April 9, 2006
Gunhed
Movie Review By: SFAM
Year: 1989
Directed by: Masato Harada, Adam Smithee
Written by: Jim Bannon, Masato Harada, Adam Smithee
Degree of Cyberpunk Visuals: Medium
Correlation to Cyberpunk Themes: Low
Key Cast Members:
Overview: Gunhed is a Japanese live-action Mecha-Transformers movie done up in low-budget, gritty cyberpunk style. Unfortunately, it gives us a set of almost irreconcilable issues. On the one hand, the low-budget robots are pretty cool, as are a number of other low-budget FX. Yet, these are packaged in a barrage of incoherent plot points and truly strange sound decisions (the Japanese actors speak Japanese while the American actors speak English). When you see “Adam Smithee” in the director’s spot, you know something has gone wrong – in this case, the answer is clearly the editing. Gunhed may qualify for the worst editing of all time.
The Story: A Robot War ensued an a small robot production island in the Pacific in the year 2025, where sentient supercomputer, Kyron 5, has decided that Mankind was irrelevant. A mecha battalion of Gunhed warriors – huge transformer style tanks – were dispatched to eliminate Kryon 5. They didn’t succeed, but Kyron 5 was essentially marginalized, so no more force was sent. Now, 13 years later, due to a depletion of world resources, the key component that creates supercomputers, Texmexium (I shit you not – this is the name!), is in short supply, as are spare microchips. A group of scavengers have decided to enter the “forbidden zone” and go to the Island in the hopes of collecting Gunhed chips, which are now worth more than gold.
When the get to the Island, they quickly learn that Kyron 5’s protections are degraded but still seem in place. At first Kyron 5 doesn’t recognize their presence (you’d think it would notice a plane landing, but I guess not – nor do we find out why they didn’t just bomb the Island from the air back in 2025). But quickly it’s defenses, headed up by a fly-eyed looking “bio-droid” come to challenge the scavengers. Along the way, the find the remnants of a Texas Air Ranger helicopter, which still has a passenger, Sergeant Nim (Brenda Bakke). As things progress, most of the scavengers die in gruesome ways, until only Sergeant Nim and a mechanic named Brooklyn (Masahiro Takashima) survive – but due to the Island’s defenses, they are stuck there unless they can destroy Kyron 5. Also, they have stolen the Kryon 5’s supply of Texmexium (perhaps this is constructed from stale tacos), and now the Biodroid wants them back.
But that’s not all! Apparently some kids live on this Island (where they came from, we have NO idea), and they’ve decided to help Brooklyn and Sergeant destroy Kyron 5. But wait – there’s more! It turns out that one of the Gunhead tanks from 2025 appears salvageable, so Brooklyn attempts to revive Gunhed while Sergeant Nim goes off to do something unspecified (but at least it looks important). An incoherent sequence of actions ensues, whereby Brooklyn tries to bring the Gunhed to destroy Kyron 5. As he gets close, their biggest challenge awaits – Kyron 5 has resurrected a Gunhed of his own!
The Editing: Gunhed could have potentially been a decent, low budget movie, but the editing kills it. Continually, we see random actors popping out in places that don’t make sense, and whole streams sequences are rendered incoherent based on completely haphazard editing choices. I’m going out on a limb and guessing that at some point, the script was relatively simple and straightforward, but due to the editing, Gunhed was transformed into an absolute mess. But perhaps this is just the English version - does anyone know if the Japanese version is different?
The FX: Yes, the effects are all low-budget, and yes, it appears as if the entire movie takes place in a small factory, where the same locations are used over and over again only with different camera angles, and no, the tanks really don’t have any flexible movement. Still, even with the problems and all Gunhed has some enjoyable shots. The biodroid is pretty low quality, but the factory looked realistic enough, and every now and then, you get some cool, low budget effects. The Mecha-transformer fight is especially fun. .
The Bottom Line: The fact that the actors speak different languages but apparently understand each other perfectly really describes the state of Gunhed – it’s interesting but never seems to hang together well. Most egregious is the Biodroid, which has swallowed one of the scavengers whole, and now has to deal with someone inside itself stopping it from killing the rest of the people (the hows and whys of this are never explained). The appearance of the kids pretty much destroy all possibility of a believable story. On the other hand, we get Brenda Bakke doing her best sultry Lauren Bacall impression, which works somewhat well. Unfortunately, her partner, Masahiro Takashima isn’t up to taking a leading role. Watch this for the Mecha fight if you like, but the movie as a whole just doesn’t work.
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21 Comments on Gunhed »
April 10, 2006
Kybernetica.com @ 1:41 am (Trackback)
Gunhed…
[Source: cyberpunkreview.com] quoted: When you see “Adam Smithee” in the director’s spot, you know something has gone wrong - in this case, the answer is clearly the editing. Gunhed may qualify for the worst editing of all time….
