Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vincent Klyn, Deborah
Richter, Dayle Haddon, Terrie Batson, Haley Peterson, Alex Daniels, Ralf
Moeller, Blaise Loong, Jackson “Rock” Pinckney
Director: Albert Pyun
Action Director: Blaise Loong, Tom Elliot
Following the success of Bloodsport, Van Damme found himself at an interesting fork in the road. The Cannon Group, whose Cannon International subsidiary had distributed Bloodsport, made Van Damme an offer for his next starring role. One option was to take Michael Dudikoff’s place in the American Ninja franchise. The second sequel, American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt, was soon to start production. A second option was to take a leading role in the second Delta Force film, although the details of whether Van Damme would have replaced Chuck Norris or starred alongside him are vague. The third option was to play the hero in post-apocalyptic sci-fi actioner called Cyborg.
Cyborg was an interesting case, as it started life as an attempt to salvage the pre-production investments for two cancelled projects: Masters of the Universe 2 and a live-action Spider-Man film. The first Masters of the Universe had gone overschedule and and overbudget, to the point that the final battle between He-Man (Dolph Lundgren) and Skeletor (Frank Langella) was filmed as the sets around them were being taken down(!). Once the film turned out to be a flop, the two big-budget productions were called off and Cannon ordered a low-budget movie to be made to take advantage of some of the sets and costumes that had already been made. The job went to Albert Pyun, who had already been tapped by Cannon to make both of those ill-fated movies.
While it is interesting to ponder just what Delta Force 2 or American Ninja 3 would have done for Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career, I do think that Cyborg was the right choice for him, even if it was (arguably) the lesser film of the three. Delta Force 2 ended up going over budget, suffered a number of production mishaps (including a helicopter crash that killed several crewmembers), and failed to recoup its budget in the theater. On the other hand, the “Ninja Craze” that started with The Octagon and Cannon’s own Enter the Ninja was already on the wane by the end of the decade. American Ninja 3 did nothing for the career of martial artist David Bradley, who quickly became a direct-to-video staple of crap like American Samurai. I don’t think Van Damme’s presence would have done anything to resurrect people’s interest in R-rated ninja movies--or convince anyone who gave up on the series after part 2 to give it another chance.
The plot is so simple that Pyun had to film numerous flashbacks in order to keep the running time at around 90 minutes. Sometime in the future, society collapsed under the oppressive weight of man’s inhumanity to man: wars, genocide, starvation, etc. But before the ever-resilient human beings could get things back on track, The Plague appeared and finished off what we had already started. A group of scientists in Atlanta, on the brink of finding a cure, transformed a young lady named Pearl Prophet (Canadian model Dayle Haddon) into a cyborg and sent her into what used to be NYC to procure the data necessary for the scientists to complete their research. I guess there were several gigabytes of info she needed to carry…and writer Pyun didn’t have the imagination to foretell flash memory drives.
While her initial mission is successful, getting back to Atlanta is where it gets tricky. Before they get out of the City, a band of “Flesh Pirates” led by the fearsome Fender Tremolo (New Zealand surfer Vincent Klyn, who also appeared in Bloodmatch) attacks Pearl and her guide, Marshall Strat. The latter is killed pretty quickly, although the former runs into a Slinger—futurespeak for a mercenary-guide—named Gibson (Van Dame). Gibson initially rescues Pearl from some pirates, but is injured when more of them show up. Fender kidnaps Pearl with the intent of taking Atlanta over himself and assuming control over the cure, thus attaining virtual Godlike status in the post-apocalyptic wasteland.
To that end, Fender and his minions slaughter an entire settlement just to take their boat, which they sail down the coast on the way to Atlanta. Gibson shows up in the wake of the bloodbath and makes an ally in the form of Nady Simmons (Deborah Richter), who had wisely gone into hiding before the massacre started. So the two start braving the savage-infested wasteland on their way through the Dirty South.
