Overview: If you’re looking for an off-beat, low-budget cyberpunk comedy, Tank Girl is your movie. Talk about a weird flick! Lori Petty finds her calling here as an anti-heroine called Tank Girl, a light spirited soul living in a dystopic near-future caused by a comet hitting the earth. The evil water and power company, lead by Kesslee (Malcolm McDowell) has gathered up all the remaining water sources on earth (it hasn’t rained in 11 years) and is hoarding water (now the most valuable commodity on earth) in order to maintain power over the rest of the surviving stragglers. Tank Girl, while riding around in a tank, leads the resistance made up of some of the most bizarre misfits against the evil water and power company. With Jet Girl (Naomi Watts) in tow, there is nothing they can’t do, but first they want to have some non-sequitur fun!

The Bottom Line: Truly, this movie is just strange. We get everything from bizarre, over-the-top scenes, to dances, to massive killing, all wrapped in truly odd dialogue. Tank Girl and Jet Girl make a terrific combination, but this movie is just not meant to be taken seriously. NOBODY takes the plot seriously - the entire cast knows how wierd this looks and continually seem to provide meta-comments to that effect. While this movie does drag in places, the cast is truly seems to be enjoying themselves, and in the process, they make Tank Girl enjoyable. I must confess - I’ve never seen the comic strip that Tank Girl is based off, but I can’t imagine it’s as zany as the the movie is. Again, this isn’t a great movie by any stretch, but it is pretty fun.

Overview: Rubber’s Lover is one of the truly bizarre Japanese cyberpunk films. Rubber’s Lover is an extreme cyberpunk movie that includes a number of truly outlandish violence and sex scenes. Fukui’s entire message here is summed up well on his interview on the DVD, “Dominant power comes when mental anguish exceeds physical tolerance.” Truly, this is what this movie is about. Chances are, for most of you, this movie will be pretty much completely different from anything you’ve ever seen - which is reason enough to watch it.

The story concerns three scientists who are attempting to create psychic powers in their test subjects. They use a combination of customized psychotropic drugs and extreme sound wave patterns engineered to torture their test subjects into unimagined mental states in the hopes of surpassing their normal mental abilities. Unfortunately, their test subjects have a tendency to die gruesome deaths by exploding blood everywhere. The corporation funding the research has decided to pull the plug, and have sent Kiku, a low ranking finance employee (who is about to quit to marry the head manager) to relay the news. Two of the scientists go mad and decide to administer the torture treatment to the third scientist, Shimika, as their last hope for developing psychic powers. When Kiku she discovers their torture chamber, one of the scientists abducts and rapes her, and then includes her as a test subject. Shimika and Kiku join forces and try to escape but are captured again and are then subjected to extreme torture in hopes of increasing the speed of success.

Unfortunately for the scientists, they are successful. During the infamous “rubber suit” treatment, Shimika exhibits massive psychic abilities – so much so that he no longer needs the equipment to mentally attack his captors. There are various side characters in this including Kiki’s corporate slimebag fiancé, and an assistant chick who has a penchant for slapping test subjects.

The Visuals: The entire movie takes place in a few rooms, and from this perspective, its pretty amazing how realistic and unique a film can be made on such a small budget. The shots seem very well designed to make maximal use out of very meager special effects. Massive quantities of dry ice, blood and screaming make up the bulk of the visuals, but this ends up working in black and white. But what Rubber’s Lover gives you is an ever increasingly insane set of scenes. Whether or not you follow the meager plot, you’ll see some truly bizarre scenes. The weirdest has to be the sex scene near the end where the guy orgasms while ripping the screaming woman’s chest open while he’s watched by the laughing corporate slimebag.

The Bottom Line: If you’re looking for a Japanese Cyberpunk flick that gives you something different then Tetsuo, Rubber’s Lover is a decent choice. It doesn’t have the deep philosophical message that Tetsuo does, but the cinematography and crafting is done well enough that you will get the sense you are watching an art film versus a purely bizarre sequence of violent images. Truly, Fukui put out a far better film than one would expect given an almost non-existant budget. I had taken a point away for the constant screaming, which began to detract from the film after a while, but I finally decided this is sort of necessary screaming (mostly). All in all, Rubber’s Lover is well worth watching if you’re interested in understanding Japanese Cyberpunk as a sub-genre. Check out page 2 if you want to see more visuals - WARNING - some are explicit.

