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Project:Shadowchaser
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by Turner Home Entertainment
Sales Rank: 45252
Price: $9.98
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This bubblegum action thriller directed by John Eyres is clearly inspired by films like Die Hard, where a building is held hostage by terrorists. The twist here is that the head terrorist is a cyborg, a "perfect synthetic warrior" produced by the American's ATR, Advanced Technical Research unit (whose project explains the title). What this kind of genre pic needs is a simple narrative but the screenplay by Stephen Lister juggles too many plot elements - the President's daughter as the main hostage, the staff hostages of the hospital location, the cyborg, the FBI's defence, the ATR, and the lone intruder played by Martin Kove - and Eyres gives them all an equal lack of weight, with things not helped by the one note copy of Danny Elfman's Batman theme as music score from Gary Pinder. We get mercilessly bogged down with the antagonism between FBI Paul Koslo and ATR Joss Ackland, when we just want to get back to the building, and Koslo in particular is all bad haircut and swearing machismo. It helps that Kove has a self-deprecating humour and although they aren't given the material, he and Meg Foster as the President's daughter have a funny rapport. Lister provides two laugh lines - 1 being the cyborg's expression of threatened "raining hostages", and Kove re the cyborg "His stairs don't reach the attic". The cyborg is played by Frank Zagarino as a perfect gay icon - no body hair, peroxided, suntan, and gladiator chest - which kind of deflates the idea of him having a girlfriend or the attempt at romantic tension between he and Foster, though ironically Foster's unique eyes are creepier than his robotic ones. To create tension Eyres cross-cuts madly, uses crowd panic for the initial invasion, sets up that one hostage is killed who later reappears with the others, includes some bad rear projection, and doesn't forget the cliches of slow motion for climactic confrontations. Lister provides a redemptive sci fi payoff for the conclusion.
Viewer Reviews
There are movies for which a star rating doesn't work if you're into trash movies. But this one would have to be trashier to get a higher rating from me, as it obviously is aimed at being trash. John Eyres walks a close line to Albert Pyun who did the guilty pleasures "Nemesis 1 - 4", "Omega Doom" and stuff. I think Eyres might have a bit more money but in the end the F/X are awful. But there aren't to many, mostly explotions and stuff. This movie, as written by the other reviewer, has a lot gay looks and machoism along the way, it's true. It's laughable and in the end, the movie has like zero effect. The "evil cyborg" never really gets dangerous, they sorta make him look and sound so, but he's not like ripping anyone's head off or whatever. He rather pukes out one one-liner after the other while some kidnapped people in the background act as if they're feared to their death. In context to this, the cyborg's evil expressions (oral and facial) are completly funny, like when you watch people getting scared by the look at a Garfield puppy. There are some cool one-liners that hit the spot, like when the cop says "I swear I'm gonna hunt you down 'till the end of your life!" - "I never was alive." At this point they make you remember that the blond beauty is supposed to be a dangerous, fearsome cyborg.
But then, there's pretty "cool trash" stuff here as well. For example, the "only helpful guy" is imprisoned in some "Demolition-man"-like prison. I think he was the one who knew the architecture of the hospital. But they woke up the wrong guy for some reason, a rather little idiot who got imprisoned for probably stealing toys from a child. He (i guess) keeps lying about his true identity as it might serve him for escape. When they escort him into the hospital, the elevator gets partly blown and crashes down, but he can grap a rope while the others get killed. So he remains left alone, hanging in that shaft, becoming another Jack from Die Hard.
I would watch it again for trashy nostalgia. But it's definetly not worth spending too much many for! Sequels were made of this one, part three being the most atmospheric, even partly thrilling part. It takes place in a space station that gets hit by a huge, deserted, dirty space ship. They can only survive, when they get on board of that ship. There they find our blond friend again. Entertaining trash! Probably only consumable with other substances.
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Project:Shadowchaser
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