First, just for completeness sake, a few comments on
Space Rage. I think this is Micheal Pare's worse movie that I've seen (and that includes "Lunarcop", "Moon 44", and "Falling Fire"...although "In The Dead Of Space" gives it some competition) This movie did not have a plot so much as a series of scenes. Most movies you get the feel that "well...we're introducing characters...now we're in the middle of the conflict...now we're coming to the cliamx...things seem to be wrapping up") etc...this just lurched from one set of events to another. Watching it over two days, I lost track of the running time so I coudn't wacth the clock to see where in the movie we were and the movie didn't help. At one point, I thought the 10 minutes or so at the end of the movie were really going to be the main conflict in the movie.
Anyway, the general plot is that Micheal Pare plays a con who is sentanced to a prison planet from which there is supposedly no escape. He organizes an escape of most of the inmates and tries to get off the planet. Richard Farnsworth finds out, and hunts him down.
Problems I had:
1). The idea of an unescable prison planet is pretty good, but several times they call it a "colony" and their are some civilians and children around who are way to close to the prisoners. It seems like the prison is relying on the difficulty of escape to disuade the prisoners, so actual security is pretty lax, but the security should be much tighter regardless simply because their are others on the plant.
2) Richard Farnsworth is fairly old, here. He does a good job at playing a character that makes no sense. He seems to be sotra a retired "Cobra" or "Martin Riggs" or "Dirty Harry", but it's not explained well and how he gets involved at the end makes little sense.
3) Actually, much of the ending makes little sense. Plot points for dramatic impact get abandoned pretty quickly.
4) Foreshadowing. Farnsworth keep waking up from a nightmare where he was stabbed because he was too slow to reload his shotgun, so he builds a sorta quickloader for his shotgun. A) This gives away the ending (you know what will happen) B) If I was really worried about that, I'd get a weapon that hold more than two round. His solution is cute, but really not very smart
Not bad for some mindless entertainment; the acting is decent and the movie moves at a good enough rate not to lose interest. Just don't expect a tight story that makes any sense
-------------------------------------------------------
OK, my main interest here is
Digital Man, with poor Mathias Hues doing his best "Terminator" impression.
Hues plays the "Digital Man" (or "D1", for short) a cyborg soldier sent to stop some terrorists whom have somehow stolen 250 nuclear missle launch codes. (I mention 250 only because the script keeps mentioning "250" like it matters, but it really doesn't) Problem is, the terrorist were being backed by two star (army?) general so the D1 interfering kinda ruins his day. Not to worry, one of the people on the 'evac' ship sent to retrive the D1 is also a cyborg, and with a quick broadcast from the generals sidekick, Dr Parker (played by Paul Gleason of much more fame in "Trading Places" and "The Breakfast Club"), the cyborg kills the pilot and tries to take over the ship. Before he and the co-pilot are also killed, the co-pilot manages to activate some sort of emergency program in the D1, which causes the D1 to want to uplink the launch codes to a satelite. Although not explicetly stated, this would be a 'bad thing', I guess, either launching the 250 rockets or...something else bad.
So the ship carrying the D1 crashes in the middle of nowhere (Arizona?) near a town near an old abandonded underground nuclear research facility. He immediately goes out to look for some way of broadcasting the codes. Here he runs into the local townsfolk. These said townsfolk are a fairly typical group of 10 or so small town hicks. They are actually very embarrasingly overacted (including one character by Patrick Swayze's much less talented younger brother) and seem more like rejects from a Chevy Chase "Vacation" movie. Watching the townfolk interact with other people in the movie is disjointing because it's like your watching two movies in one scene. Anyway, D1 blows up a trailer and pretty much just wanders off
Meanwhile, a Commando team is dispatched to track down and destroy the D1 and retrieve the launch codes. Un beknowst to the team, some of them are cyborgs as well. Funny thing is,even the cyborgs don't realize they are cyborgs. The team is sent under somewhat false pretenses. They are told that he is out of control, which is only partially true, and the don't know about the general's involvement. The team lands near the town, meets the locals, and goes of to find D1. D1, meanwhile finds the undergound nuclear research facility and is trying to find the communications room to upload the launch codes from. Along the way D1 manages to kill a few of the team, revealing that they happen to be cyborgs themselves. This seems to come as a shock to the survivors, who seem to really be against cyborgs being around. This even goes so far as the commander of the group will not remove the dog tags from the falled cyborg soldier and another team member he's romantically involved in exclaims "If it was me would you take *my* dog tags", which he doesn't answer. This is good in that it seems to set up foreshadwong that she will be killed or injured and revealed to be a cyborg herself. The movie, to it's credit, avoids going with that cliched twist ending. Unfortunately, there is never any explanation about why the humans dislike cyborgs. This seems to be an attempt to build some tension in the team, but since it's never really explored as to *why* they feel this way, it doesn't work.
So, they persue the D1, which whittles down the team size quite a bit (from 5 to 2)..before the final showdown....
Some things I kinda liked, some very few things. Matthias Hues, although basically playing a robot, does a good job within that of conveying that he's not really the bad guy, just doing what's he programmed to do. He comes across as a sympathetic victim in the general's plans. Also, the guns everyone used were pretty cool, although they looked like turbo-charged weed burners. Warning: The "Adam Baldwin" in the credits is *not* one of the (in)famouse "Baldwin Brothers" so don't let that through you off :)
There was a lot not to like as well, mostly in the realm of 'but why?' with the plot. Why was the general trying to launch missles in the first place? And how did he know the old lady in the town at the end? And how did the D1 find the terrorists in the first place?
There was a notable consitancy or script error when he calls a captian "Lieutenant" (for any futuristic movies, I usually ignore literal rank insignia, just figureing they picked up a bin at the local military surplus store, but this guy was called "Captain the rest of the movie, so no grace extended for that one).
The whole 'cyborg soldiers' who didn't know they were cyborgs was a bit non-sensical. Why they were disliked and why they didn't know they were cyborgs wasn't addressed. As a matter of fact, the cyborgs who didn't know they were cyborgs...hated cyborgs...just a messy plot thread. Also, the special effects were...very bad. They started with an intro (and a few other shots) that were all CGI, at the same level as an episode of "Re-boot" or maybe "Johnny Qwest". The blue screen shots were even worse.
So, this is a fairly poor low budget offering. A fairly senseless action flick, but don't try to find any real reason for what's happening, just accept it...or skip it. Not worth seeing unless you like stupid cyborg action movies
