Overview: In the annals of cheesy time travel movies, few are known better than Timecop, which cleared over 100 million in world wide box office gross. Starring martial arts star, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Timecop has decent but low-budget FX, a fairly shallow notion of science and time quandaries, but does provide a face-paced cyberpunk action-thriller with decent amounts of butt-kicking and gun fighting. Like many of his movies, Van Damme plays more than one version of himself – in this case, he plays himself 10 years into the future.

The Story: In the near future (2004), time travel has now become possible. Unfortunately, there is a very real danger that going back in time will alter the present. To protect against potential abuse, a special police outfit called the “Time Enforcement Commission” is established to monitor and enforce time travel concerns. Max Walker (Van Damme) is selected for an interview to join. Unfortunately, events in the future have already changed his current circumstances, which lead to the death of his wife, Melissa (Mia Sara).

Ten years into the future, Max, still working at the Time Enforcement Commission, goes back in time to stop his former partner from attempting to splurge on low-price stocks in 1929 that will be worth a fortune in the future. In stopping his partner, Max uncovers a larger plot of time travel tampering that implicates a sitting Senator of the United States (Ron Silver). As Max starts to investigate, the bad guys begin significant tampering with the timeline. Upon return from one of Max’s fact finding trips, he sees that the future has been significantly altered, and the police force is being decommissioned.

Max convinces his former friend (the time altering apparently has affected their friendship) and police Commander, Eugene (Bruce McGill), to send him back in time to fix the damage done to the timeline. In doing so, Max has an opportunity to go back and save his wife. Things come to a head when Max and the Senator meet face to face (both current and future versions of each).

The Action: The reason you want to watch Timecop is primarily for the fast-paced action sequences. We get lots of Van Damme kicking, along with a nice smattering of gunfights, all in interesting locations. As a downside, only one or two of the bad guys put up a decent fight. So many of the action scenes involve Van Damme just wailing on “red shirt” henchmen.

The FX: The FX for Time Cop worked at the time, but now look somewhat dated. There are quite a number of time portal effects, along with a few burning and “people plasma” shots sprinkled throughout. The set designs are pretty decent, most notably the time portal device, which has a nice dirty, low-tech feel to it. Still, I wish they had done more with the time travel machine, which looks and works like a rocket version of Back to the Future’s flux capacitor.

The Acting: Considering this is a Van Damme movie, the acting is somewhat better than expected. Van Damme is his same self, which is to say “rather wooden.” But Mia Sara, Ron Silver and Bruce McGill turn in decent performances – certainly decent enough to work with the fast pacing.

Problems with Time: Timecop really can’t be used to spark interesting discussions on time travel. The questions with how and why things work are too numerous and problematic to engage in interesting discussions. Somehow, they are able to determine if someone has violated time, and can go and stop them, but they don’t seem to be able to go to the same place more than once – why? The same two people cannot occupy the same space – why? What happens if a guy is 80 years older and goes back an visits himself as a small child? Virtually none of the same cells will remain from the child – certainly no skin cells (nor would they for 10 years out, as was the case for the poor Senator) – so how does this constitute occupying the same space? When Max Walker spends the day jumping through time, the future is modified – and he seems to have lost 10 years worth of memories. What happened to the version of Max that lived those 10 years? Did he disappear, or has he simply not gotten home from work yet? One gets the sense that Max is just jumping alternate versions of the present – each one that he created – but the ideas are too shallow to make any real sense of this.

Bad Guys Have Limited Imagination: Like many bad guys, the imagination of the evil doers in Timecop is severely limited. Time travel is used to go back and engage in bank heists, make stock purchases that pay out 70 years in the future, and so forth. If one really had this technology cornered, it seems that there would be far better ways to generate income. With just an ounce of imagination, one could come up with a myriad of more interesting ways of generating power and influence than petty crime. What about a recorded interview with Jesus Christ? One would think this might generate lots more power and income than knocking off a confederate wagon train shipping small quantities of gold. Instead, the extent of Senator McComb’s ambition is to get rich, kill off potential enemies and then steal the presidential election.

