O Exterminador de Cyborgs

CYBER TRACKER 2 is not a great sci-fi film, but it is notably better than its underwhelming precursor. The rating I give it is somewhat generous, but for both action fans and Don Wilson devotees, this energetic robot schlock is not among the worst movies you could rent.

The story: The returning Eric (Wilson) and Connie (Stacie Foster) are framed for murder by robot lookalikes controlled by an evil arms dealer (Anthony De Longis).

Compared to the original film, this movie's best attribute is that it actually does something with its premise of assassin robots, which have been made into more interesting killing machines and are definitely utilized more creatively. One of them (Jim Maniaci) even has something of a personality, and Don makes a pretty good TERMINATOR knockoff. However, there is no DOUBLE IMPACT moment wherein Don is fighting himself, and to build on this, the movie's worst attribute is that missed opportunities like this pile up: characters are underutilized (e.g. non-fighting karate prodigy Eboni Adams), fights are often over before they begin (e.g. the Super Tracker showdown), and the examination of civil rights from the first film is lost on this one.

Most of the film's action content is in the form of shootouts, which are almost unanimously overlong and unimaginative. This has the surprising effect of making Don Wilson's questionable fights seem a little better than usual, at least as the movie progresses. Anthony De Longis, who had that cool swordfight with Jet Li in FEARLESS, is presented as a suit but then shows off some surprisingly mighty martial arts and makes for a surprisingly formidable opponent against Don in the finale. Enforcer Athena Massey has only one fight, but it's not terrible.

While the level of energy slackens at times, the bright setting and occasionally fun special effects help keep the film alive to the end. I'm not heartbroken that this series has apparently ended, but it's heartening to be reminded of what a difference that small improvements can make.

Plot Synopsis: When his wife, a news reporter, is kidnapped & replaced with an android double, Secret Service agent Eric Phillips tracks her down & uncovers a plan by an arms dealer to create an army of invincible androids to assassinate world leaders.

I wasn't expecting much when I first saw this sequel to Richard Pepin's low-budget sci-fi / action hybrid "Cyber Tracker". That film was nothing special, not to mention a blatant rip-off of both "The Terminator" & "RoboCop". This sequel is the same as before, with an all-out action sequence opening the film. There are plenty of explosions, heavy gunfire & a huge bodycount, as well as some martial-arts moves courtesy of the film's star, Don "The Dragon" Wilson. The whole film seems like a series of action scenes strung together with minimal plot. On the acting front, Wilson is a bad actor. He really needs a personality transplant.

This PM Entertainment production is laced with enough bullets to make John Woo say, "Enough already!" Of course, it isn't nearly as beautiful as Woo can deliver but it gets the exploitive job done in 90 minutes. Eric Phillips (Don Wilson) is an undercover cop in the near future. When his wife is framed for murdering the Governor by a team using a look-a-like cyborg, it is up to Eric to clear her name. Wilson gets to pull Van Damme duty as he plays the heroic lead and his evil cyborg doppelganger. Why the Academy failed to take notice is beyond me. Being a PM production, there are tons of car chases, exploding cars (4 in the first 5 minutes!) and shoot outs. I particularly liked the van that flips in midair before it even comes close to touching an exploding truck. My other favorite bit involved a neighborhood girl coming over to perfect her karate in Don's simulator. It is merely a chance to show off some cheapo LAWNMOWER MAN effects circa 1995.

The first Cyber Tracker was a painful cinematic experience, one so atrocious it was impossible to even laugh at it. I quite literally bugged out on hearing that this follow up existed. I tried to ignore it, but morbid curiosity compelled me to witness it. While not by any stretch good, it outright steals so many scenes from other films that it ends up being bearable.

Watching Cyber Tracker 2 is almost like watching a homage to all previous action sci-fi, because there are so many scenes that have been stolen directly from other films and inserted into this script on a fraction of the budget. That said, they seem to have pushed the boat out for this film as no scenes look particularly awful indicating a reasonable amount of money has been spent on it.

