Cyborg Cop II

This is one of those films that gets better as you drink more beer. Great movie to watch with your pack of snarky friends. The Rifftrax version works too if your snarky friends haven't called in sick to avoid another useless staff meeting and you are home alone. It isn't great cinema but it has high fun potential.

I did not have the pleasure of watching the first Cyborg Cop, so I am confused about what was going on honestly. The main character was not a cyborg or technically a cop and when he saw the cyborgs they baffled him making me wonder what the heck happened in the first film? Was the thing just called Cyborg Cop for no reason or did the main guy here simply forget he fought cyborgs or what? I guess I should not delve too deeply into it, because what can one expect from a film where a cyborg gets hit point blank with a shotgun and barely moves a muscle and then seconds later gets lightly kicked by the hero and flies like he got hit by a train?

So, the story starts out blazing! Seriously, the first portion of this film was rather rocking, there were no cyborgs and no cops just a strange bevy of dudes with guns on a truck shooting other guys while topless women and men worked on drugs. I've seen this before in films, they have to be topless to ensure quality or some crap, but you know this is a Hollywood invention to add some boobs to the film as if the drugs were that delicate the women would be wearing hairnets and there would be no pants either. The hero from the first film enters the scene and my first thought, "Why is he wearing a fanny pack?" It's a big one too! A guy gets killed, the main killer apprehended and the guy who was kill has a wife also sporting a big ass fanny pack. With a film like this, the next natural order of things is for the villain to be turned into a cyborg because that always works out and soon the cyborg and his buddies start terrorizing the countryside. I mean that literally, they like run amok at a gas station in the country.

The film had something going during the first portion, but just lost it. The hero guy just does not look heroic to me. Not only does he have a fanny pack he looks like Robert Hays dressed as Eric Bishoff circa 1996. The bad guy as a cyborg talks incoherently then when his old nemesis is seen he talks the same as he used to. For some reason the hero and the woman who has these super weapons that blow the cyborgs up easily plant bombs at a nuclear power plant, why? I mean, one shot from the weapons they were using and the cyborgs were dust, but hey lets save them for later!

So it started off good enough, good enough for a cheesy B movie, but then it just lost it. It does make me wonder what the first film was about and see if it had a cyborg cop or if it didn't. It is obvious the main guy is not a cyborg, so was he just fighting another cyborg that was bad and so never really was a cop or what. The villain here was a much better villain when he was not a cyborg, I mean, the hero pummeled the crap out of the guy and he still kept going, he lost his spark after being turned into a cyborg though he still had his dreams. He literally said first he was going to take control of a city then he would start taking over countries. Dare to dream I say!

David Bradley has his second go around as Jack Ryan, an FBI agent or something who takes on a cybernetic terrorist, who is turned made into a robot for some reason. Cyborg Soldier is one of those movies that sort of just happens as you watch it. I didn't hate it, because to hate it would indicate that I had an opinion of it. Basically, it's Robocop, Terminator, Universal Soldier and Nemesis rolled into one. I loved the first two movies I mentioned, I liked the third and found some merit in the last, so you would think a movie that could mix and match elements from each would be a winner. It's not. David Bradley is blah in the lead role although the best thing about the movie, he's not nearly as terrible of a presence of say Lorenzo Lamas or Don "The Dragon" Wilson, but he definitely has less charisma than your Van Dammes, Seagals,Lundgrens and Dudikoffs. The main problem though is that it's really flatly directed. None of the action crackles, it should as the choreography is pretty good, there looks to be somewhat of a budget given the numerous explosions and yet nothing rises above the uninspired. Cyborg Cop wasn't very good either, but that one had a sort of distinctive B.movie charm, this sequel lacks even that and the film is dreary and unexciting. Die hard fans of 90s B.movies may find something worthwhile here, but for me, I found it dreary and unexciting. A mindless thing to watch on TV when you can't fall asleep, I still recommend sleeping pills.

*1/2 Out of 4 -(Poor)

If there's a way to enjoy this film it would have to be in a so bad it's good way. Early on there is a line from Morgan Hunter, who plays the lead villain in which he calls an average sized guy a fatty. Clearly the script called for someone fat but at some point the role was recast but the line was unchanged, just one example of many of what this film has to offer. The main drawback of enjoying the film in an ironic way is the best performance comes for Hunter who hams it up, but much like Ryan Reynolds in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, after his transformation he loses his personality for most of the film except at the very end.

By all rights, CYBORG COP 2 should be a piece of trash and by all rights, it is. A cheap and cheerful rip-off of better sci-fi films (in particular TERMINATOR 2, with which it shares many stylistic similarities), it's made without an ounce of originality and yet plenty of enthusiasm, to the degree that it actually turns out to be entertaining to watch. Yes, it's a piece of trash through and through, but it's entertaining trash – and I'll take entertaining trash over a boring blockbuster any day of the week.

The plot is unconnected to the first film, and one again there are no cybernetic cops, although we do get low-rent action man David Bradley returning as the hero. This time around he's up against a villain clearly influenced by ROBOCOP's Clarence Boddiker, and there's an absolute ton of action thrown in along the way as he battles an army of unstoppable cyborgs. I don't know where Firstenberg got his budget, but the movie is chock full of cheesy fight scenes and endless explosions; barely a minute goes by without extras being gunned down in slow motion by the robotic army.

Some aspects of the production are intensely irritating, like the endless and moronic musical score, played on an organ for the most part, which really saps life from many of the scenes. The editing is pretty dodgy too with a couple of shots transposed and most of the action filmed in a repetitive way. Bradley's acting is terrible as is that of the rest of the cast, although I did gain enjoyment from Morgan Hunter's ultra-hammy bad guy. But this is a movie for trash fans all the way.