Welcome
to the post-apocalyptic future as it was imagined in the late 1980s. If it looks familiar to you, all the better. There can be little doubt that Cyborg
is heavily inspired by the success and artistry of George Miller’s The
Road Warrior (1981), a film that generated a slew of imitators in the
Decade of Reagan.
Cyborg’s (1989) anarchic world is one of
mullets and shoulder pads, not to mention roving gangs and the total breakdown
of law-and-order. Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Gibson Rickenbacker, a taciturn,
Clint-Eastwood-like outsider known as a “slinger” whose tragic personal past is
explored in the film through a series of flashbacks.
The
Clint Eastwood connection is important not only because Van Damme play a man of
few words, but because Cyborg can easily be parsed as a
transplanted Spaghetti Western. There’s a Sergio Leone-vibe to the film’s
visual presentation. To wit, action is frequently punctuated by close-ups of
creepy, physically unusual characters, like the film’s gold-toothed, glow-eyed villain,
Tremolo (Vincent Klyn).
Produced
for just 500,000 dollars, Cyborg was the final theatrical
release under the Golan and Globus Cannon banner. The low-budget film might
be deemed somewhat silly-looking by today’s standards, since its evil gang is
so two-dimensional and stereotypically villainous, and because the fashions
reflect the late eighties to an alarming degree. Similarly, it’s not difficult
to discern that the filmmakers take any excuse whatsoever to have Van Damme
inflict his van-damage while shirtless.
Yet
Cyborg still works hard to earn a degree of respectability.
It
does so primarily through crisp, cleanly-directed fight scenes that don’t hide
the stunt-work or rely on quick-cutting or herky-jerky cameras. At least two
fight scenes -- one set in a Southern marsh, and one set in the pounding rain --
are unforgettably crafted.
Similarly,
the film’s quiet moments (which don’t require Van Damme to speak or emote much…)
are oddly affecting. These moments are abundantly simple -- almost more like
sketches, or memories half-visualized than full-fledged movie scenes -- and
they add to the sense of a fractured, fallen world, and a half-remembered,
past. There’s a dream-like, hazy feeling
here that works in Cyborg’s favor.
Cyborg operates on two parallel narrative
tracks for most of its duration, telling one story in flashback, and another one
in the present. The commendable quality about this structure is that the
stories connect in a meaningful way, and each story helps to generate interest
in the other. For instance, the
flashbacks reveal Gibson’s sad history, thus explaining his anti-social nature
in the present. Similarly, his deliverance, in the final act, hinges on the
(surprise) re-appearance of a character from his past. It’s not like you go to see a movie like Cyborg
for the character touches, I realize, but the film actually offers more of
value than just a series of increasingly picturesque kickboxing tournaments.
Cyborg
may not be a
great film, but it features neo-classical touches worth noting. And since so many post-apocalyptic movies of
the 1980s are outright terrible (like Warrior of the Lost World [1981], or
1990:
The
Bronx (1982), Cyborg’s general competence, thrills
and visual legerdemain qualify it, at the very least, as a better-than-average
example of the then-popular post-apocalypse sub-genre.
“Just
get us out of the City!”
In
the not-too distant future, civilization has collapsed and a plague -- the living
death -- has decimated the human race. Savage gangs now rule the cities, raping
and pillaging wherever they go.
A
female cyborg from Atlanta and the CDC, named Pearl (Dayle Haddon), has discovered
a cure to the plague, but gang leader Tremolo wants it for himself. Indeed, he plans to take Pearl back to
Atlanta, and control the cure himself.
A
loner and “slinger,” Gibson (Van Damme), who has a shared history with Tremolo,
shadows Pearl’s journey with an unwanted sidekick, Nady (Deborah Richter). They
brave many dangers together, and along the journey, Gibson recalls the family
he lost because of Tremolo, and the pain he has suffered.
Before
long, Gibson and Nady must confront Tremolo, and get Pearl safely back to
Atlanta.
“I
Like Death. I Like Misery. I Like this World.”
In
several significant ways, Cyborg mirrors an underrated and
unheralded post-apocalyptic film from the 1970s: The Ultimate Warrior.
