CYBORG 2: GLASS SHADOW
A film review by Paul-Michael Agapow
Copyright 1997 Paul-Michael Agapow
It is the late 21st century and the ruthless Pinwheel corporation has perfectly Glass Shadow, an explosive reagent that they put into androids so as to use them as assassination devices. One such android Cash (Jolie) elopes with martial arts instructor Colt (Koteas). Pursued by the sinister tracker Danny (Drago), they go on the run, seek the help of the mysterious Mercy (Palance), yadda, yadda, yadda.
"A sequel to 'Cyborg', one of the worst Jean-Claude van Damme pictures? How can it fail?" I hear you ask. (Just above the adolescents saying "Does Jolie get her clothes off?"). The answer is "very quickly" (and "yes, but haven't you better things to do?"). Nearly a Bad Movie, "Cyborg 2" is just a bad movie, stock video store fodder.
The connection to the earlier film is fairly tenuous, with a few gratuitous clips of Jean-Claude inserted at random into a plot written by one of those novel-generating machines from "1984". In the all-too-typical opening scenes, a Pinwheel exec demonstrates the power of the explosive Glass Shadow with a film of (yes) an over-endowed female android having sex with her target. In rock-video montage, we see her orgasm and explode, undeniably making the point that the scriptwriters have deep, deep, psychological problems. But instead the company decides that this means they rule the world.
Jolie, working on her sneer, kicks a few heads to show how deadly she is before running off with Koteas. From that point on _he_ does all the fighting. (Don't ask me why. Carry a perfectly good killer android with you and insist on doing all the fights yourself? Maybe he was saving her for a suicide mission against the producers.) Jack Palance - a walking advertisement for compulsory superannuation - growls, weeps and issues cryptic hints to our heroes, obviously thinking of his role in "Gor" and how that was supposed to be the bottom of the barrel. Drago plays the cyborg tracker as a cut-price Julian Sands which is bad enough, but once you think that Sands must have turned this role down, is even worse.
Rubbish and not even entertaining rubbish. Exactly how lame does an idea have to be before it doesn't get made into a movie? [*/misfire] and Jean-Claude squared on the Sid and Nancy scale.
"Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow" Directed by Michael Schroeder. Starring Elias Koteas, Angelina Jolie, Jack Palance, Billy Drago. Released 1993.
------ paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/] "There is no adventure, there is no romance, there is only trouble and desire."
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