Page 2: More Screencaps –>>

Overview: Videodrome, another interesting flick from mind-fuck horror master, David Cronenberg, provides us an interesting commentary on the effects of total immersion into a mass-media culture. Filmed for a paltry 6 million, this movie generated significant buzz upon release as one of the weirder movies ever made. Unfortunately, its FX don’t age well, and maybe I’ve seen just a few too many weird movies to consider Videodrome all that strange now. But if you’re in the mood for a strange cyberpunk horror, this is one to consider.

The Story: Max Renn (played wonderfully by James Woods), a sleazy two-bit cable TV executive is always on the lookout for shows that pass the bounds of human decency. One day while scanning the satellite feed, his engineer stumbles upon an S&M, broadcast from a strange production company called Videodrome. Not only are the subjects beaten, they may even be involved in creating a snuff film. Curiosity gets the better of Max, and he becomes obsessed with finding the broadcast.

Along with his pain and pleasure girlfriend (played by Blondie’s Deborah Harry), Max finds the broadcast, and is then shocked to learn that his girlfriend has left to become a star on Videodrome. In pursuing her, and in wanting to experience Videodrome for himself, Max becomes captivated by the Videodrome signal. The wall between reality and fantasy dissolves and Max becomes a pawn in a plot to broadcast Videodrome’s subliminally controlling signal to millions.

Cyberpunk Musings: If we strip out the bizarre and magical horror stuff, Videodrome’s message is that total immersion into mass media dehumanizes us. It excites us into a state of hyper-violence and deviant sexual desires. Videodrome’s desire to create the “new flesh,” in movie terms is the merging of human consciousness with mass media. In a more post-human sense, Cronenberg seems to be saying that humanity itself is becoming lost as society slips further and further into this new mass-media culture. By feeding our deviant unconscious desires that have been surfaced by addiction to mass media, in effect, our humanity and individualism is lost.

The Bottom Line: Even though the effects seem dated, Videodrome is still a pretty weird head trip. The characters are by no means deep, but the acting is good enough to keep you entertained in places where the story falters. I will say the as a whole, the cinematography wasn’t the greatest – there were significant lighting issues, and very little imagination in camera angle placements. But whether you watch this movie purely for the horror or the philosophy, the ideas are interesting enough to keep you entertained even with the FX start to falter. I’m torn between giving this film a 7 star rating or an 8 star rating – for now I’ll give it 7 stars until someone provides a good enough argument to merit changing it.

Overview: George Lucas’s THX-1138 is one of the many good small-budget films long forgotten that has found new life on DVD. THX-1138 gives us a wonderful commentary on how Lucas, back in 1971, thought society would be if those in power ever really got their way. Everything here is antithetical to the 60s movement. Freedom and in fact most of humanity is squashed in this depiction of a dehumanizing nightmare society. All actions are controlled and securitized to ensure compliance.

The Setting: THX-1138 takes place in an underground facility in some ill-defined future where all aspects of humanity have been squashed. Everyone has all individuality removed, including possessions, hair (everyone has shaved heads). Humanity is controlled by television brainwashing combined with medications that remove human emotions. All citizens have a have a specific role to perform, and must adhere to completely programmed time schedules. Regularly scheduled “confessions” with mind control officers are used to catch any unexpected problems with individual expression. In this setting, Robert Duvall, known as THX-1138, and his room mate “dare” to have affection for one another.

A series of events occur which make THX-1138 disenchanted with society. He begins to cut down on his medication, and convinces his room mate, LUH 3417 to do the same. When emotions return, so does their humanity. They begin to find emotional desire and love for one another, but this is cut short, when a ranking facility member, SEN 5241, decides he would prefer to have THX-1138 for a room mate, and removes LUH 3417. But THX-1138 has gone too far, and instead, seeks out a budging resistance movement. Unfortunately for him, the control group has discovered his deceit.

