Final Equinox (1995)

Tagline:

The future of mankind has been stolen. Who controls our destiny now?

Movie Review:

There are really only two types of cop movie. There's the vigilante cop who doesn't play by the rules, gets suspended by his Captain and takes matters into his own hands to revenge his dead partner. Then there is the detective who is recruited by a special government agency to do an off-the-books mission to bring down an old enemy that got away from him, and gets double crossed for his efforts. In both cases the cop can be a drunk and/or drug user. Final Equinox is the latter type of cop movie, albeit with a sci-fi edge to it, and Joe Lara is that drunk, drugged up detective.

Joe Lara is a cop returning home from holiday with his girl. We are told it's the 'near future' but Lara is on a shuttle going past a space station so I don't know what they were thinking in 1995 when this flick came out. They arrive home and immediately Lara gets into a fight with his missus for some reason, and she leaves him home alone to get drunk. Simultaneously a gang of mercenaries do a break-and-enter at a security complex and steal an artefact, then organise a deal to sell it in an abandoned factory complex to a buyer. Using his 'near future' technology, the mercenary can see into the suitcase without it being open and notices the money is tainted. Martin Kove gives orders whilst lighting a cigar, gunfire ensues and the buyer ends up dead.

Joe Lara on the scene of the dead buyer the next day, sporting a hangover and bad breath, gets interrupted during his analysis of the scene by Commander Dreg who takes control of the case and wants to speak to Lara about a special mission. So they go to a titty bar (of course). Dreg is from some future CIA equivalent and really wants this artefact for some unexplained reason. Lara agrees to help because Kove is the 'one that got away' bad guy that he regrets having never caught.

Things don't go to plan when Lara tries the same trade as the first buyer and gets kidnapped, drugged, beaten and eventually released for a final chance at getting the money to them. He gets rescued by scientist-turned-hobo David Warner, who must have been low on cash this year, and tells Lara about the artefact. Basically it's an alien device that looks like a bowling pin painted silver with glyphs on the side of it and it predates all civilisation. Warner has worked out that turning the device on will terraform any planet with "trees and ferns", destroying what is already there. With that obvious power advantage Lara can see why Commander Dreg is desparate to have the device as well.

There are two reviews for Final Equinox on IMDB and as usual with the reviews on that site, are complete polar opposites. One reviewer gives is 9/10 saying it is one of the best films of its time. The other gives it 1/10 saying if you want a headache, watch this movie. I'm sitting in the middle - this one was all right, but only just. It was totally devoid of humour and the producers were obviously trying hard to make an interesting action-thriller with a sci-fi tone to it. The problems are many but most can be explained away by the low budget. This was probably made for cable television and on a tight time line. Things like the night time scenes being obviously filmed during the day but with a blue lens on the camera support this. If it wasn't for the space shuttle scene at the beginning (and the ludicrous ending) there wouldn't be much 'near future' about this at all.

Actually I lie about the humour. Whoever chose Martin Kove's outfit was totally having a laugh. Nice chains! (see the last screenshot at the end of this review). And Lara's straight-line eyebrows always raise a smile (though they don't raise his eyebrows, geddit?).

Most of the action isn't bad. There's about three shootouts and Lara kicks a few people around as well. Nothing hugely memorable in the action but it does the job. No explosions at all, which is a big disappointment. The final fight is easily the most interesting and some tension is actually built around this alien artefact and what would happen if it was actually used. Along with the bar scene there's also two random sex scenes; hooray for boobies and all that.

Hang in there for the craptacular ending. Atrocious 90's special effects that you couldn't even get away with in a children's TV show these days are definitely the highlight and the only other (unintentional) piece of humour in the whole affair. Worth the $2 entry alone.

The Video:

Decent enough full frame picture though the dark scenes are pretty lowly lit. The bit-rate is low on this cheapo DVD so macro-blocking is evident in fast scenes. The audio is generally okay but I had to turn it up loud to hear conversations; sometimes it seems there was no ADR and the actors were barely whispering, or bad synth music was laid over the top in post. Runtime approx. 90 minutes.

If you pick up the $2 RRP Flashback Entertainment DVD, ignore the lengthy synopsis and screenshots on the back. It's for another sci-fi movie starring Stephen Nichols called Phoenix! It doesn't sound bad actually so I might track it down.

