Cyborg (1989)

Who payed the critics

Such a frustrating disappointment

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

A martial artist hunts a killer in a plague-infested urban dump of the future. Cyborg is a super cool late 80's action movie starring the great Jean Claude Van Damme but also Vincent Klyn made for a terrific and pretty scary looking villain. The movie is kind of a Mad Max meets Terminator kind of movie but of course it's nowhere near as great as those movies but on it's own terms? Cyborg is a whole lotta fun with terrific action, lot's of martial arts sequences and even Van Damme getting cruficied but also going toe to toe in a rain fight sequence. (10/10)

Van Damme goes the Mad Max route in this unthinking, low budget rip-off of the futuristic film craze of the early '80s. However, the futuristic setting here is merely a backdrop for some ruined buildings for Van Damme to fight the baddies in, and a chance for some really odd costumes and fashions (once again, the MAD MAX films are a definite influence).Unfortunately, this turns out to be one of Van Damme's lesser '80ss films, mainly due to the simple lack of plot, special effects or stylised fight scenes. Indeed, there is still some fun to be had from watching Van Damme take on multiple opponents in a variety of settings (a marsh, a deserted building, a town square flooded with rain), but these fun fight scenes are not quite as inspired as they should be, and not nearly violent enough, bearing in mind this was heavily cut in the UK.I don't think Van Damme had really got the hang of acting this early on in his career, and his accent is very thick, and the poor sound quality merely makes it harder to hear what's going on. Not that it's very memorable. A rather dull and talentless group of performers fill out the cast, with the female lead stripping off and doing little else, the group of bad guys merely grunting and shouting incessantly, and making zero sense (also making the script writer look infantile), and the main bad guy having bright blue eyes but little acting ability.To add insult to injury, the cyborg only appears briefly in the film at the beginning, in a flurry of stop-motion animation which really deserved more screen time but comes across looking rushed and unrealistic. CYBORG is definitely uninspired, but on a plus point it is the only film where you'll see Van Damme get crucified. Oh, and watch for the incredible wounds which heal within minutes. This almost qualifies for so-bad-it's-good entertainment, with 'almost' being the operative word here.

Gibson Rickenbacker (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is a bodyguard who, as part of his duties, protects Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon) from being attacked. Rickenbacker strikes up a conversation with Prophet and discovers that she is a cyborg that has been sent from Atlanta to gather data on a deadly plague. Prophet needs to get the data back to Atlanta and believes that scientists in Atlanta may be able to find a cure for the plague based on the data she has collected. However, when a group of pirates led by the notorious Fender Tremolo (Vincent Klyn) learn of the data that Prophet has gathered they kidnap her with the intention of taking her to Atlanta in order to use the data for their own evil purposes. Rickenbacker now finds himself having to save Prophet and also make sure that she gets back to Atlanta.I'll say something for this film and that is that it does, at least on the surface, have more intelligence than your average JCVD film. The idea of a deadly plague wiping out civilisation with one person potentially finding a cure is certainly something that should work on paper. Sadly though Cyborg just doesn't have enough flesh on its narrative bones....It's all well and good coming up with an interesting concept but to then expand upon this concept to create an engrossing and rewarding cinematic experience is something else entirely and this really is where Cyborg fails....Yes we're told that there is a deadly plague but the details of the plague are pretty much kept a secret. Why we're not privy to more information about the plague is something that only the filmmakers can answer? The fact that we're given so little information about the plague means that it does become a hard film to care about. This in turn has a knock on effect with other aspects of the story such as Rickenbacker's flashbacks. Whilst these flashbacks presumably exist to give a bit of depth to his character they seemed to be clumsily thrown in and seem almost at odds with the rest of the film. We're given a lot of development to one character, but no real development to the story??? Hmmm... just seemed a bit strange to me. The flashbacks are good at first, but become tiresome when you realise what little purpose they are actually serving....We all know that JCVD films suffer somewhat in the acting department, but the performances in this film are just beyond the pale. Klyn is a good physical presence but he's so cartoonish here that it just becomes impossible to take him seriously. Was that his actual voice or was it dubbed?? Either way it sounded awful and I found myself laughing whenever he was on screen. The rest of the cast are pretty much the same with either some members trying too hard or not trying at all. The ridiculous performances actually clash with the serious story that is attempting to be told and ultimately undermine the whole film.Cyborg is a terrible film and unlike many other JCVD films it isn't even terrible in a way that is entertaining. One or two good fight scenes are not enough to save this film and I personally feel that everyone involved with this mess should be ashamed of themselves.

From the horrible matte painting in the opening shot to the plastic knifes and the plastic chains to the ridiculous customes and the horrible lines and the so called acting, this has got to be one of the worst movies ever made.This is so amateurishly badly made that me and my friends could have made a more convincing movie with a video camera and no budget at all.How a movie like this could ever get a green-light and even be allowed to get a theatrical release is beyond me.My friend and I could'nt stop laughing at how bad this was.I recommend this to no one.