"Dark Angel: The Ascent" and "Cyber Tracker"

[Fearless Freep]

"Dark Angel: The Ascent" - Like many Full Moon productions, this one has a very interesting and fairly original premise that get's let down by lack of budget  and production talent to see the promise through.

The 'back story', if you will, is that demons are in Hell in punishment for a rebellion against God.  While in Hell, they punish the sins of humans.  Demons still seek to serve and worship God.  (Watching a family of demons in Hell saying grace before a meal was...interesting).  Demons, in their part in the divine plan, have a zero tolerance policy for sin.

One young demon, Veronica,  has dreams of a world with a blue sky and a yellow orb and talks to those around her about wanting to see that place.  "That place", of course, is our mortal world and such ideas are considered blasphemous.  In escaping punishment for her ideas, she actually does come to our world in bodily form (Demons normally only visit this world in a non-corporeal sense through possession).  There she meets a friendly doctor with 'a pure heart' and runs into typical 'stranger in a strange land' sorta experiences.

Veronica's biggest problem in dealing with her new environment is a) her zero-tolerance policy for sin b) her ability to read people's 'character' (good, evil, etc...) c) her supernatural abilities.   Put these together and she starts wrecking havoc in the motral realm; brutally killing those she deems as evil.

The story and characters are interesting.  Angela Featherstone as Veronica does a good job, although the rest of the actors are fairly typical Full Moon fair, not standouts, but not embarrsing either.  The two cops trying to solve the murders that Veronica is commiting are very good, reminding me a bit of Rosewood and Tagert from "Beverly Hills Cop"  The basic premise of a demon coming to Earth and wrecking carnage simply because her desire is to serve God and punish sin is pretty original and sets up some interesting possibilites.  

However, like many Full Moon movies with big ideas, the follow through doesn't quite make it.  In one scene, an angel visits Veronica's parents and tells them that what Veronica is doing is within God's will and that she will serve as a light and an example for the downtrodden and oppressed.  Unfortunately, that never really turns out. Veronica kills a bunch of people, scares the Hell into a few others, and that's about it.   Also, the ending is fairly weak.  Veronica gets shot by a security guard and gets taken back to Hell to be healed.  It seemed as though the story wasn't sure if it wanted to be a 'mortal/demon love story' or a 'demon extracting divine judgement on the sinners of the world story'.   It worked well within those two ideas as they played off each other, but the setup seemed to heading for the latter conclusion and ended up really being the former.  Almost like the script left them  without enough room to really know where to go with one idea so the sorta wimped out with the later.

In all, a good idea with some interesting characters.  Executed well and professionally on a budget but with a script that gives up in the end.  Worth watching, but expect to feel somewhat unfullfilled in the end



Cyber Tracker - This is a Don "The Dragon" Wilson production, and he was the star as well.  "Danger Will Robinson" - Usually when a main actor is also invovled in the back end work, it's not going to be good.  In this case, the story is that androids (cybertrackers) are being used as enforcers to go out and execute people who have been covicted in absentia.  Our hero, Eric ("The Dragon") is a bodyguard for a politician and witnesses his boss executing an employee.  It seems Eric's boss (Senator DIlly) is in bed with the company building the cybertrackers and the employee was a spy for the resistance group fighting against the turning over of the justice system to computers.  Since Eric won't play along...a cybertracker is sent after him, and he ends up joing the resistance in fighting the cybertrackers. (Actually, in the movie, the company is called CyberCore and the trackers are called CoreTrackers...)

I won't say too much; Nathan's review at ColdFusion pretty much hits all the points I was thinking about when watching the movie.  Such as "Why is the sentance always death?" and that watching gun battles involving androids that are both invulnerable and can't aim gets pretty boring.

Two additional points is that:

1) People who write future, cyborg, martial arts, action movies should just plain not bother with any romantic dialog or interludes.  They never do it well and it's just painful to watch the attempt

2) Richard Norton, as the Senator's chief of security and main bad guy enforcer, is actually probably the best actor on film here.  He was certainly more relaxed and competent than "The Dragon", so the few scenes with them together are a bit akward  (OK, not as bad as Gene Hackman chewing up sceneray and Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Quick And The Dead", but you know how it can be when you have two actors of different skill levels working in the same scene)

In all, if you like any combination of future cyborg, martial arts action movies with some silly premises and plot points, this should  be enjoyable. Just go in expecting ninety minutes of low-budget cheese and you should come out in good shape.

[Fearless Freep]

although the rest of the actors are fairly typical Full Moon fair, not standouts, but not embarrasing either.

One comment on that.  Veronica's demon friend in hell; she was pretty bad.

[raj]

Excellent review of Dark Angel.  I thought it was a fine flick, the idea that demons were just doing their 9 to 5 job, torturing sinners, and then going home to supper was hilarious.  

You're right, the ending left a lot to be desired.  I had been hoping for a sequel absent a better ending for this; heck I'd even have taken a "they live happily ever after" ending.

[Fearless Freep]

Speaking of 'going home to supper', I was surprised they never had a moment where it dawns on Doctor Max just what supper really was :)

[John]

I liked both movies as well as the sequel(s?) to Cybertracker. I liked that the trackers weren't wimpy androids that could be easily disabled as they are in most future movies.

[Fearless Freep]

I liked that the trackers weren't wimpy androids that could be easily disabled as they are in most future movies.

The problem with that is that the also had remarkably bad aim and just stood and shot. So you ended up the long silly scenes of the android shooting stuff to no effect and the humans shooting androids to now effect.  It would've been ok if they had been shorter.  Like the human saying "gee..my shot's didn't work, maybe I should run" or the tracker saying "gee, I missed and he's hiding behind that car, maybe I should stop shooting and just walk around the car"

[John]

>The problem with that is that the also had remarkably bad aim and just stood
>and shot.

True, a machine should have perfect aim like Robocop. Still I preferred them to the type robot/android that can be disabled with just  couple shots.

[Fearless Freep]

Still I preferred them to the type robot/android that can be disabled with just couple shots.

I was thinking about that when watching "Space Truckers".  It seemed liked the first android in the opening demo for "The Company" was nigh undestructible and just a killing machine.  The second android shown (the first that woke up from the shipment) was pretty serious, too.  But as more and more androids woke up, the seemed to get dumber. Easier to avoid, fool, and destroy.  I hate when shows make androids out to be unstoppable killers, and then they are easily acoided, stopped, and killed by the hero(s)

The androids in "A.P.E.X." were similar...hard to destroy but couldn't hit the side of a barn from the inside