Kamandi73

So about ten + years ago various employees of the U. S. Embassy in Cuba were afflicted or attacked by some sonic waves or microwaves. A couple of them died. An investigation concluded that the government of Cuba had been directing a new energy weapon at the embassy.

This movie takes off on that historical footnote and has a team of black ops go to an island to rescue a family that is being attacked by the sonic beams. They find only the wife, and she soon dies, with lots of blood dripping out of her ears.

The rest of the movie is sonic sound effects and what looks like infrared lighting, followed by various members of the rescue team grimacing, moaning, groaning, and having hallucinations.

There is about zero action in this action movie. If you do not want to watch five people looking constipated, groaning, and slapping their heads in pain, then skip this turkey.

The movie starts out with a fair amount of low budget action. The special effects are from Party City. Numerous security types machine gun a door and it has the same ten holes in it no matter how many shots are fired.

Byron Mann (Ryu in the Street Fighter movie of 1994) is the lead actor. He plays a guy who is picked by Robert Patrick (the evil scientist) to be implanted with a new super-chip that makes him super smart, fast, etc. It is also supposed to give Robert Patrick control over him.

When Patrick gives Mann a test run in front of a CIA op and some investors, Mann breaks out. In the process he shoots about 25 mall security types and never needs to reload his handgun. He also downloads all of Patrick's master files, and even re-writes the code for himself in about two minutes.

The rest of the movie is totally boring. Mann meets up with another chipped agent, and spends about an hour telling her his story, and the same clips of the same lab escape are played about five times.

Mann programming code is also replayed a few times. Watching a guy typing code was boring enough the first time. He also throws in memory clips of him talking to other chipped agents and getting them to kill targets. It is a lot more boring than reading this.

Eventually at the end of the movie, we get a fight scene that is pretty entertaining. We also get revenge from the tomb (or the brain dead), which was a nice touch.

Dark Assets takes about 15 minutes of action, and replays into a 90 minute movie with a lot of explaining of the same clips over and over again.

Arnold is the guest star / villain. Robby Robinson (future Masters Mr. Olympia champion), Franco Columbu (Arnold's best friend and future Mr. Olympia), Ed Corney (Mr. Universe), and a couple of other famous bodybuilders of the 1970s who were shown but not listed in the credits.

Bert Freed plays the owner of the mega bodybuilding federation that runs most of the contests. He is clearly supposed to be Joe Weider of the IFBB. The writers really took a shot at the guy.

He comes across as a greedy huckster who figures that Arnold will be lifting weights in prison and come out of prison bigger than ever. He also pays a guy with a coupon instead of cash. The bodybuilder sport is treated pretty badly.

On the other hand, there are several minutes of some great guys of the 1970s competing. The actual bodybuilders are depicted as nice people. Even Arnold, who turns out to be a killer, is a nice guy all the time except when women laugh at him.

The story is kid of lame, except for the fact that it ends up spending a lot of time among classic 1970s bodybuilders, and showing them as good people.