The Visuals: Like many cyberpunk films, dominating color schemes are used for conveying the moods. In this case, white is used to depict dehumanized society; yellow is used for the controlling machinery, and darkness is used for the unknown innards of the facility’s inner-workings. THX-1138 provides much of the storyline through its visuals. We aren’t told the history of this futuristic dystopia, nor are we given much indication of how this society is run. As an interesting side note, although its never stated, one really gets the feeling in watching this that the powers that be would strongly prefer replacing humans with emotionless robots.

Changes to the Original Release: I have only seen the director’s cut of THX-1138, so I cannot comment on the original cut. However, I notice a similar level of anger to this version as was seen in changes to Star Wars. I probably need to track this down, but not having seen it, I don’t really see many of the problems they list, including poorly integrated CG effects (the shot above is an example of added CG into the background). Many also complain that while the film length is the same, some shots are missing. I don’t notice any complaints about changes to the sound, which seems very well engineered to me. Again though, having come to this movie without seeing the earlier version, I do have a hard time with people stating there is no value to this version, or that it is so far worse than the original that it is not worth watching. These sentiments seem like severe overkill. Still, like Star Wars, one hopes that the original eventually gets released as well.

The Bottom Line: THX-1138 is a very well made low-budget art film where Lucas takes the controlling elements in society to what he sees as their logical conclusion. While this isn’t very realistic in many ways, it certainly sends a powerful message. The pacing is consistent and the themes, while not new, are interesting and well conveyed. As long as you’re not looking for lots of action, you will probably enjoy this.

Overview: Existenz is one of the really good twist-your-brain VR game movies. ExistenZ allows us to imagine a rather strange future where games themselves potentially tear down the fabric of humanity. David Cronenberg, master of the weird, has Jennifer Jason Leigh starring as Allegra Geller, a game designer who creates VR games that are inserted directly into the spinal cord from an invasive “game pod” modification into the middle back vertebrae. Entire sets of players use living “game pods” to interact in the VR games. In this movie, Allegra is doing a “focus group test” on her latest game called eXistenZ. Everything appears fine until all hell breaks lose when one of the players gets up and tries to Kill Allegra for destroying the fabric of society.

As the movie progresses, Allegra and Ted Pikul (played by Jude Law), an unsuspecting marketeer are thrown together during the escape. While on the run, Allegra talks Ted into experiencing eXistenZ. To do this, he needs to get a game pod installed in his back. Things go from bad to worse as they attempt to get a pod from a shady guy, and significantly damage Allegra’s game pod, which has the only copy of ExistenZ anywhere on it. As the movie progresses, Cronenberg makes sure the viewer never really knows if the characters are in the very real looking game, or are actually in reality.

The Plot and Pacing: The plot is more than passable in eXistenZ, the action is good, and the acting is above average. Jude Law, Leigh, Ian Holm and Willem Dafoe are very solid and engaging in selling this story. The pacing gyrates from massively wierd head-spins to periods of calm and reflection. All in all, it’s enough to keep you captivated.

The Bottom Line: ExistenZ asks the question whether we truly know when we are in reality or not? This is interesting in that if direct VR type connections get made to the human nervous system as Kevin Warwick’s work suggests might be one day (soon) possible, this question becomes significantly more pertinent. All in all, this makes for a wonderful cyberpunk flick with some terrific scenes and interesting thoughts. With a production budget of only 15 million, the visuals are not always high tech (there are a few cool beasties though), but the story serves to aid in suspension of disbelief.

Overview: Screamers is a low budget near future outer-space movie with some cyberpunk elements in it. We get all powerful corporations and some interesting android/robot self-replicating development. While it has some serious story issues, and doesn’t always have the best acting or FX, there’s still enough here to make it pretty interesting, especially if you’re a fan of RoboCop star, Peter Weller.