Cyborg represents director Albert Pyun’s first encounter with both kickboxers and cyborgs, which would be a fixture of his movies throughout the 1990s. According to the Wikipedia, this film is the first movie in Pyun’s “Cyborg Trilogy,” which would include Knights (1993) and Heatseeker (1995). And that’s ignoring the fact that Cyborg was the first of its own trilogy, although its sequels are ultimately unrelated to the original film. Moreover, Albert Pyun directed no fewer than four Nemesis movies during that decade, the first of which starred Jean-Claude Van Damme’s non-Union Mexican equivalent Olivier Gruner[1].
What is particularly interesting about Pyun’s approach to the material is that the titular Cyborg, Pearl Prophet, is little more than a McGuggin in this film. We know she’s important because the characters say she is, but she herself does little to actually move the story forward. The weak explanation given is that once Fender Tremolo declares that he’ll take her to Atlanta, she more or less submits, trusting that the inhabitants will be ready to do something about the pirates once they arrive. While that makes a certain amount of sense, it also leaves a lot to chance and renders her a useless character within the context to the movie we see (as opposed to unseen events that would bookend the movie).
Most of the character backstory and development goes to Jean-Claude Van Damme’s character, Gibson Rickenbacker[2]. We learn through flashbacks that Gibson had briefly retired from the Slinger business in order to settle down with a young widow, her son, and her adolescent sister. That lasted for a while before Fender and his pirates raided their home, killed the mom and son, and Stockholm Syndrome’d the girl, Haley, into joining them and becoming Fender’s concubine. So Gibson’s score to settle with Fender is largely personal, although it is implied that he slowly comes to realize the scope of Pearl’s importance to the fate of mankind. But until then, we get to see Van Damme wearing a silly wig during those flashback scenes.
The fight scenes were choreographed by Blaise Loong, of which this is his only credit. Hollywood veteran Tom Elliot (Sudden Death and Hellboy) also got stunt coordinator credit, although it is unknown how much he was involved with the fight scenes. The action is a balanced mixture of hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting, with a little bit of gunplay thrown in for good measure. The fights often got so violent that they had to be edited to avoid an X rating. The fellow that Jean-Claude Van Damme spin kicks with the shoe-blade during one sequence was Jackson “Rock” Pinckney. Unfortunately, the kick did not quite as expected and Pinckney lost his eye, which ultimately resulted in a lawsuit for Van Damme. Pinckney ultimately walked away with almost half a million dollars, which was almost what it cost to produce the film in the first place!
Expect vintage Van Damme fight choreography here. It is very static compared to your average Hong Kong film, although in these days of too many wires, too many edits and too much shaky cam, the fights retain a certain charm to them. Nonetheless, there is a lot of “punching bag” choreography, especially during Van Damme’s fights with the intimidating Vincent Klyn. Van Damme does his usual simple kicks and punches, broken up by a slow motion jump kick of sorts. Pyun often shows a single punch from several angles in rapid succession, giving the viewer the impression that Van Damme is punching his opponent multiple times. Once in a while, Van Damme’s character performs feats of superhuman strength, like a jumping hook kick capable of lifting a six-foot mound of muscle several feet off the ground.
Time has
been kind to Cyborg in some ways.
Fans of crap cinema consider it one of Albert Pyun’s better movies, especially
compared to his post-2000 work when his budgets got really low. Van Damme fans, aware of the variable nature of DTV
releases (see reviews for Derailed,
for example), probably enjoy this with rose-tinted goggles, reminiscing ‘bout
the time when his movies were about the bootwork and not just generic action
beats. It’s not a particularly good
movie, but it harkens back to a time that we fans of MA miss so dearly.
[1] - Interestingly enough, like
the Cyborg sequels, the Nemesis sequels are also largely
unrelated to the original film, but form a continuity of their own. And like
the Cyborg follow-ups, those movies
center around a strong female protagonist. In the Cyborg movies, it’s Cash (played by Angelina Jolie and Khrystyne
Haje in parts’s two and three, respectively). In the Nemesis films, it’s Alex, played by bodybuilder Sue Price.
[2] - Yes, Albert Pyun purposely
named the characters after guitars and instrument manufacturers here. He
apparently did something similar in The
Sword and Sorceror, where the characters were named after famous rulers,
kings and queens. In Radioactive Dreams,
the characters were named after literary detectives.
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