesn’t seem to matter very much. Nor does it matter whether the TV is plugged in or in one piece. I guess his character is just supposed to be that badass.
One notable feature of this movie is that, since it was filmed in 1993, 18 years after the birthday in Angelina Jolie’s IMdb bio, this is the first movie where we get to see Ms. Jolie’s boobies. Fortunately, no one exploded during her sex scene. Also, due to the fangs of one of the minor characters towards the end, it could be argued that this film had both a vampire and an explosion. The thing that will most stick in my mind, however, even more than Angelina Jolie’s boobies, is Jack Palance’s battle cry while executing a one-man ambush against hopeless odds: “If you’re going to dine with the devil, make sure you bring a really long spoon!”