April 11, 2006
David Gentle @ 1:47 am:
Note also that the Land Rover in Virtual light is called Gunhed.
SFAM @ 3:57 am:
Awesome! Terrific reference find David Gentle! It’s nice to know they got the name from a reputable source
April 13, 2006
David Gentle @ 5:56 am:
I think it’s the other way ’round actualy
June 10, 2006
FX¡¦¡¦¡¦¡£¥Ç¥£¥È¥ì¡¼¥É¤òĶ¤¨¤í¡ª @ 5:41 pm (Trackback)
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July 19, 2006
mattness @ 6:54 pm:
thx, SFAM.
I saw a movie almost 20 years ago (with german dubbing, I missed the beginning so until now I didn’t knew what it was) - and thanks to your review (pictures) at last I tracked it down!
Yeah - all reviews on net I’ve read crush this movie.
But I love it - I was in love with Bebe for years (costumes are really great in this movie).
If you’ll treat this one as a summer movie - you’ll have plenty of fun. Just don’t analyze the plot and don’t look at bioroid -it looks like scuba diver with some seaweed from some Verne novel.
August 8, 2006
Adam Doub @ 1:59 am:
Fun and interesting facts about movies that should have been great, but suffered from horrible budget-editing. A rather now popular Industrial band ‘Frontline Assembly’ used cuts of this film to make their video for the song ‘Mindphaser’. I think it’s hilarious that this movie works better as a music video than a movie
SFAM @ 3:04 am:
Hi Adam, is that video somewhere accessible? I’d love to see it.
Adam Doub @ 8:34 pm:
I know it’s easily downloadable from Emule, but if you want to just simply view it right now, check out -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLg70a-slao
Enjoy
March 16, 2007
Lukas Mariman @ 7:56 pm:
I pretty much agree with your review, especially concerning the editing severely damaging a potentially decent movie. I still like this movie, though; it has some really cool visuals in it and a definite cyberpunk atmosphere about it.
I also think this would make GREAT material for a computer game. Tactical combat, hacking, shooting stuff in a high-tech nightmare fortress piloting a tank/giant robot… How can you go wrong?
About the Gibson reference, as the other person said, indeed it was Gibson who got it from this movie, not the other way around. Although IIRC he altered the spelling to “Gunhead”, for whatever reason.
Lukas Mariman @ 8:16 pm:
BTW, you asked about the children and where the heck they came from. The opening narration tells us how a handful of technicians and their families were stationed on the island. The children we see are apparently the only survivors. I think we see some skeletons of the others near the end of the movie.
BTW, there was a 3-part Gunhed manga published at the time; I myself got hold of parts 1 & 2 but never got the 3rd part. It was drawn by Kia Asamiya (sp?), known from series such as “Silent Möbius”, and it fleshed out the story; and explained among background stuff such as why the main character is reluctant to get in a cockpit.
March 17, 2007
SFAM @ 2:23 am:
Hi Lukas, thanks for the details on the people and the manga. I would like to get a hold of those.
March 23, 2007
Lukas Mariman @ 8:43 pm:
About the manga, you may be interested to know you can still get hold of that on Amazon.
April 19, 2007
Fluke32 @ 11:11 pm:
Hi does anyone know where I can get a torrent for this film?
June 25, 2007
nikita @ 9:58 pm:
HI HI
i think thats the movie i am lookng 4 ages…is the battle in a complex under the ground?????/ if yes, PLEASE where can i download it???my father is lookg for more then 10 year for this movie!!!PLESE!HELP and TKS xxy
Lukas Mariman @ 10:05 pm:
@nikita: I don’t think it’s underground, although the complex probably has underground levels… As for it being available online, I can tell you I looked for it for ages. I guess it’s not known well enough for that.
Eventually I found a decent copy on Amazon. Don’t remember what I payed for it, but it was worth it. Very decent DVD release with nice looking menus and some nice anime trailers. Unfortunately, no featurettes, just a trailer.
June 26, 2007
nikita @ 9:27 am:
@lukas:hi tks a lot for that information.to b honest i never liked that movie when i was a child but my father just loves it…even after all this time..so to make him happy i ll keep looking
November 6, 2007
Curtis Blackburn @ 12:41 am:
“and truly strange sound decisions (the Japanese actors speak Japanese
while the American actors speak English).”
You find it strange that the characters actually speak their own languages…?
What are you? German?
January 3, 2008
A.M.D.A. @ 1:07 am:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8W6ID8jk4A
January 5, 2008
wiredcoma @ 8:52 am:
lol, i was just going to mention that A.M.D.A.
Does anyone know if that was fan made, or if it’s an official FLA music video?
Lukas Mariman @ 9:18 am:
No, that was official FLA video clip. As the info on the various YouTubes (who are not a truck) says it even won an MTV Award at the time.