Cybermax

Even though it was in their earlier days, this movie was GREAT! Birrane and Sigler stole the show. I can honestly say that I have never seen a movie that could possibly compare to this. The job that Istvan Pely did really showed the long-term potential that was later realized by his published computer game.

Sigler's commanding presence drew the eye, and Birrane's comic genius lightened the mood when necessary

A+++

I dated this guy for 6+ years and was there during parts of the filming of Cybermax. Birrane was not a trained actor, but knew how to "play the audience" for his own egotistic reasons. If you ever knew the guy, even in real life, he was always acting for everyone's approval and to impress others. That kind of thing gets real old after a while.

I'm actually surprised this movie got completed. I thought the director Ogie had a hard time (or took a long time) completing the post-production. My impression of the film set was kind of strange. Parts of it were filmed in an old (I want to say abandoned) house in Baltimore. The filming was going on during the hot & humid summer in the city, there were lots of hot lights set up for certain scenes and no A/C. The inside of the house actually became HOTTER than outside. Whew. They even got pulled over by the Baltimore Police during the filming of the car chase scene. They did some pretty unsafe, reckless and stupid stunts, with no budget or insurance. I don't even think the actors got paid! I know for a fact that Ed didn't. I had to be a financial support to him for his poor a** for a time. Anyway, to me it seemed like a movie made by geeks, for geeks.

Sorry, Ed... Just wasn't that impressed.

No one ever makes a movie in a vacuum. For every Donnie Brasco and Goodfellas there's a Godfather. It's a truism for all movies but especially poignant for genre films.

One has a sense when watching Cybermax that the future had been perfectly laid out before it, as if the sum of all the directors and actors who had made cyber and computer techno features in the past were, in fact, just laying ground for something better.

Many will point to movies such as Tron or Blade Runner and say, "There is something special. There is a movie that made a difference!"

But those people are only showing their ignorance. Of course Tron and Blade Runner came before Cybermax, but what the truly enlightened will ask is, "Why were those movies made? What's the point?" if not to one day create a cinematic masterpiece? For in the litany of filmmaking history, Tron and Blade Runner are but a verse; Cybermax is a poem onto itself.

Like all great films, Cybermax began simply. Mere spermicidal thoughts in the vaginal brains of two college students. Before the Matrix, before Dark City, before the desiccated copies and celluloid drivel found their way into mass market and shaped the way a generation saw projected art, two college students experienced truth. They beheld simplicity in its barest form and they captured it. On one afternoons shoot, they trapped on film the thoughts and emotions that make us all human.

You can see it on the face of the heroine, the immaculately tragic Blueface, accentuated congruously by Amanda Walburn. Every scene her eyes light up the screen, but in their wild illumination those same eyes also pull at us like the void Nietzsche warned us about. They surround us and dare us to plunge ever deeper into a Hobbsian world, into pain, and ultimately depravity.

Dr. Franklin likewise tugs at our hearts. For the whole film he searches, trying to find that one memory that will drive away the voices and the doubts and bring him peace and serenity. One might attempt to contrast the role to Guy Pierce's work in Memento, for it is true that both characters live within a framework created by their own memories, but to accept such a comparison would be an embarrassment for Dr. Franklin and the enigmatic actor, Joe Tunny, who brings him to life. Surely anyone who has seen both films would deem Leonard Shelby the weaker of the two characters.

And then there's Mr. Rhyme. Could there ever be a better Tin Man? Surely the makers of the Wizard of Oz didn't have a clue because their version came off hollow and one-dimensional. Not that Jack Haley did a poor job, his performance was equal to the written script, but sometimes it takes an actor of a different caliber to perform the weaknesses and hope inherent in all of us. Enter Ed Birrane and the fiery orange hair that launched a world-wide carrot craze. In Cybermax, Ed delivers his greatest performance. It's a role that demands versatility and he doesn't disappoint. Could anyone else bring an audience to tears when he utters the famous last lines, "Scratch, scratch, are you alive? We've got to get out if we're going to survive."

The tragedy in Mr. Rhyme's life isn't that he's a poet or that he's mired in an inspirational rut, but that he's all but given up hope for any change. Then Totality comes into his life and changes all of that forever. Totality, the commanding mythological mastermind behind the Cybermax "program," offers Mr. Rhyme a new world vision; the possibility of living within poetry rather than existing to mimic it. It's a simple bequest and one that might come off as lame or even hackneyed, but Ed keeps us in suspense with his polar facial expressions and witty repertoire ("Something acoustic would be fantastoustic!" -- what a riot).

Mr. Rhyme adds that much needed comic element to this sweeping drama. Just as Star Wars would not have worked without Harrison Ford, Seven Samurai without Toshiro Mifune, or David Lynch's Dune without Patrick Stewart, so too is Cybermax dependent on Mr. Rhyme. To put it simply, he creates balance and is the defining role in the second half of the film as he imposes meaning on chaos.

If the latter half of the movie belongs to Mr. Rhyme, the former is undeniably in the proven hands of Totality. Richard Sigler, famous for his method-style stage acting, bursts onto the screen in Cybermax, wrenching the audience's attention with a barebones soliloquy that matches anything Shakespeare could scribble. His testament to his program, to his future vision, is powerful if not ultimately misguided. Like a prophet from the Bible, he comes from the wasteland of human existence intending to help Blueface, Dr. Franklin, and Mr. Rhyme. Though he truly believes he's doing the right thing, and addresses the audience directly in a number of soul searching speeches to that effect, he fails. In the end, all that remains of his prophesy are the wires and plugs of a dream deferred.

And that's the primordial tragedy of Cybermax. The struggle against nature and the limited existence of the human condition -- both mind and body. Totality attempts to pull three characters from the depths, as indeed he tries to pull us all, but he's not strong enough. Though he doesn't descend as far as Blueface, he definitely stumbles. Yet, as the end nears we glimpse that sliver of hope, that perhaps not all is lost, for at the last there is renewal and an echo of the forces that started the movie, thus implying a cycle that hopefully will never end.