The Bottom Line: Timecop is an enjoyable movie assuming you turn your brain off prior to watching. This approach generally works as the fast-paced nature of the movie serves to stop you from noticing too many issues. The action is good and the FX are passable, so if you want to kick back and enjoy some Hollywood martial arts wrapped up in a cyberpunk time travel flick, give it a go. I will say though that the quality of the DVD is horrid - so much so that I’m docking a star from my review. It’s got a lousy transfer, no extras, and is in full screen only. Common Universal – fix this!

Overview: Here I yet again delve into the world of the experimental extreme Japanese Cyberpunk – this time to watch Death Power (Desu pawuda in Japanese), a movie Glam Creature discovered for me. Death Powder is a very low budget, mostly incoherent extreme Japanese Cyberpunk film with some occaisionally very interesting visuals. I probably would have liked this movie more had I obtained either a decent transfer or full subtitles. Unfortunately, the only place I could find this at the time was on LostSilver.com, a site that presses public domain movies to DVD-R format. All the main characters had appropriate subtitles, but the vast amount of mumbling in this film (mumbling usually occurred ultra-bizarre situations) was only subtitled in Chinese. The transfer was so bad that in some scenes the screen appears pixilated.

The Story: In the very near future, a group of three researchers has captured a very special android named Guernica (Mari Natsuki), and have brought her to a deserted warehouse, and have tied her to cot, with a protective covering over her mouth. One researcher (Izumiya) is left to guard the Guernica, but appears to be slowly going crazy. Two of the researchers, a guy (Inukai) and a girl (Murakami) apparently have just escaped (presumably from some fallout after capturing Guernica) and are on their way back to the warehouse. Murakami tries calling Izumiya and discovers that something is wrong.

They proceed carefully into the warehouse where they discover that Izumiya has gone crazy and is now trying to kill them. Izumiya makes it to Guernica, who suddenly sits up and blows dust all over Izumiya. From there, the movie turns extremely surreal. Guernica’s body slowly disappears into dust, while Izumiya’s face starts to expand dramatically (in a very low-budget sort of way), while Izumiya rips his hand off and Inukai shoots Izumiya with a futuristic looking gun. Things settle down with Izumiya off hallucinating, while Izumiya has somehow captured and tied Inukai to Guernica’s metal cot. She gets free and beats Izumiya to a pulp.

Meanwhile, Inukai’s hallucinations have provided him omniscience. Inijai proclaims, “”I understand the secrets of the flesh.” He sees Guernica’s origins and the ongoing struggle with the scar people, who are people who’s flesh is slowly decaying on their bodies. Things get even weirder from there with visuals of massive globs of oozing puss creatures with eyes, an incoherent video montage, a fight with the scar people, and in the end, we find a very bizarre looking monster sitting in a vast setting of emptiness.

What The Fuck is This Film About??? I fully acknowledge that Death Powder is incoherent enough that attempting to interpret it will potentially lead to nonsensical ambiguity. Unlike others like Tetsuo, which CLEARLY has a point even though many claim are incoherent, this film may not simply hold together well enough to have a clear point. That being said, after two watches, it appears that the death powder is an allegory for technology’s insidious and pervasive destruction of mankind. That Android chick’s name, Guernica, after Picasso’s famous painting, gives us the clue. She is the embodiment of humanity’s destructive tendencies, and like the painting, her ultimate impact is seen with dead, injured, dismembered and torn bodies. That Geurnica is created by a rock star playing an electric guitar indicates that our technology enabled modern culture is ultimately to blame. A bastardized version Christian forbidden fruit analogy also is at play here in that a woman (android) possesses the forbidden knowledge, and humanity tries to access it by capturing her and covering her mouth. The implication is that they hope to possess the knowledge without suffering the consequences.

The other aspect that Izumiya seems to explore is the nexus between life and death. Death Powder explores competing ideologies in examining this question. Initially, we are told that “Life without flesh is death.” The researcher, now fully infected and potentially dead, but still thinking (meaning his flesh is dead), responds to this thought with the following:

There is no death without life. There is no Answer to this Madness.
Heaven exists within my body…dead. But Hell…Hell is everywhere!