The Story: Screamers takes place in a dystopic near future (2078)e environment, where mining colonies on remote planets have been at war with the N.E.B. Corporation for the past 20 years. After a new substance that made space flight possible, called Berynium, was discovered, the N.E.B. Corporation sent out mining teams to the planet “Sirus 68” to mine the Berynium, but unfortunately, it was discovered that the Berynium was accompanied by massive does of radiation. The miners and scientists on the planey Serius 68 revolted, and soon a larger alliance was formed to fight the all-powerful N.E.B. Corporation.

N.E.B. responded by dropping nuclear bombs to kill the alliance soldiers on Serius 68, and then sent in ground troops to finish the job. The alliance responded by developing “screamers.” Screamers are small sentient robots that can burrow underground at a high rate of speed, and then come up and chop humans to mincemeat. The alliance developed a self-sustaining lab that allowed the robots to self-replicate and included learning algorithms to improve their attack capability. The alliance also included an identification beacon so that the screamers would not attack alliance soldiers. Unfortunately, the screamers have begun to learn, so much so that they have started developing their own models, and worse, have started to disregard the identification beacon.

Commander Joe Hendrickson, who has been on Serius 68 since the beginning of the conflict figures out that the war has forgotten Serius 68, and has decided to try to visit the commander of the N.E.B. forces in order to make a ceasefire. Unfortunately, as he discovers in his trek, the N.E.B. forces are the least of his concerns.

The Visuals: Screamers is a cross between Alien inside visuals and a desert-like Road-Warrior setting (without the punk stuff), or perhaps better said, a Pitch Black setting. Orange is the color du jour. In general, the look and feel of the internal set designs are far less realistic than the outside world. Some of the inside sets would look right at home on a sci-fi TV series. The creatures are pretty low budget too.

The Believability Factor: Although originally based on a Philip K. Dick short story, there are enough problems with the story here that cause you to pause. In addition to some real whoppers regarding the overall plot (for instance, if humans could build adaptive learning robots, why didn’t they just get the robots to mine the radio-active Berynium?), and some serious acting issues on the part of some of the minor characters. Still, both Peter Weller (RoboCop) and Jennifer Rubin are good enough to make this worth watching. More so, the evolution of the robots, while often “magical,” is done at least well enough to make you take pause and actually have a deep thought or two about it.

The Bottom Line: I’m really torn in deciding whether to give Screamers a 5 or a 6 star rating. This is not a great movie, but there’s just enough here to make watching it worthwhile. If you’re in to dystopic futures, especially ones involving outer space, you’ll probably want to see this. If you’re in to developing AI type movies, this also should hold interest for you. In terms of “cyberpunkness,” the same thing applies – there’s just enough here to include it as watchable cyberpunk, although you’d be find just calling this a space-sci-fi movie.

Overview: Every now and then I run across an absolutely extraordinary cyberpunk film, largely forgotten or ignored by the film going masses. More often than not, this film is foreign and never had a decent release in the US (where I’m from). One Point O (called Paranoia 1.0 in the US) is European a film that meets these criteria. Truly, you’ll be hard pressed to come close to finding an immersive film as One Point O. When you consider this was reportedly shot and produced on a budget of 1.7 Million, you begin to understand the enormity of what was accomplished here.  No, you don’t get cool explosions or guns, or fancy CG effects, but you do get an absolutely awesome near-future dystopic story with a biting commentary on advertising and software development, all wrapped up in an extremely immersive, slow paced film.  Everything is subordinated to the mood here, which is emphasized by the color choices and simple score. Unfortunately, I will need to be pretty vague in this review, as the ending definitely has a Sixth Sense type feel to it.

One Point O is about a computer programmer named  Simon who works at home in a truly dingy, run down apartment building in a very shabby part of the city. He comes home to find a package waiting inside his apartment, and gets worried as nobody should be able to get inside. He opens the package, only to find that it was an empty box. This happens again and again, each time making Simon more and more paranoid. One top of this, he is late in delivering his the code he’s been working on to his customer. It appears as if his code has become infected with a virus, and worse, he really has a craving for milk!

