CYBORG COP 2 (1994)

 

DIRECTED by

Sam Firstenberg

SCREENPLAY by Jon Stevens from a story by

Sam Firstenberg

STARRING - David Bradley as DEA Agent Jack Ryan

Morgan Hunter as Jesse Starkraven / Spartacus Cyborg

Jill Pierce as Liz McDowell

Victor Melleney as Sam Pickens

Douglas Bristow as Dr. Owens 

Dale Cutts as Captain Salerno

Adrian Waldron as Jon Travis

Hector Rabotabi as Mike Alvarez

Kimberleigh Stark as Gloria Alvarez

Michael McGovern as Warden Chuck Hunter

David C. Webb as Eddie Richards

Frank Notaro as "Stix"

Robin B. Smith as "Fats"

Norman Coombes as Mayor Spencer Davis

Ken Gampu as Police Chief

Isaac Mavimbela as Carter

Darryl Werner as Cyborg #1

Vadim Dobrin as Cyborg #2

Arthur Berezin as Cyborg #3

Tyrone Stevenson as Cyborg #4

PLOT - Jack Ryan is back...and he's badder than ever.

This time - Jack Ryan arrests a neighbourhood gangster and drug dealer - Jesse Starkraven - unfortunately Jack's partner is killed during the bust. 

Starkraven is sentenced to death, however upon reaching the penitentiary he is abducted by agents from a cybernetics corporation. Starkraven is converted into a cyborg - one of a new generation of cyber soldiers the unscrupulous company is hoping to market.

Upon hearing of Starkraven's supposed prison break, Jack vows to hunt him down to avenge his partner.

However Jack soon uncovers the cyborg conspiracy and finds out that Starkraven (now going by the name Spartacus) has broken his programming and now has control of a cyborg army with which he intends to conquer the world...

PERFORMANCES - David Bradley reprises his role of Jack Ryan from the original.

This time round we see Jack driven by vengeance as he goes rogue to redress the murder of his partner ( hang on a sec - doesn't Jack go rogue to avenge his brother in the first movie ? Seems like our boy Jack takes a lot of things INCREDIBLY personally. If you let your dog shit on his lawn he'd probably throw in his badge and hunt you down.)

As we can see - there's very little change to Jack's character in this sequel (although he is single again - the cute reporter from the first movie obviously got tired of him buggering off on personal vendettas every five minutes).

To be fair there are a few slight changes to Jack's character - he's a bit more ruthless this time out, he's not adverse to a bit of "police brutality" when interrogating witnesses, also he seems to have picked up the habit of using cheesy chat-up lines on the ladies this time round (he's generally cockier around women full stop), but aside from that he's much the same as he was in the original. Bradley again gives a decent performance and I don't really get why he didn't become a bigger action movie star in the 80's and 90's than he did.

One thing I will say - whoever designed Jack's costume must have been on crack cocaine. It starts off well enough - the classic black leather jacket, jeans and shades - but why did they have to make him wear a bum-bag around his crotch for the entire film ? It looks like the sort of thing a middle aged woman would wear to keep her spare change in when she goes to the shops. Way to undermine your badass action hero there.

Jill Pearce is Jack's love interest this time round as she plays the role of Liz McDowell. Unfortunately she seems to be a bit of an afterthought as she's barely in it - she only really has anything to do in the final scene where she helps Jack kick some cyborg arse.

As a result of this there's very little to her character, to the point that I can't even tell if she's a decent actress or not, she has little to do and has barely any chemistry with Bradley. This is a shame as Jack's relationship in the first movie was pretty well done. Maybe they should have just got Alona Shaw back from part one...

Then we get to the villain of the piece - Morgan Hunter as Jesse Starkraven aka Spartacus, which is really a performance of two halves.

In his human form Jesse is a total psycho (wouldn't you be if you where an action movie bad guy saddled with a name like "Jesse" ? I bet he was bullied at school, it'd certainly explain a lot). He's basically a hair trigger lunatic with a bad attitude and a grudge against Jack (who killed his brother, so now Jesse's got a vendetta against Jack. What is it with personal grudges in this film ?), what this basically boils down to is Jesse killing lots of rival drug dealers and banging on about how Jack is going to be next, all whilst pulling a face that looks like he's licking piss off a nettle...

It's as daft (and as entertaining) as it looks.

Then, at about a quarter of the way into the film Jesse gets abducted by an evil corporation and turned into a Cyborg Cop (well, a Cyborg drug dealer really, but let's not split hairs). 

In cyborg mode he gains the codename SPARTACUS and a nice baseball hat and a pair of shades (for some reason all the cyborgs in this movie wear baseball caps and shades. This is basically our way of telling who the cyborgs are instead of - I dunno - giving the actors playing them makeup jobs to look more "cyborgy". Is "cyborgy" even a word ? It is now).

Needless to say Spartacus breaks his programming and decides to become the new cyborg Messiah and to lead his new race into dominance over mankind (which basically involves blowing lots of cop cars to smithereens).

Baseball hats off to Hunter though as he does (just about) manage to sell Starkraven's transformation into Spartacus pretty well. At first Spartacus does come over as a completely different character and it's only as his ingrained evil side re-emerges that he slowly gets more Starkraven-like. The only problem is that Hunter is saddled with a RoboCop style vocal reverb effect added to his voice (presumably to make him sound more robotic) but it only serves to hamper Hunter's performance and make it seem more stilted than it really is. A shame.

SEX & VIOLENCE - Sadly Jack doesn't get a sex scene this time round (so no motor boating), The closest we get is a cheeky suggestion that Jack is aroused when he's in a tight spot with Liz during a firefight with cyborgs.

The violence is much the same as before - people get shot in slow motion, cars go boom, helicopters go boom, buildings go boom - all in glorious slo-mo. In fact the slo-mo is so overused this time round that you can even tell when it's David Bradley's obvious stunt double being blown through the air (spotter's hint - he has a totally different haircut).

SFX - Sadly we don't get any "Terminator peeled face" style makeup this time round - the cyborgs get a sort of metallic body - but it looks exactly like what it is - a bunch of blokes wearing Lazer-Tag style plastic armour sprayed silver.

The rest of the movie is pyrotechnics central.

Boom. Boom and...er...Boom.

Of course - for maximum effect all these shots of things exploding are shown three times, EVERY TIME from three different camera angles.

Speaking of things exploding - when the cyborg army is destroyed at the end of the film they're BLATANTLY shop window dummies being blasted to Hell. 

RATING - Another straight to Video "masterpiece" from the world of Cyborg Cop. I'm not going to lie - it's not a patch on the first film BUT it still has it's moments.

Good clean cybernetic fun. 3 and a half bumbags out of 5.

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