To which, the Android, Guernica responds, “Is there life without death?” From an android’s perspective, this is probably a VERY interesting line of questioning. If you are able to think, does this not imply you are alive? But if you have no flesh – doesn’t this imply you cannot die? This is of course completely at odds with the original statement. When we include the scar people – a faceless gang of humans losing their flesh – as those espousing that life without flesh is death, we are left with a losing struggle where living humanity (flesh) is supplanted by our technological monstrosities our culture creates. In effect, Izumiya is espousing that humanity slowly dies as our culture is merged with technology. In the end, all that is left is this zombie-like monstrosity that is neither alive or dead, but definitely isn’t human.

Disconnected Bizarre Video Montage: At about three-fourths through the 62 minute movie, Death Powder breaks into a ten minute plus video montage segment. This occurs after the death powder-enabled android chick states something to the effect that there are far more people to infect, so she must hurry. I’m guessing this is supposed to be Guernica’s Destroy the World tour. This would work except that when its over, we are brought right back to the warehouse, this time to await some workers who are lured into the pit of horrors. In ending it as such, the purpose of the montage seems to disappear. In the end, we are left with the idea that director Shigeru Izumiya had also developed this cool video montage footage, and wanted to include it somewhere. It does look pretty cool though.

The Visuals: Like many experimental films, Izumiya literally throws in every kind of camera technique available. We get tons of perspective shots, multiple exposure shots, different overexposed lighting shots, completely strange camera angles (like a sideways up-above running shot), all wrapped up in a myriad of disturbing visuals. Whether we get coherency or not, Death Powder is certainly creative. I really wish I had been able to obtain a better copy of the film, as I’m afraid the color is washed out on Lostsilver’s public domain version (although I don’t know – perhaps this is intentional). This leaves the film with a very washed out, almost (but not quite) black and white look.

The Sound: Perhaps Death Powder’s best strength is in its sound effects. Izumiya continually barrages the audience with a cornucopia of industrial/techno cyberpunk sounds. We get various low-toned keyboard pieces combined with strange and eerie sounds of all types and textures. If I had to guess, I’d say the majority of the time spent on producing Death Powder was working with the sound track – it’s by far the most polished aspect of the movie. This may not be all that surprising considering Izumiya got his start composing for Japanese Cyberpunk director Sogo Ishii on Crazy Thunder Road.

The Bottom Line: I wonder if I’ve become jaded since watching a number of these extreme Japanese Cyberpunk flicks. Many comments about Death Powder indicate that people were blown away by the visuals and have never seen anything like this – some to the point of even having nightmares about it. If this is your first, or perhaps even second experience in delving into extreme Japanese Cyberpunk movies, than perhaps Death Powder comes off much better. However, as much as I love the experimental visuals, this movie clearly could have been put together better. There is a lack of crafting in Death Powder which negatively impacts the movie-watching experience. Still, Death Powder, while incoherent, is at least unique, creative and interesting, so there’s certainly something worth watching here. It’s for this reason that I’m giving it 5 stars instead of 4. I really wish I was able to get a better transfer of this, but even if I had it, I still doubt I’d be giving it more than 5 stars.

Overview: The Island is straight Hollywood fare from the get go. In this summer bubble gum scifi-action romp, you’ll find few original ideas here, or even a coherent plot, but you will find loads of awesome visuals and even more action scenes and explosions. Vast amounts of money went into creating some rather incredible action sequences. Unfortunately, with all the thought devoted to creating those sequences, there apparently was little left for the story itself. Still, Scarlett Johansson looks absolutely gorgeous in The Island, and Ewan McGregor works as a leading man.

The Story: In the future, the desire among the rich and famous to live for ever dominates their existence. Along comes Dr. Merrick (Sean Bean) who founds the Merrick Corporation to meet this market need. The Merrick Corporation has (supposedly) found a method to take a person’s DNA and clone all of their organs within a gelatinous blob that maintains a persistent vegetative state. Unfortunately, they were never able to make this work, so instead, the Merrick Corporation broke all the laws and went with straight cloning of their human sponsors. For a cool 5 million bucks, sponsors can buy an insurance policy to ensure they always have a perfect set of organs that can be harvested to save them from whatever malady arises.

