Comeuppance Reviews
In the year 2074, two rival companies, Pinwheel and Kobayashi, vie for supremacy in the cyborg-making biz. By this point in the future, cyborgs have reached amazing levels of sophistication and humanity, including having emotions. Pinwheel decides to get the edge in all this corporate intrigue by creating Casella Reese, known by the nickname Cash (Jolie). In her design, her superiors programmed in the directive to go to Kobayashi Corp. and detonate herself, wiping out the competition - permanently. A higher-up named Mercy (Palance) sees what's going on, and allows Cash, and her human love interest, Colt (Koteas) to escape. Pinwheel doesn't like this, so they send a psychotic bounty hunter named Danny Bench (Drago) to track them down. But will human-robot love conquer all in this treacherous world? The filmmakers behind Cyborg 2 decided to take a different tack from the first one, thankfully. Despite the fact that the cyborg Cash has some sort of implanted memories of Van Damme from the first outing, this particular cyborgian opus has a much different vibe than the first one. We applaud the fact that there are actually some interesting ideas at play here, not the least of which is the nature of humanity. While our normal mode of pondering such weighty questions about life would come from re-watching T-Force (1994), the injection of some much-needed intelligence scores the movie some points. As does the set design and overall look, which is relatively upmarket for a DTV sequel to an Albert Pyun-directed Van Damme movie.On the bad side, it could have used some more action. The museum fight with Karen Sheperd was way too brief and didn't live up to its potential, but overall we do get a decent amount of Jolie-Fu, which was nice. All the best scenes in the movie feature Jolie front and center, and it's easy to see why - she has an almost mesmerizing effect on the audience. That doesn't stop the pace from becoming slow at times, of course, and a lot of the cooler imagery is undercut by the dinginess of the "future". So the audience gets yanked in a bunch of different directions, which maybe was on purpose (?) - but, on top of everything else, they found time to have some Punchfighting between Koteas and Billy Drago, which moved things in the right direction. As for Jack Palance, we're glad he's here, but for 90 percent of his "screen time" it's just that: a close-up of his mouth on a TV screen. When he does show up in the flesh, he gets by far what is the best line in the movie, so it all pays off. Why visions of him looking forlornly at his lost love were intercut with the Koteas-Jolie sex scene and not placed somewhere else isn't known, but it's oddly similar to when David Warner was intercut with a Pamela Anderson sex scene in Naked Souls (1996). That aside, there's only so much of Palance's teeth that any normal audience would want to stand.As per usual, Billy Drago is the baddie, Sven-Ole Thorsen is on hand as "Doorman" , and the computerized corporate intrigue certainly seems modeled after the Apple and Microsoft battles. Maybe one day they'll use deadly cyborgs to one-up each other. There's even a Cyborg dog - a cy-dog if you prefer - and we felt that could become a movie in its own right. Tailor-made for the pay channels of the day, this could have played on Cinemax in the mid-90's right before Nemesis (1992) and right after American Cyborg:Steel Warrior (1993). It all comes to a surprisingly sweet and touching ending. I guess you never know what to expect from the Pinwheel Corporation.Director Schroeder also was the man behind Damned River (1989) and went on to do the third and final Cyborg movie, Cyborg 3: The Recycler (1994), the following year. Yes, there is a cyborg trilogy. As the main star, a young Jolie is certainly easier to look at than Van Damme, and we appreciated a lot about the overall production, but, as usual, a little more action in the mix would most likely have given the reputation of Cyborg 2 a brighter future.
Vomitron_G
How many sci-fi/action B-movies from the '90s featuring cyborgs do you know of that are actually any good? "Cyborg 2" is a shamefully underrated sequel to Albert Pyun's original from 1989 and it actually succeeds in surpassing its predecessor. The story has more heart & thought put into it (you get a little bit less action sequences because of this), the production values were decent and the special effects quite impressive for this type of production (especially the wide shots of a futuristic, post-apocalyptic city are well-crafted, echoing some of the visuals seen previously in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner"). It wasn't until producers read the script of "Glass Shadow", they decided to turn it into a sequel to Pyun's film. But "Cyborg 2" is pretty much a standalone film, merely just referencing the first film by adding some footage of it. A female cyborg (Angelina Jolie) and her trainer (Elias Koteas) form a leading duo we actually care about, while they're on the run from the corporation that employed them. Being hunted down by a bounty hunter (Billy Drago) and another female cyborg assassin (Karen Sheperd), the mysterious entity Mercy (Jack Palance) guides them through the city. There are many far worse cyborg movies out there, which usually revolve around showcasing some martial arts & blowing things up. "Cyborg 2" has some of that too, but still manages to be a little different.
jack_thursby
As a sci-fi and casual Angelina Jolie fan, I thought this obviously low-budget movie might be worth a look... maybe it had a few scenes or a storyline that would make up for all its other faults. Plus, it might be interesting to watch Angelina as she was embarking on her star-bound career.Oh how wrong I was. One thing I learned -- at 18, Angelina Jolie couldn't act. So, to make her comfortable, the producers cast this entire movie with people who couldn't act. Seeing this, Jack Palance (who can actually act) decided to overact. Watching 10 minutes of this happen is enough to burn your eyes out.To the horrible acting and overacting add a nonsensical script, insipid dialog, bottom-of-the-barrel cinematography... in fact add bottom-of-the-barrel everything.The story features Angelina as a cyborg programmed by her corporate overlords as an assassin. She escapes the corporate HQ with the help of her combat instructor. The corporation sends bounty hunters after them. Stupid stuff happens. The end. I would tell you more but I didn't want to waste my life watching this dreck.I implore you -- this is not worth watching. Its not even worth thinking about watching. Save yourself the pain and move on.
