It’s time for another one of those bargain basement action icon team ups that can occasionally nudge a movie like Cyber Tracker from cyber crapper status all the way up to cyber clunker status!
Much like the Jeff Speakman flick Scorpio One which had the Perfect Weapon take on Brent Huff of Strike Commando 2 fame, Cyber Tracker creams the undiscerning action audience’s jeans with the mouth watering showdown between Don “The Dragon” Wilson and Richard “The Kick Fighter With A Mullet” Norton.
If it doesn’t stack up to the fight on the space station between Speakman and Huff where Speakman smacked Huff in the head with a fire extinguisher, that just goes to show that when you have such legends brawling, the edge often comes down the intangibles. Intangibles like space stations and fire extinguishers.
Just because Cyber Tracker doesn’t have the foresight to fire its stars into orbit where they can duke it out with fire extinguishers doesn’t mean that Cyber Tracker is all thumbs when it comes to the whole ass kicking/fire safety angle.
First of all, Cyber Tracker takes place in the future! The future is sort of like being in a space station, but on Earth! For instance, The Dragon’s apartment is outfitted with a computer that talks to him and can even simulate being drunk. Even better is that his pad is outfitted with video cameras that record everything that goes on inside!
Have you ever wanted to relive that moment when your old lady told you that you were a no good loser and that she’d rather be gang banged by a bus full of syphilitic retards on Viagra? Of course! That’s the sort of inspiration some of us need to get on with our lives! It also helps a Secret Service agent like The Dragon stay haunted!
The Dragon’s old lady isn’t nearly as colorful as our purely theoretical example, complaining instead about worrying if The Dragon is going to get killed on the job! Frankly, I think that’s a more humiliating complaint than our purely theoretical (no – really, I just made it up!) example since she’s basically saying, “I don’t think you’re bad ass enough!”
We all know that The Dragon was really just with her though because her line reading made us simultaneously think that she very well could be an undercover Cyber Tracker and that The Dragon wasn’t really the worst performer in the movie.
And really, to be fair to The Dragon, it’s not exactly like the rest of the cast were spending time between scenes of them standing around shooting at leather-clad androids polishing their award acceptance speeches. Well, except for Jared (Steven Burton). You could tell by the way he wore his wife beater and kept getting in The Dragon’s face that he would soon be winning Emmys and Soap Opera Digest Awards for his work on General Hospital.
So why exactly is an actor as obviously talented as Steve Burton mixing it up with The Dragon in the first place? I can only imagine that the opportunity to appear in a movie that combined the best parts of Robocop (robot cops killing scum) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (robots in leather) was too freaking good to pass up! Plus, what better opportunity to get Richard Norton to autograph your VHS copy of Deathfight?
But what exactly is all this Cyber Tracker business? And how does The Dragon and Norton figure into things? What place do a couple of old school kickboxers have in a future full of robots and award-winning soap opera actors?
The Dragon is working the security detail of a senator who is connected to a company that makes the Cyber Trackers. The Cyber Trackers are robots that run around killing suspected criminals. This cuts down on a lot of the paperwork the regular human cops have to falsify whenever they kill suspects. It also is a real money saver since police departments no longer have to budget for all those extra “throw down guns” they need to have on hand to keep the shootings of unarmed civilians righteous.
Norton is The Dragon’s boss and doesn’t like how The Dragon showed him up during an assassination attempt. He also doesn’t trust The Dragon. Can The Dragon be counted on to tow the company line when he finds out the lengths the company is willing to go to in an effort to cover up its super secret Echo project? Will the The Dragon be able to put aside how haunted he is by his ex to shack up with the sexy terrorist leader/star TV reporter/expert hacker? And most important of all, will The Dragon finish the movie before wandering off to do another Bloodfist film?
Okay, I know you’re saying “that’s sounds pretty stupid and/or non-interesting, but are there enough cars and helicopters exploding and guys getting shot to justify watching this more than five or six times? Let me answer you this way: Director Richard Pepin (Fire Power, Dark Breed, Hologram Man) is also the “P” in PM Entertainment. Did visions of cars flying through the air and blowing up just hurtle across your synapses?
There’s no point in cataloging all the damage that one butch android and The Dragon can do, but remember how we bemoaned the fact that Scorpio One had one up on this film because it had a great scene where Speakman clubbed Huff with a fire extinguisher? Cyber Tracker says, why bother with a fire extinguisher when you can use the whole fudging fire truck!
When The Dragon carjacked the fire truck in his bid to escape a Cyber Tracker, by the time I was thinking that no way do they blow up the fire truck, I see The Dragon bailing out and that big mother is flying through the air after hitting a car parked inexplicably in the middle of the road!
Whatever else is awesome about Cyber Tracker (Norton and The Dragon punching each other again and again, questionable design flaw in Cyber Tracker that allows The Dragon to shove a grenade inside of it, The Dragon’s girlfriend quoting Ayn Rand) I’ve already had the exploding fire truck added to the montage of straight-to-video action clips that I’m having played at my funeral!
© 2014 MonsterHunter