To keep the clones under control, Dr. Merrick constructs an alternate reality where a contaminated world has killed everyone except for a few fortunate souls who were rescued and placed into a special set of buildings. They have also saved an Island, which is now the only place on earth where people can live without dying. Now all the clones await their turn in the lottery, which, if won, supposedly means they will be able to go to the Island. In reality, the clones are “selected” when their sponsor has need for one of their body parts. From their diet to their associations with others to their urine output, every aspect of a clone’s life is monitored. THX-1138’s surveillance society, right down to the oppressive white, is omnipresent in The Island.

Lincoln Six-Echo, played by Ewan McGregor, is a clone who starts questioning his surroundings. He eventually gets out (through a completely idiotic plot point) and realizes that that those who leave to go to the Island are in fact being murdered. He quickly goes back to get his close friend, Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson) who just yesterday was selected to go to the Island (her sponsor is dying from wounds suffered in a car crash). Together, they make a break for it, but are pursued by (we are told) a crack-group of ex-special forces agents led by Djimon Hounsou. With the help of a low-level employee (Steve Buscemi) that Lincoln Six-Echo befriended, Lincoln and Jordan make for Los Angeles in an attempt to find Lincoln’s sponsor to discover the truth. From there, The Island turns into a high-tech, futuristic chase movie, with continually larger explosions and action sequences dominating screen. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but suffice to say this movie is as predictable as they come.

Michael Bay’s Approach to Story Telling: It’s pretty clear that director Michael Bay doesn’t plan movies like most directors. He seems to pay FAR more attention to the visual progression than he does the actual dialogue. The narrative in Island, like most of his movies, simply doesn’t hold together. To buy it, you have to accept all sorts of inane action on the part of the characters. Michael Bay seems to construct his movies via storyboards alone – for instance, he knows that in the end, the hero and the bad guy need to fight on a high-tech, scary looking bridge with explosions going on in the background – he is far less concerned about the rationale that brings them together. In watching it, the Island is one of those rare movies that is actually more coherent if you turn off the sound. The story you make up to go with the visuals will almost certainly make more sense then some of the plot points Bay provides.

I don’t even mind that we have to accept that two clones, three and four years old, are able to outwit an entire platoon of ex-special forces personnel, or that they “magically” assume all of their cloned person’s skills (like riding flying motorcycles). I can even accept that a supervisor on a regular basis, gives a clone a key that gets him to the outside world to save the supervisor from running errands, or that the the police regularly park their squad cars in the middle of an intersection and then don’t look for broadsides, but some of the basic plot stuff really does bother me. In the Island, the cloning is a HUGE secret that implicates the entire corporation into illegal action, but none of the investors, including the Defense Department which as spent 120 Billion on this “technology,” ask any questions. Even more incredible, none of the hundreds, if not thousands of low-level employees have ever consider spilling the beans. Instead, they are so closed-mouthed, they don’t even tell their family members. Killing is cool for them, as long as they get to keep their meager paychecks. This is just one example – far worse are the ending plotlines, which have our heroes assuming that top-notch special forces personnel wouldn’t search them for weapons even after they’ve shot people (lucky for them, the special forces personnel complied), that hired thugs would hang out and watch their boss go mono-a-mono with the hero vice wasting our hero, and that the boss himself, up in the comfort of his office, would be able to make it to the hero far quicker than any of his hundred thugs who’s job it is to enforce the peace.