Every character in One Point O is quirky and memorable. Udo Kier (Ralfi from Johnny Mnemonic), one of my favorite role actors, plays an eccentric robotics hobbyist who has a nanotechnology-enabled couch that changes colors and cleans itself at the click of a button, and creates a sentient talking head in his spare time (this talking head named Alex has a penchant for making very prescient phone calls). Bruce Payne (Passenger 57, Hellborn) plays a neighbor VR game maker who creates S&M VR porn experiences by acting out the scenes with various partners. Deborah Kara Unger (Fear X) plays a cancer nurse in search of fleeting humanity wherever she can find it. Lance Henriksen (Bishop in Aliens) plays a strange, zen-like repairman who always seems to know what’s going on. Finally, Emil Hostina places a voyeuristic landlord who loves to eat meat. But its Jeremy Sisto who steals the camera - he’s simply terrific playing a normal guy overtaken by extremely weird events. 

The Visuals: Like many cyberpunk movies, One Point O is dominated by a single color scheme - in this case we get a spectrum, from a yellow to pale orange to reddish-brown, with an occasional pale green as a highlight. Pretty much the whole movie (with the exception of the white convenience store which represents the corporation) takes place in those colors. Further accenting the dystopic quality is the continually run-down feel of the place. The apartment building is continually falling apart, as is virtually everything else except for the local drug store. While its clear that advanced technologies are the norm in this world, the people in One Point O have clearly been marginalized. They play with patchwork toys and out of date technology.

The cinematography is consistently interesting in One Point O, with many using floor shots with expansive backgrounds.  However, in some cases, they probably go a bit over-board on the camera angles, such as the use of the close-up phone shot of old, which actually took attention away from the story telling.  But again, this is a minor gripe, especially when we include the editing, which for the most part, is also outstanding.  But in watching the deleted scenes, I do agree with the director’s commentary that a few shots probably should have been included, most notably the throw-up scene. 

The Message: While I can’t go into the actual plot for fear of ruining the experience, I will say that One Point O has perhaps the most biting commentary on advertising and software development you will find anywhere. There is no question who is evil in this movie, even if they are rarely seen. Renfroe and Thorsson take to extremes and then crystallize problems they see in today’s world that form the basis for the story in One Point O. But they don’t state it in an in-your-face way - far to the contrary in fact. The story itself hammers home the message in the starkest manner possible.

The Bottom Line: As long as you’re not looking for action or sleak visuals, but instead are looking for original cyberpunk themes done wonderfully well on a shoestring budget, One Point O is for you. One Point O is definitely a movie I would LOVE to talk about in detail but I cannot for fear of spoiling the terrific ending (maybe creating a spoiler thread in the meatspace would be the way to discuss it). The pacing has a slightly repetitive feel to it, but only because the movie progresses in a spiral pattern - the same basic pattern of events happen each pass, but events spin further and further out of control each time around.  But again - go buy this movie (you’ll want to watch it more than once) - you won’t be disappointed.

Overview: f8 is a truly wonderful 13 minute film short that captures almost all the key elements of cyberpunk without using any dialogue! f8 was well received in many of the 2001 best animated film short awards (including the Hollywood Film Festival, the Jury Award, and others). The 3D graphics, while not as high quality as might be found in a large budget movie, are more than adequate. Wen’s selection of viewpoints, lighting decisions, movement and shadows are able to emphasize the best qualities of the 3D animation.

f8 centers on a nameless lead character in a strange futuristic society who wants to gain individuality. He lives in an oppressive, metropolis-like controlling society, where your fate and role is predetermined. But an underground has developed where individuality appears to be the key for admission. The plot follows the plight of our protagonist who attempts to steal a “face,” and thus, will have the ability to express an individual personality.

Unfortunately I cannot divulge too much more of the plot for fear of spoiling it. You can get this movie at Best Buy for about 10 bucks - even though its only 13 minutes, I think its worth it. You get 5 commentaries, and truly, the story is interesting enough that you’ll watch it more than a few times. But instead of a plot, here’s some more screen captures of it - these should give you an idea of f8’s visual splendor. Like many cyberpunk films, one color tends to dominate f8 - in this case, yellow is the predominate color.