Sourced From:

A two dollar store. Outside Australia I think this might only be available on VHS.

Trailer:

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American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (1993)

Tagline:

Their battle will decide the fate of the human race... forever.

Back of DVD:

It's all in Thai language, so just watch the trailer below.

Movie Review:

I liked Joe Lara's work in my last review, Armstrong, where he played the bad guy known only as "Ponytail". He was good in the role of a terrorist nutter so I wanted to see more of what he could do. Going through my recent acquisitions I realised I already had another - American Cyborg: Steel Warrior! And what's more it's a Cannon movie, so it's bound to be fantastic.

It's a post-apocalyptic Terminator style future. We are informed by a voiceover that seventeen years ago (we don't actually know when this movie is set) there was a nuclear war in which the machines won and enslaved the surviving humans. Sound familiar?. We are allowed to live out the rest of our days in run-down cities run by The System, and as all the women are now sterile there won't be any more of us to continue the species.

But as always with us pesky humans, you just can't stop us from trying to breed. Scientists at work in an underground lab have successfully gotten a girl Mary (Nicole Hansen) pregnant and are now keeping her foetus in a jar to grow. I don't know why she couldn't keep it in her own jar (wink wink) but that's science for you - always making the simple difficult. The scientists are prepping a team of soldiers to take the foetus in a boat to Europe where humans have had better luck in overthrowing their new cyber-overlords and a healthier gene pool exists. The map indicates they will go to the port only a few clicks away and hop on board a boat.

Meanwhile a cyborg with bleach-blond hair and a bikers jacket (John Saint Ryan) receives orders from a computer kiosk in the street by plugging his finger into an outlet. The orders are to find and exterminate the human rebels. Somehow he locates the hidden lab and smashes his way in, blowing up everyone in his path with a huge machine gun. Mary and one other girl escape through the tunnels of the lab on to the street, but the cyborg follows and kills Mary's associate. Mary gets away but the cyborg retrieves the map from the dead girl and now knows where Mary is heading. It chases her through one of many abandoned factories in the movie but she manages to elude it again and drop an engine on its head. Problem solved.

As she continues on to the port she is rumbled by a gang of sailors and transvestites. As she is about to be done in, a knife is thrown into the back of one of the thugs. Joe Lara (as 'Austin') appears and doing his best Van-Damme-in-Cyborg impression (of which this movie owes a huge debt) deals with all the degenerates swiftly and rescues Mary. Mary asks for his assistance in getting to the port but he politely declines "Pardon me lady, I have business to do." and goes to trade items at a local pawn shop. Mary manages to discretely tag along, but that only attracts the cyborg who has returned from the dead to finish her off. It's all very Terminator cat-and-mouse, and Austin manages to temporarily defeat the cyborg by stabbing it in the neck. The cyborg bleeds white goop just like the Bishop androids do and Mary and Austin escape into the sewers. Mary ultimately convinces Austin to stay with her by lying to him that waiting at the port is a shipment of radiation sickness drugs.

For a rip-off of quite a few post-apocalyptic movies, this is a pretty fun ride. I really don't know why it only has a 2.3 rating on IMDB, it's worthy of at least a 5 (or a solid 7 in bad-action ratings). Joe Lara is good in his role as Austin and John Saint Ryan plays as convincing a cyborg as Schwarzenegger does. He uses his glowing techno-eyes to detect footprint heat signatures and can even self repair, though his voice is more like a Cyberman and less like an Austrian. Mary holds her own against the cyborg just as well as Austin does.

The movie goes on like this for a while - cyborg attacks, Austin and Mary kill it and escape, cyborg comes to life again - until Mary is captured by cannibals known as 'leeches' who have an Asteroids upright arcade cabinet for some reason (at least something good survived the nuclear holocaust). The cannibals are a bit like humanoid CHUDs and are eager to taste Mary, but Austin busts in and blows them all to hell. Then they have a romantic moment ("You've never been kissed before?").

There's plenty of action, shootouts and running around in abandoned warehouses and factories but there are not many laughs (except for the sailor muggers). There is a very nice soundtrack, which I don't usually say of 80's movies. It's a dark electro-classical-synth thing with choral chanting parts; it really suits the glum atmosphere of the movie well. The plot has been done before but I don't care, I get a kick out of these movies, particularly their dirty, broken industrial worlds filled with neon lights and hookers and smoke emanating from sewers. Think of this as Hardware on an even lesser budget. It's a Canon movie so by rights it's awesome, and one of the producers worked on JCVD's Cyborg, so that should help you align your expectations. Some of cinematography is really good too and I liked the use of drab colours contrasted with badly placed blue neon lighting tubes.