Product Placement Gone Wild: It’s kind of refreshing to know that in the future, all dehumanized clones have to wear Puma shoes and clothing, drink Aquafina, serve Ben & Jerry’s Ice cream to kids, model for Calvin Kline on billboards, play Xbox, seek out MSN Search as a phone book, conduct their slave work on Apple computers, steal American Express credit cards, snag rides on Mac Trucks, wear Monza watches, and look longingly at Michelob Light beers. And of course, EVERYONE will be driving either Cadillacs or Dodge Magnums in the future. The Bond movies, where you expect significant product placement, don’t hold a candle to the monstrosity that is The Island. Not only do we get an obscene number of product placements, the on-camera product “lingering” that Mr. Bay engages in is almost criminal. I felt like I should have gotten a discounted ticket due to the myriad of embedded commercials. It’s rather amazing if you think of it – that almost 70 years into the future, all these companies will still be using the same logos they use today. I must say though the product placements are very memorable – they make be both remember the product and more importantly, they instill in me the STRONG desire to never buy these products again, as I now associate these brands as contributors to fucking up my movie watching experience.

The Visuals: While I’ve bashed the Island’s plot, Michael Bay certainly deserves a lot of credit for delivering some pretty cool cyberpunk visuals. The clone development labs look pretty darn cool. Additionally, Michael Bay continually composes shots displaying wonderful color panoramas. We get gorgeous yellows and blues in a variety of textures and settings. In scene after scene, it becomes clear that while Bay isn’t too concerned about the dialogue or narrative sequences, he’s intimately involved in the look. In some cases though, the visuals, while impressive, make absolutely no sense – the worst example being the weird eye-nanobots that are needed to take pictures of the brain activity. That its necessary to have metal insects entering the eye in order to take a brainscan 70 years into the future strains credibility far past the point of reason – even worse, the brainscan cannot be processed until 48 hours!

The Action Sequences: Michael Bay is known primarily for his outrageous and visually impressive action sequences. He does not disappoint in the Island as the action is consistently top notch. We get awesome explosions, incredible chase scenes and lots of gun fire and fight sequences, all with wonderful camera angles and high quality positional surround sound. If there’s one reason to definitely not miss the Island, it’s the action sequences. Michael Bay may not be a great film maker, but he and his crew are genius at constructing creative, eye-poppingly tense action.

The Bottom Line: If there was one change I would make to the story, I would have suggested they had done away with the illegal nature of cloning (the second change would be to eliminate the magical memory transferral that happens between clones and sponsors). The Island would have worked far better if it portrayed a world were society as a whole had decided that cloned people were property. Instead, the Island practically ignores this question. But while I have a hard time suspending disbelief for the plot the Island provides us, I probably would have given it six stars, similar to a number of other Hollywood movies high quality visuals and significant plot issues. Unfortunately, the obscenely over-the-top product placement deserves at least the loss of one star. Not only are there over a dozen companies, the “linger” factor makes it clear that you’ve just paid to watch a commercial. In the end, this is simply asinine and reflects poorly on the studio (Dreamworks), the film maker (Michael Bay), and the products themselves (too numerous to mention). I would conservatively guess that the product placement easily cost the Island many tens of millions in lost revenue. The Island cost 126 million to make but only brought in 35 million, large part because virtually all reviews discussed the overbearing product placements. Word of mouth from viewers merely confirmed that if you pay to watch this in the theatre, you will be paying for commercials.

Overview: Full Metal Yakuza is simultaneously a campy low-budget Robocop Rip-off done with gangsters and an exercise in a mild form of extreme Japanese cinema. Director Takeshi Mike (best known for Ichi the Killer, but also did Andoromedia) does his trademark extreme blood spatters, and includes lots of head chopping, gun fighting, and a torture-rape-suicide scene thrown in for good measure. You won’t get any big picture thoughts out of this flick, but you might want to tune in for the crazy action and visuals.

The Story: Kensuke Hagane (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) is a slacker junior gangster who doesn’t show a lot of potential. In his mind, he wants to be a Yakuza – a tough guy with a code that’s feared by all. Unfortunately, he just doesn’t have what it takes. He sucks at fighting, enforcement, and worse – he even sucks at love making. He idolizes the older Tousa, a gangster tough guy extraordinaire that has a detailed dragon tattooed on his back. After Tousa gets taken prisoner for 7 years, Hagane perseveres to become an enforcer. Unfortunately, when released, the Yakuza gang betrays Tousa and shoots him down – Kensuke gets killed in the crossfire.

