Cyber Wars

Despite all the bad comments, this movie is rather enjoyable. True, the acting is not always at its best...but other than that it is a solid classical cyberpunk movie that looks as a professional level job...not the amateurish home-made thing that someone described!

It's not a world shaking work of art, but it accomplished the job of entertaining the viewer and is much better then some Hollywood-crap we see this days.

I rate it a 6 for the movie "value" ... a 7 because it shows a good technical work ... and a 8 because we should get more of this stuff, it deserves support.

Not bad, not bad at all. I gather this is Australian, at least in part, and it seems of a piece with the generally good quality of Australian films, at least those imported to the US compared with the US domestic product.

As my title suggests, it combines general plot elements of Domino, The Matrix, and the general concept of Blade Runner; it doesn't try to outdo any of them, but instead is a somewhat stripped down, sleek SF action film, more in the spirit of Domino than the somewhat ponderous senses of The Matrix and Blade Runner, which had to set up the cyberpunk world that this movie can now take for granted.

What's nice about it is a general lack of crap or cheesiness; actors are all good, including Joan Chen and William Sanderson, apparently a permanent fixture of the cyberpunk world since Blade Runner; dialogue is good; no cheesy effects, performances, dialogue, etc. I find this compares favorably with something like Freejack, which had the faint whiff of fromage floating about it, as well as Mad Max (the original) which was sort of obviously cartoonish.

This film was based on William Gibson's SF writing, but he isn't mentioned anywhere in the credits. A challenge to watch, because the dialogue is often muted. If the audio track had been recorded better it would be a better film. The story is not bad, and the ideas are intriguing, but alas, they came from somewhere else...sort of a youth oriented film for younger fans of SF. Maybe a film that would have been better done by a big studio. Better than most trashy Cyber-Punk movies set in the proverbial post apocalyptic garbage can, this future is clean and orderly. The female lead is not that bad, but the film resounds with so many ideas that came from William Gibson it is like watching a mini cornucopia of the SF writers work all rolled into one film, that is written by someone else.

In the early 21st Century, society is connected through the Cyberlink. All communication and monetary transactions occur within its sphere. The Cyberlink records the identities of all legalized citizens. Simplants provide criminal with alternative identities. Ident police and private headhunters track them down.

In Entropolis, the efficient bounty hunter Dash MacKenzie (Genevieve O'Reilly) is hired by the big corporation boss Joseph Lau (David Warner) and his henchman Davinder Sandhu (Michael De Mesa) to hunt down his former employee Edward Chan (Gerald Chew). Edward has vanished after submitting to the state-of-art procedure neuromorphing. While seeking Edward out, Dash stumbles with Ident Detective Victor Huang (Luoyong Wang) and he warns her that someone might want to kill Edward, but she does not pay attention to him. Dash finds Edward but he is assassinated before telling her why he is hunted down. However his mistress Sylvia escapes from the killer. Soon Dash finds a clip and her biotech guru Julius Kui (Kay Siu Lim) stumbles with the truth and finds why Edward was murdered. Dash brings Victor to meet Julius and he shows Megacorp transactions in Sintawan to them. He explains that these five companies make up the total infrastructure and have total control over Cyberlink. They form a powerful consortium and play a game based on the ancient Chinese game Wei Chi. Sintawan is the playing field where they wage corporate war in accordance with the strategies of the five companies, manipulating the course of the society and everyone living here. Therefore the place is an illusion and nothing is what it seems and there is no distinction between the game and reality. Then Dash finds that they are all avatars. What will they do?

"Cyber Wars" is an interesting film with a complex story. The plot has flaws and gives too much new information to the viewer; therefore the best to do is to watch the film again on the next day to understand better the details. Dash is an unpleasant character and Genevieve O'Reilly and Luoyong Wang are histrionic in certain moments and do not show any chemistry, but this combination of Matrix and Blade Runner entertains. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): Not available on Blu-Ray or DVD.

A decent movie with a good cyberpunk theme. A very Gibsonesque world complete with wetwiring, neural links, the matrix and even a holo-dolphin being used as an semi-sentient afterlife avatar. The main character is a tough independent women caught up in a world of technocratic intrigue playing a short hand against tough odds. So the scenery is familiar to fans of cyberpunk and anybody who has read mid 80's Gibson.

Of course the world has moved on and in 2010 the film seems oddly dated. For a more current take on cyberpunk look to Vexille or Paranoia 1.0. This aside I give it kudos for portraying a more honest 80's idea of a virtual world than maybe something like virtuosity. The themes are solid, if a little cartoonish and flat.

Main gripe would probably be the lead role. She just did not seem to engage with the role. The material may not have been there but I have seen good actors giving a lot more with a lot less. She never seemed hurried or overly perturbed even with the bullets flying and people dieing in front of her. A gunshot wound was just another cheap squib and her acting was not up to the task of making you believe it was anything other. The threatening claustrophobia you would expect from a good techno or cyber thriller was absent.

Supports were better and gave a solid B grade performance.

One of the other problems was a noticeable inconsistency in the sound. Some parts were noticeably poorly miked and there were differences in tone and sound continuity. A distraction but not so bad. The music was good and had the right feel.

Also the lighting never seemed right. The whole film was too bright. Cyberpunk is film noir at heart and there should have been more play with shadows and colours. There was plenty of scope for light play. Scenes where subways lights go out could have been played for darkness but they were not.

That being said I still enjoyed it. There are not too many movies of it's kind. A Gibonesque story can be hard to pull off even with the best actors, production crews and serious money to throw around (Johnny Mnemonic). The Matrix as envisaged by Gibson always looks a bit cheesy (think lawnmower man) and as I said in 2010 there are real threats from networks that make the 80's cyberpunk themes seem pale (drone war planes, hikikomori, identity theft, net surveillance, rfids and GPS positioning).

Think of this film as picture postcard from a day at a Gibson beach. Your not really there but it looks nice enough.