Overview: Like Immortel and Sky Captain, Casshern was one of the first movies filmed entirely on Blue or Green Screen. Casshern is by far the most ambitious of the three movies in terms of story complexity, symbols and messages conveyed, and in the scope of experimentation with visual effects. Unlike Sky Captain, this is NOT a feel-good Raiders-like fun romp. And unlike Immortel, which is also complex in scope, Casshern largely meets its intent from a story perspective. While Casshern is philosophically dense (I haven’t seen the anime yet, is it philosophically dense as well?), it does have some terrific action sequences. One of the best samurai sword duels I’ve seen happens here, as does some terrific robot vs. human fights. With its hard rock accompaniment, the action is almost matrix-like in quality.

Casshern takes place in a very mechanized dystopian alternate future, in which the forces of Europa and the Greater Eastern Federation have been fighting a 50 year war for dominance. The Greater Eastern Federation has finally established control over the Eurasian continent, and now has to deal with the horrid side-effects the endless years of a chemical, biological, and nuclear war. The earth’s environment is in shambles, most of civilization has been wiped out and people usually wear protective masks when venturing outside.

Its in this environment that Dr. Azuma, a genetic scientist, comes up with a solution to the maladies. He says he has discovered special “neo-cells” that can regenerate human tissue, and in effect, can create “replaceable parts” for the human body. An aging General with serious health problems jumps on this solution and sets Dr. Azuma up with a lab funded by the military. Casshern centers around the life of Dr. Azuma’s son Tetsuya, who in rebelling, decides to join the army. Unfortunately, he finds out that war is truly hell, and eventually ends up dying. His ghost comes back to say goodbye to his mother and fiancee, but things don’t go as planned. Unfortunately, Dr. Azuma’s research is not going very well. To extract more “Neo-cells,” the military ends up engaging in ethnic cleansing of the oldest part of Eurasia - sector 7. They bring back the body parts for the good doctor to use in extracting the Neo-cells.

We find, however, that Sector 7 is inhabited by an ethnic group who were devout followers of a Gaurdian Spirit called Casshern. Casshern decides to make his presence felt and sends his lightning bolt down from the heavens, right into Dr. Azuma’s lab, and gives the Neo-cell “pool” the ability to bring the dead body parts back to life. After massive amounts of zombie-like people (later referred to as neo-sapiens) emerge from the pool (sparking the military to go all out in killing them), Dr. Azuma gets the idea that if he places his son Tetsuya in the pool, he will come back to life as well. This works, and Tetsuya gets reborn, but as a faster, stronger version of himself, just like the newly formed “neo-sapiens.”

After the military hunts down and kills virtually all of the neo-sapiens, the few remaining Neo-sapiens escape to Sector 7, and after a cry for help, their prayers are answered when the Gaurdian Casshern sends them down an ancient stronghold, completely with robot warrior making capabilities. The rest of the movie involves the ongoing conflict between the Neo-sapiens and the Greater Eastern Federation, and the role that Tetsuya (who later takes the name Casshern when defending the local people) and his family plays in it. There is also a really nice love story that takes place between Tutsuya and Luna. They apparently have been fated for one another since birth, and will continue to be together throughout time.

The Visuals: Casshern has some of the most astounding visuals on film. More impressive is the use of various color palettes and textures to represent various themes in the movie. Death is represented by streaking white aura around a person; war is represented in a black and white pixilated look; Impending doom is represented in yellow; green represents life; the Neo-sapiens have the dark blue and bright red colors, etc. Truly, the diversity in visual effects is the strong highpoint of the movie. Also, I found the choice of music accompaniment consistently terrific. The choices really add to the mood. Combined with the astounding visuals, we really get a tour-de-force type “blow you away” affect. . Casshern is also heavily laden with symbols and philosophical meaning. In addition to having a strong antiwar and anti-technology message, Casshern gives us interesting religious musings, and some thoughts on implications for cheating death, and a pretty powerful message for the need for co-existence with others. Most interestingly, Casshern is able to show pain and suffering on the individual “little person” level, and show how this affects the large scale picture.

Overview: While difficult to understand (let me know if you want me to post a “page 2 spoiler” on this to explain it - it really is a very cool story), Casshern is simply an awesome picture that will develop a huge following over the years. Take the time to understand this, and you should love it. It is NOT a happy picture though, and is very emotional in tone.