Then the weirdness begins – Hagane wakes up in a strange lab, and finds out that his head has been removed from his body and is now attached to a cyborg body, partially made up with Tousa’s remains. He has Tousa’s heart, hands, feet, tattooed back, and most importantly, his very large “member.” An insane genius scientist ((TETSUO’s Tomorowo Taguchi), for reasons never explained, has brought him back to life, but before Hagane agrees to work with the scientist, he must take revenge on those who killed him and Tousa.

Hagane goes all out, killing his way to the top, but eventually stops due to the pleading of his former friend. Along the way, he also finds Tousa’s mistress (Shoko Nakahara), and falls in love with her. Things go horribly wrong when she is taken prisoner. Hagane now has to finish what he started.

Yes, He’s a Cyborg, But…: Nothing in this movie should be taken too seriously, especially the cyborg aspects of this. Kensuke eats bullets and other assorted metals for energy, but apparently doesn’t even need to grind his teeth to chew them. His body is fully metal, but apparently he’s had an extra large dick grafted on as well. He does weird chants in order to temporarily turn off his emotions (apparently, this trips a jump switch of some kind). I could go on, but nothing in this depiction of cyborgs is intended to be anything other than the creation of a setting.

The Visuals: Full Metal Yakuza gives us a number of trademark Takeshi Mike shots, including massive screaming, gratuitous blood spurts shooting in all directions, torture and rape, and a variety of surreal action scenes. From a cyberpunk standpoint, the interesting visuals take place when Hagane is first transformed into a cyborg. In many ways, they resemble a lighter version of Android from Notre Dame’s visuals.

The Bottom Line: Full Metal Yakuza is interesting in that it was apparently made for a very low budget. There is enough here in terms of strange, extreme cyberpunk visuals that many might really enjoy this flick. Just don’t be expecting too much from the story. There are whole sets of scenes that go absolutely no where (the female cyborg chick, for instance), and many more that strain the bounds of coherence. But if you’re interested in watching a campy, extreme Japanese, non-sensical cyberpunk flick, you might want to give Full Metal Yakuza a try.

Overview: Some low-budget movies make it with a terrific story and just the right quality of effects; others come close; and others still get worried about not quite making it, so they decide to spew insane plot twists at the viewer in the hopes of increasing the tension. Unfortunately, Johnny 2.0 takes this tact. The movie was “teetering on the edge” of being decent, but fell off the wrong side. Instead of going with the stream of increasingly unbelievable plot twists, had they spent just a bit more on beefing up the story, Johnny 2.0 could have gotten some real kudos.

The Story: In the present, the experimentation with cloning begins to take off when scientist Johnny Dalton (Jeff Fahey) teams up with Frank Donahue (Michael Ironside) to create a small cloning start-up that has terrific potential. They are able to speed up the cloning process, and more surprisingly, are able to take an MRI scan of a person’s brain in a way that can record their entire set of memories. Unfortunately, anti-technology terrorists attack their complex and severely hurt Johnny, causing a massive, bleeding head injury.

Johnny wakes up later to find that almost 20 years have passed, and that he is no longer Johnny Dalton – he’s a clone. Now referred to as “Johnny 2.0,” Johnny’s memories extend only to the injury 20 years ago when he had a scan of his memory. Now, the earth has become a dystopia, where countries have broken down, and only the corporations exist to maintain order. Worse, the “real” Johnny Dalton has either been taken by terrorists, or worse, has joined them, and has taken all his research, including a software program that removes imperfections in clones. Now, unless Johnny 2.0 can find and return the original Johnny Dalton, his body will start to break down within the week!

While the story starts off in an interesting way, and generally keeps a decent pacing, as things get tense, instead of resolving things in an innovative way, the viewer is continually assaulted with the most extreme plot twists. OK, one or maybe two might work, but Johnny 2.0 just doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. Worse, in key scenes the rationale for certain characters starts to resemble the massive space invasion force surrounding Naboo in The Phantom Menace – they all seemingly took a lunch break when the counter attack came, leaving only one ship to defend their forces. When all is said and done, it’s simply not possible to suspend disbelief.