The majority of the budget must have gone into the pyros. Pretty much everything explodes, whether it wants to or not. Even if there's no particular reason why a door should explode, it blows up. This is a movie that would have Michael Bay thinking, "Man, that's a lot of explosions". It's all so overblown that it becomes a lot of fun after a while. If you like stuff blowing up, rest assured you'll have to go no more than 5 minutes before something goes boom.

I was shocked to see that most of the leads have taken some time to learn to act a bit. Steve Burton's still a little wooden as Jared, but not too reprehensible, and everyone else takes their hackneyed roles quite well. While never stopping to mug at the camera, it's clear everyone knows this isn't high art and doesn't take it too seriously. This was another mis-step in the first effort, as everyone played it so straight it sucked all the life out of it, not having the skill or effects to pull off a serious approach.

Theoretically I ought to pan this for managing the unique feat of being far less original that the first, but if you're going to nick a film outright then Alien 3, Terminator 1 & 2 and Robocop are pretty good sources. As such the script seems more replicated than written, although the dialogue is still largely poor. Nothing like as bad as the last one though. Pepin's direction in unremarkable, but there aren't too many ways to motivate his main character, Mr. Explosion.

I'm generally not a big thievery supporter, but imagining the horrors that could have unfolded if they'd went their own way gives me a sense of dread that shakes me to the very core of my being. There are a few amusing moments, and the continual booms mean there's little time for a plot to drag or get in the way of the shooting. The movie moves along fairly logically, and displays an unexpected sense of continuity both internally and with the first film, although I would have disavowed all knowledge of that travesty if I were in charge.

Were I in the business of passing quantifiable judgements, I'd award this 2/5 TippyMarks.

(Following a bribe from PM Entertainment, makers of Cyber Tracker 2, the following review has been heavily edited to omit references to films Cyber Tracker 2 may have a resemblance to) Agnes 3000, the talking house, is back! So is some footage from the first film! Don "Billy Drago" Wilson returns as bodyguard (now cop) Phillips, now married to the newsreader chick from the first film and working in conjunction with Cyber Trackers to rid the world of evil (even though at the end of the first film they said they weren't going to use Cyber Trackers in the police force). Jared, the newsreader's sidekick, is also back, although I'm fairly sure he died in the first film because I just watched that a couple of days ago.

The trouble this time is that some evil guys are using Cyber Tracker technology for some reason and to do that they have a Cyber Tracker who looks like the newsreader kill some guy in public and the next thing you know the police have a Cyber Tracker out hunting for the newsreader. In a direct steal from (On Golden Pond), the Cyber Tracker grabs a truck just like (Henry Fonda) did in that film and chases our heroic couple through L.A.'s storm drain system. Things get worse when a Cyber Tracker turns up looking like Don "Man in drag" Wilson at a police station and starts wasting scores of policeman, just exactly like (that scene in Kramer Vs Kramer where the kid gets fed up choosing a parent and goes and kills loads of cops in a police station).

So the real newsreader, the real Don "The Serpent" Wilson, Jared and some other guy have to deal with loads of Cyber Trackers, corrupt businessmen using cyborgs to their advantage, just like (Mac and Me), the cops being on their trail, and robots with their own faces trying to kill them. Luckily, the robot newsreader gets covered in liquid nitrogen and then shot, just like (that bit in the Greatest Story Ever Told when John Wayne's character covers Jesus in liquid nitrogen and shoots him, causing Jesus to break into loads of little pieces, taking three days to pull himself back together again).

In a highly original film like this, they pull a 360 turn around and have one cyber tracker reprogrammed to help out the good guys, just like (that bit in Forrest when a re-programmed Bubba comes back from the dead to help Tom Hanks and wins the Vietnam war single handedly). I enjoyed this more than the first one for some reason, probably as it reminded me of better films like (Steel Magnolias springs immediately to mind).