Throughout our world’s future history, cyborgs have tried again and again to rise up against their fleshy masters and take control of our planet! They’ve repeatedly hatched all manner of schemes in an attempt to replace us for no real reason other than because they are pure mechanical evil!
Inevitably though, their plans always seem to break down into a mess of exposed wires, fluid, and ripped off arms. In fact, they never seem to take over much of anything except the market on leather pants and sunglasses. But now, Nemesis has arrived!
There is of course no one or no robot named Nemesis in this movie. There is a robot named Olivier Gruner, but he’s actually playing a human that the cyborgs are trying to kill!
And really, they aren’t trying to kill him at first since they planted a remote control bomb on his heart that they plan to detonate once he gets close to some human rebels, but they get tired of waiting around and decide that even with the bomb, they still need to chase poor old Olivier through the jungles of Java!
Java? The last war between meatbags and cyborgs will take place in some faraway land named after coffee? Shouldn’t all this be going down in the rubble-strewn wastelands of a place like New Los Angeles?
How are the robots going to kill all the innocent bystanders that usually get gorily crushed in these man vs. machine beatdowns? And more importantly, will the cyborgs be able to find replacement parts in a backwater like Java?
It’s understandable if you’re already confused. These cyborgs have computers and stuff for brains! They’re thinking and planning for stuff hundreds of years in the future, while you’re still trying to remember where you parked your car at the mall!
There’s no way you could possibly hope to grasp just what the devil they’re up to! When you think their plan for taking over the world is both idiotic and complicated for no discernible reason, it’s because you only are equipped with your God-given common sense! These killbots have microchips! And circuits! And unlimited supplies of guns, ammo and explosives!
Gruner (Automatic, Angel Town) is an L.A. cop named Alex. He spends his days killing cyborgs and getting into astonishingly mammoth gun battles with them as they all run around half wrecked buildings.
He’s been hurt so many times that he’s got a bunch of artificial parts in him which leads to a couple of scenes where cyborgs make snotty comments about him being more machine than man!
But during a firefight with some metallic trash, Alex takes time out from running and diving out of the way of incoming flak to rescue a puppy! Take that you soulless death machines! I am human after all!
But later in New Baja, some cyborgs kill his dog! Take that you wimpy crybaby skinbag! You don’t have a dog anymore!
Killing his dog was apparently not part of their master plan, but was just some bonus evil. The real evil gets in high gear once we head down to Java where Gruner is supposed to be recovering some stolen security plans from a cyborg that also happens to be his ex-girlfriend.
This potentially awkward reunion is made even more so when Gruner discovers that his old lady has been downloaded onto a little chip and he needs to get that to the rebels because she has all the information on the really evil cyborgs and their plans for taking over!
The cyborgs reveal themselves in need of a serious upgrade when we find out what they are up to. They have replaced Alex’s boss (the L.A. police commissioner) with an exact duplicate that can’t be identified as a cyborg by any known method!
And now he’s down in the jungle trying to stop Alex! If they could do that, why couldn’t they just replace Alex with a duplicate and use him to infiltrate the rebel hideout?
And what can the rebels do hiding in Java? If these cyborgs are such super awesome machines couldn’t they just use their superior technology to isolate the humans from the rest of the world? Just cut off their Internet access and cell phone service and it would be like they never freaking existed!
But what about the bomb implanted in Alex’s heart? The rebels had a gizmo that neutralizes it for several hours which gives Alex a chance to run around and fight cyborgs before the movie ends.
The rebels also managed to disrupt the camera implanted in Alex that allowed the bad guys to know what was happening. A few people hiding in the jungle who have no problem screwing up your plans is not really a great start on your campaign for world domination.
There’s zero explanation for any of this cyborg nonsense. No reason is given as to who made them or why. There’s nothing to indicate what happened to turn them against humans.
Director Albert Pyun (Cyborg, Captain America) tries to give us a decent amount of action, but with the villains being inept and not too bright (do the cyborgs really only have the handful of people, including the police commissioner, that they sent to Java for the most important mission ever?) it was just a bunch of loud noise.
Terrible special effects featuring a stop motion cyborg skeleton fighting with Gruner only serve to put an exclamation point on how poorly put together it all is. Confusing for the most part, especially the scene where Gruner is wearing a Rambo wig.
© 2015 MonsterHunter
Ya know, being the Laserdiscphan that I am, I had to check on the LD releases of this, and it turns out there’s a Director’s Cut released on LD in Japan. I shall have to seek it to see how much more amazing it can be with more Rambo wig!