Johnny 2.0 Clone Technology Musings: For all its faults, Johnny 2.0 does have some interesting musings about cloning. The idea that clones can be sped up, and enhanced (by removing eye imperfections, improving the immune system, etc.) is interesting. More interesting is the idea that our memories can be recorded and re-inserted into a new host. Unfortunately, Johnny 2.0 doesn’t address idea with any degree of thought. In Johnny 2.0, the brain is essentially seen as an empty hard drive just waiting to be filled up with new memories. Even existing people apparently can have their memories wiped and re-inserted with new ones. Had this technology been combined with the rapid growth process, whereby a clone could be created while having their brain slowly become adapted to the imprinted memories, this would have worked lots better. Unfortunately, shortcomings in the ending narrative precluded anything unique here.

Even with the faults, Johnny 2.0 poses an interesting idea – that our existence could be perpetually extended by a combination of cloning and brain scanning. In Johnny 2.0, it’s the evil corporate head who is trying to cheat death, but if such a technology were created, one can only imagine the change we see in society. Imagine the chances we individually would take.

The FX: For the most part, the FX was what you’d expect – low budget TV fare. It wasn’t too distracting though, and pretty much worked for what was intended. Some of the effects, like the force field walkthrough scene was pretty forced though. One wonders why they would spend the money for a high-tech force field instead of a wall, especially when it can be penetrated so easily. They also seemed to try to stick VR helmets on everyone – this is more a sign of the times as VR stuff was hot in the mid nineties.

The Bottom Line: While the concept is interesting, this made for TV movie is poorly implemented. Although, there is enough here to get a modicum of enjoyment, and the movie does start off well enough that I feel compelled to give it at least a 5 star rating, especially considering it’s low budget. The actors were at least adequate (Michael Ironside of Total Recall fame was definitely the best of the bunch), so consider giving it a watch if nothing else strikes you.

Overview: Overview: Codehunter (a.k.a. Storm Watch) is a fun, but absurd low budget AI and VR flick. This is not a movie who’s technical plot holds together, but it does work as a bubble-gum current-setting hacker-cyberpunk romp. Code Hunter is another War Games-Hacker-Colossus, the Forbin Project rip-off, but in a simplistic and enjoyable way. I’m a sucker for movies with either Bai Ling and Adrian Paul in it. Along with those two, the supporting cast which includes Babylon Five’s Jerry Doyle, Vanessa Marcil and Nora Dunn is pretty fun too.

The Story: Nick “Jester” Chase (played by Nick Cornish) is a reformed hacker who likes to hang out in a VR first person shooter game called Shock. Simultaneously, a small computer firm is attempting to sell the US Navy on a new satellite system called “Thunderhead,” which is designed to control the weather. Nick is contacted in the game by Skylar (Bai Ling), a computer genius extraordinaire, to steal a file from an unknown computer system. After refusing, Skylar blackmails Nick by modifying his record to make him a wanted fugitive. Skylar agrees to steal the file, but then hides it and tries to go to the news station to seek protection. He enlists the aid of up and coming reporter, Tess Woodward (Vanessa Marcil), who agrees to help him.

Unfortunately, Thunderhead appears to be out of control, and has created two massive hurricanes on each side of the US that will devastate the both coasts, causing potentially millions of deaths and billions in damages. The government tracks down Nick and bring him in for questioning. As the plot unfolds, it appears that a strange connection between the VR game “Shock” and Thunderhead emerges. Unless they can unravel it, the consequences will be catastrophic.

The Bottom Line: Although the cast is fun, and the pacing is good, the actual plot points and coherency are well past the point of believability. They are too numerous to count, but suffice to say the good guys had a number of obvious solutions that could have stopped the catastrophe. To add insult to injury, the movie overstretches its AI angle – had it stopped earlier, it would have worked within the narrative, but instead, they go for the sappy “teach me all of humanity” angle. Again, the movie is fun to watch, but lacks any real intelligence.