Automatic

Olvier Gruner stars as J269 a robot who becomes the target of a group of mercenaries sent to destroy him after he kills a man trying to rape Nora Rochester (Daphne Ashbrook), fearing bad press Goddard Marx orders the machine dead in this well made yet very routine rip off of Robocop and The Terminator. Automatic however does have good actionscenes.

Olivier Gruner finally finds the one role he excels at, a robot who protects a woman from her boss/rapist who the corporation then decide to send an army to kill both her and the robot to avoid bad press and save face with stock holders, making Gruner the only one who can protect her and save the day. Automatic is a solid reason why one can't write off straight to video science fiction. Automatic is well directed, well made and has moments of true atmosphere. The movie also has some good ideas such as how robots are intertwined with humans and how the robot in question weren't trying to take over the world and rather provide confused responses to human nature. This is a movie where the bad guys are human and the hero is a robot who deals in black and white morals because it's the way he's been programmed. It also has that Blade Runner vibe of how the corporations are the evils of society and on its own level it succeeds rather well. This is easily the best thing you'll ever see from Olivier Gruner and aside from the bad acting from the cast (John Glover and Gruner aside...) the film works in both categories its been sold as. My only complaint was that it didn't feature more robot's responses toward issues regarding human nature but it is an Olivier Gruner movie. His best one by the way.

* * * out of 4-(Good)

Basic Die Hard rip-off action flick with touches of wit and even satire. John Glover as the jolly corporate mogul is great. (Particularly in the first five minutes!) Jeff Kober, as always, has a lot of fun with a small role. I enjoyed this more than I thought I would!

AUTOMATIC is a low-rent sci-fi B-movie starring French martial artist Olivier Gruner, a guy who had all the acting ability of a hunk of cheese but who knew how to kick when it came to the fight scenes. This is an incredibly cheap-looking movie that sees Gruner playing an android who rebels against his corrupt creators and is forced to defend himself from a hit squad.

The entire film takes place in a dimly-lit building with the characters prowling the corridors and engaging in some low-rent fight scenes. The choreography is poor and the script worse, and it doesn't help that the cast is filled with actors giving laissez-faire performances which hardly fill the viewer with confidence.

Throughout AUTOMATIC, the scriptwriter rips off many other, better movies. The single-location stalking sequences are reminiscent of the basic premise of DIE HARD, while of course THE TERMINATOR hangs over everything with the presence of androids (although the movie doesn't feature much of the cool robotic effect stuff you saw generally in '90s B-movies). There are also lots of scenes inspired by ALIENS. Inevitably, this movie can't hold a candle to any of those classics and is a completely forgettable piece of popcorn fare.

For a low-budget action/sci-fi film, this is a really good movie. Of course the acting is rather crappy as you'd expect from Gruener, but the action is good and so are the sci-fi elements. I have seen a few of Gruener's movies and this one is by far his best in my opinion. One thing that really impressed me in this movie were the guns that were used. They had lcd type screens on them that allowed the holder to see around corners - a few years after this movie was made the military looked into actually using a similar system on their rifles.

I highly recommend any fan of action/sci-fi movies to rent this one as it is actually better than some of the big-budget action movies these days.