Eve of Destruction (1991)

Load of rubbish!!

Boring

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Eve (Renée Soutendijk) is a military robot made to look exactly like her creator (also Soutendijk). When she is damaged during a bank robbery, the robot begins to use more of the memories she has been programmed with by her creator, the dark, angry ones.Vincent Canby called the film "an undistinguished, barely functional action-melodrama." While a bit harsh, I would say he is hardly wrong. For what could be a fun film -- the military and police are tracking down a killer robot -- it is largely rather pointless and the plot turns do not always make sense to the viewer.Apparently in the Netherlands, Soutendijk is a sex symbol. And you can see they tried to work with that here, as guys are compelled to come on to her. I hate to be critical of someone's appearance, but if you are supposed to have a "sexy" robot, you might want someone who looks at least average...

So let's see if Gregory Hines can tap dance his way out of this one! Eve 8 is a human cyborg created secretly by the military, and she's armed and dangerous. She doesn't seem to have any problem getting hold of any weapon, and don't even think of trying to tackle her down with hand to hand combat. She's mean, ruthless, and she's on the loose. The cyborg is being tested, so its not yet programmed with any military commands. The experiment goes awry during a bank robbery, when she is shot, which screwed up her internal workings. Now she's on the lose, to the public, and nobody is safe from her unpredictable shenanigans. The only two people who stand a good shot at taking her down is Jim McQuade ( Hines), who is a colonel given special orders to move onto a special assignment. He won't be too happy about this, and his mood doesn't look like it will improve much through the film, as this is taking time away from his training camp. His special assignment: Take down Eve VIII by any means of force necessary. He won't be able to do this by himself, however, as he finds himself teamed up with Dr. Eve Simmons. Dr. Simmons will prove herself a vital tool in McQuades quest in the not-so-easy task of taking this military robot down and out of harms way. Eve 8 is almost a duplicate of Dr. Simmons, since she was taken from her image, although Simmons will argue that they are not entirely the same. ( Of course, Dr. Simmons isn't going around shooting anybody!) Another advantage that Simmons has on helping to end the cyborgs insane rampage, is that the robot seems to have inherited her...ready for this?...memories and secret fantasies. These memories somehow got programmed into the robot, and none of them seem to be good memories, as we see in the flashbacks. These memories are played randomly through the cyborgs mind, who appears human, but is almost entirely machine. The memories mainly deal with a little girl watching her daddy abusing mommy, which upsets her quite dramatically. If you value your life, you will NOT call her the name that rhymes with "witch"...this is a very BAD trigger in her that causes her to become quite violent. Looks like your mouth just wrote a check your butt couldn't cash, boys! Life goes on, luckily, without you, since her main target kills seem to be knocking off insensitive men. My kind of woman! If she knew how to cook, I'd say "I do" to something like that! Life seems to get more complicated, however, for our hero McQuade, when he learns that a certain event has triggered Eve 8 into 'battle field mode'. Battle field mode means she's put herself on a 24 hour clock. She's literally giving you one day to pack your stuff, and go find a corner to tuck your head into, and pray you survive the explosion. She could take out several, SEVERAL blocks of innocent lives. It's a rat race against time to put an end to Eve 8 once and for all! Although the script suffers a bit, mainly due to the over abundant lack of answers to the questions that may be posed to the viewer, Eve Of Destruction isn't a complete bust. It's overall a great violent action thriller with some pretty good scenes, including a car chase, a mishap in the motel room ( God, I love you! ), and the climatic ending. I must warn, for Gregory Hines fans, this film would be 'for fans only', as it's a far cry from Running Scared. In fact, after this movie is over, he may not be the only one running scared.

Eve is a military robot made to look exactly like her creator.When she is damaged during a bank robbery, the robot begins to use more of the memories she has been programmed with by her creator, the dark, angry ones.She becomes a killing machine if anyone tries to stop her.A tap dancer is assigned to stop the robot and with the scientist who programmed her tries to think what she will do next....This was the original Terminatrix, back in 1991 there were only two cyborgs, Arnie and Eve. Guess who is the least remembered? What I didn't get was just how serious the tone of the film was. Imean the film is basically about a nuclear bomb that gets frustrated when its called a certain word that is derogatory toward women, this should have been hilarious.When Hines shows up, I thought, this could get the ribs tickled now this guy is in it, but he looks really angry through the film, and ruins the camp feel it should have.Rene however you pronounce her surname, is really grim in this, at times I couldn't tell who was the cyborg and who was the Doctor, she was that wooden, and it's surprising considering shes so good in Spetters.But, it's a cyborg movie, a nuclear bomb cyborg movie, and it deliver that typical cheesy nineties action you expect.Yuppies get owned, hillbillies lose parts of them, and eyes get shot out by Hines, so all is not lost.Early nineties video stores were rife with his type of film early in the nineties, this one wasn't that bad.

Eve of Destruction is infamous in The Netherlands because it meant the failure of Renée Soutendijk's career in the States, the film being a flop. When I was watching this movie however, I didn't expect such a B-movie. Surely the story was not original, but the special effects were really pathetic and everything looked just plain and ugly. What bothered me most was the unfitting, melodramatic music score which sounded like it was made for an eighties soap-opera (!). I think a low budget is not really an excuse here because the superior Terminator (1984! 7 years older) was also made with a low budget. But that one had genius James Cameron directing and Arnie on the rise of stardom, besides good performances by the other actors. Expect none of that here. The casting, the soundtrack, the dialogue, the action and the effects: they all disappoint. One of those movies that you really regret wasting your precious time on. Not 1/10 though because there are even worse Terminator clones.I give it 2/10.