In
that film, Yul Brynner played a loner and fighter who -- at the behest of Max
Von Sydow’s character -- had to transport one woman from NYC to North Carolina.
In
both cases and in both films, the hero must contend with a villainous gang, and
risk emotional connection so as to save the future itself.
And
in both films, of course, the journey takes the lead characters from the
dangerous “city” (the Big Apple) to the South.
And in both cases, that woman holds the key to the re-birth of the human
race. Cyborg isn’t quite as good as The
Ultimate Warrior, frankly, but it is not unimpressive.
As
noted above, the Pyun film is pretty low-budget, and yet it features two matter terrific paintings of the future world (NYC, and Atlanta) that go a long way
towards selling the End of the World as a reality.
Another
scene, also cheaply-produced, sells that reality in another, more intimate way. Pyun’s camera pans across a series of wagons
at a bazaar, and at one point, the audience sees the gruesome imagery of one
person being treated for the plague. The patient screams in agony, but is
largely unnoticed by others.
The
moment is not big and epic, for certain, but the economical imagery sells the
reality of this world in a way that is both memorable and economical.
Suffice
it to say, you wouldn’t want to live here.
If
one is inclined, one can also gaze at the film as a kind of extended Jesus
Christ metaphor. After losing his earthly connections -- his family -- Gibson wanders
the wastelands and cities, an outcast. At one point, he is crucified by his
enemies, literally, but then resurrected, stronger than before.
In
his new, fierce fighting form, post-crucifixion, Gibson battles not for
personal happiness, but for the future of the planet itself. He fights to save Pearl (a Pearl of great
price), and bring a cure to suffering mankind.
The Christ comparison is telegraphed in an early fight scene in which we
see Van Damme beside a graffiti cross, and then fulfilled, at least, during the
character’s crucifixion on the wetlands.
In fact, if you go back and watch the first frames of the film (following the matte painting), you'll notice, even, a crucifix in a kind of urban junk-yard setting.
Although
Cyborg raises some questions about its post-apocalyptic world (which
features both barbarians and high-tech
cyborgs…), and relies on clichés occasionally (like the sting-in-the-tail/tale ending),
it really goes for broke with its careful and evocative imagery. The Christ metaphor is valid, certainly (and
has been used before, in the post-apocalyptic arena, in The Omega Man [1971]),
but other visuals remain just as powerful.
For
instance, in one scene, we see a traditional wedding cake topping burn and
melt, a sign forecasting the end of civilization, and more specifically, the
end of Gibson’s happy “marriage” because of Tremolo. Two worlds (ours, and
Gibson’s) burn down.
The
film’s fight scenes, similarly, make the most of their locations. The scene leading up to the marsh fight -- a pitched
chase after a run through the sewers -- gets the adrenaline pumping.
And it indeed feels like real (if
post-apocalyptic) justice, when Gibson finally takes down the film’s villain in
a cleansing, cathartic rainfall.
So
Cyborg
may not be great, it’s true. The
film’s opening scenes -- with the ridiculous over-use of slow-motion
photography and the mood of a bad Italian action movie -- portend bad movie disaster.
But Cyborg avoids that fight with its
dedication to trenchant imagery, and a nice focus on humanity.
Gibson’s memories -- like gauzy and diffuse photos
from another era -- make us feel for him, and understand his refusal to be
drawn back into battle. He’s lost
everything, and wants nothing from the world.
Commendably, the film allows him to pull back from that point of
nihilism and re-join the war in a noble way.
Sure, it’s been done before (see: The Mad Max movies!), but Cyborg
is so crisply shot and lean in presentation that the film succeeds on an
artistic basis: as a straight-forward transplantation of the Spaghetti Western
to the science-fiction genre.
A
cyborg is a being who is part machine and part human. The nice thing about
Cyborg perhaps, is that the film’s focus lands more on the human and
less on the machine side of that equation than one might rightly expect from a
low-budget post-apocalyptic movie of late-eighties vintage.
The Spanish comic "Hombre" has far too many parallels. I'm sure the film drew inspiration from it.
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