Overview: OK, so you don’t have a huge budget or any orginal ideas but you still want to make a cool Scifi flick? Answer: Just merge together little bits from lots of popular scifi movies, and make sure you get good actors with nice chemistry. This is in essence what Yamazaki has done. He’s literally taken E.T., the Terminator futuristic dystopia time travel thing, only he substitued Independance Day Aliens (and their technology) that look like E.T. for the exterminators, and a cute asian chick for Reece. Add in an asian mafia group to mix things up, and to top it all off, Yamazaki stole matrix-like action and cinematography looks to bring this project all together.

Truly, this movie has grown on my since I first watched it. And looking at it from a cyberpunk lens, it truly fits well. While on the surface, this idea of merging every popular scifi movie together into one might appear to be a complete and utter mess, but it sorta works as an enjoyable, present day cyberpunk flick. Even wierder than the grand larceny of the various movies is the overt nods to many of the scenes from those movies. Yamazaki isn’t hiding anything here - he knows that we will know he has stolen all his key elements. So instead of shoving this under the “plot” table, a number of the scenes are literally duplicate nods from these movies. This more than anything rises Returner up from the run-of-the-mill copycats to something more interesting - almost Tarantino like, but far more overt.

The Story: Milly (Anne Suzuki) is an average foot soldier serving in the last gasp of mankind, 80 years in the future where alien invaders have all but wiped out humananity. As a last gasp effort to save the human race, a group of scientists have been trying to develop a time travel machine to send someone back to when the aliens first arrived - they believe it was the first alien that called the others to destroy the earth, so if they could just go back in time and kill it, maybe the rest would not have come. Through an odd twist of fate, Milly ends up being the one sent back to save Mankind.

Milly hooks up with this two-bit hoodlum named Miyamoto (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who has devoted his life to avenging his childhood friend’s death at the hands of the local mafia. Milly coerces Miyamoto into helping her find the alien who recently crash landed so she can kill it. The story gets convoluted when the mafia gets involved - they see power in the alien’s weapontry. From there, the chase is on to both avenge the mafia and find and deal with the alien.

The Acting: Again, while this wierd amalgomation of big production scifi films could turn out to be an utter mess, its the chemistry between Milly and Miyamoto which saves it. They are wonderful together. On second viewing, I found I liked their chemistry even more. Also, the evil mafia leader, Mizoguchi (Goro Kishitani) is pretty fun as an over-the-top bad guy. He does everything from blow away little kids, to engaging in gratuitous breast groping, to conducting repeated attempts at gangster coolness.

The FX: Even though they are low budget, they work. Even the matrix-like coolness effects work to some extent. The problem is getting around the obvious thefts that are put in, albeit in a different light. Its hard, for instance, to see E.T. as the bad guy. The surround sound FX are also pretty well done, with nice positional FX and good deep bass.
The Action: Again, think Matrix Rip-off here, complete with the various high kicks into people, along with your average asian gangster shootout movies. We also get some fun little ID4 alien technology fights, force field and all. While not original, it’s at least consistently well done. And while the story and action are well enough put together to keep you engaged, again, its really the interplay between Milly and Miyamoto that makes this movie work. Their performances make you care for these two characters far more than you should. I would almost liken it to a Jonny Depp-like saving of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Also, there’s a wonderful little time-travel twist at the end which is truly heartwarming.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!: By the way, if you get this movie, for Godsakes, whatever you do, DON’T use the english dubbing. We’re talking 70s chop-saki bad movie dubbing here!

The Bottom Line: Returner is one of those hard ones to judge in that it has some clear sucky elements (no original ideas, for instance). But just as clearly, the director both realizes this and plays off it. Moreso, the performances by the two leads make returner easily watchable. Again, fair warning, we’re not talkin masterpiece here, and had I not given it 6 stars, I probably would have dropped it down to 3 (meaning you either buy the director is doing the rip off in an intelligent way, or you decided this is just tacky in the extreme). But in the end I decided it is a decent low-budget movie that hits on enough cylinders to make it worthwhile.