American Cyborg is ridiculous but is far more deserving of a better IMDB rating than this piece of shit. Another good one for Joe Lara.

The Video:

This Thai DVD is pretty good quality, with a nice anamorphic print and generally clean audio (although I heard some clipping every now and then when people were shouting). The R1 I believe is only fullscreen so this disc is definitely a step up. The only issue is the manufacturers forgot to mark the video anamorphic bit, meaning that your equipment can't automatically work out if it's widescreen or not. All you need to do is go into your DVD setup and force 16:9 display. A bit annoying but nothing that can't be solved.

Sourced From:

Lawsons in the Sydney CBD for $5.

Trailer:

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Armstrong (1998)

Tagline:

The Cold War has Just Heated Up.

Back of DVD:

CIA agent Bob Taylor (Charles Napier) arrives in Moscow with his new wife Susan (Kimberley Kates) with a highly secret vieo tape of Russian missiles leaving an unknown base near Moscow under the cover of darkness.

Are these missiles destined to be aimed at the US or are they being smuggled to a terrorist organisation. The Americans need to know where these missiles are going, the only person who can help them  discover their destination is Armstrong (Frank Zagarino) an ex buddy of Bob who now trains an elite Russian anti-terrorist squad under the command of Colonel Zukov (Richard Lynch). Zukov is from the old guard, corrupt, ruthless, and will stop at nothing to gain control.

Movie Review:

Here we have a late 90's Nu Image bad action flick and wow, does it ever live up to the description of 'bad action'. Particuarly the 'bad' part. But honestly it's a lot of fun anyway so here we go.

An American couple arrive in Moscow (Charles Napier as 'Bob' and Kimberley Kates as 'Susan'). This itself is funny as he is about 25 years her senior. Though I suppose I shouldn't be a prude about these things. Times are changing, and all that. They are very obviously being followed by another car as they leave the airport and Bob can't stop sweating. When they get to their hotel, Bob hides a VHS he had in his pocket (!) inside the rooms video player. Hopefully his wife won't tape over it with Russian sitcoms, because it's probably important.

Somewhere else in Moscow, a blond guy drops out of a helicopter on the roof of a government building and shoots a grappling hook to the opposite window. The guy swings over, smashes through the window, beats up the guard then kills the whole room of military officers by sliding along the boardroom table on his back and letting rip with his machine gun. Oh no, it was a fake, and the blood was just jam or something. Haha. Turns out his name is Armstrong and he has been hired by the Russian Colonel Zukov (Richard Lynch as a bad guy again) to train Zukov's elite KGB forces. Frank Zagarino as Armstrong is pretty funny in this. The guy is a pretty average actor and his line delivery is terrible but he has fun in this role anyway.

Bob goes to see Armstrong at his apartment. He tells him that something is going down in the Russian military - there are plans to sell nuclear weapons to the Middle East - and he needs to help to stop it. Just as Bob is about to tell Armstrong about the video tape, a bunch of mafia guys burst in and shoot the place up, killing Bob but Armstrong escapes out the window. Charles Napier really had a short part in this as he buys it really early on. When the mafia guy (Joe Lara, credited only as Ponytail because, like, he has a ponytail) shoots him and blood splatters on his shirt he gets upset and yells at the dead Bob "Look at what you did!" - then shoots him another half dozen times. One of Ponytail's henchmen chases Armstrong in his car through the city streets, swerving to miss a pram (nice cliche) and crashes into a pile of boxes.

Kimberley Kates is pretty hot. After the funeral of her husband, she gives the video tape to Armstrong. Not liking what he sees on the video he goes to see 'the only person he can trust', a young Captain in the army, and convinces him to go to the army depot and stop the sale of the weapons. Susan decides to have a shower and, well, you can definitely tell that a male directed this movie. The door bell rings (room service, that she didn't order) so she quickly dresses in a light shirt (without drying first) and answers the door. Even though she pulls a gun on the guy, I think his expression would have been the same regardless ("oh my god, boobies"). She spends the next ten minutes soaked, headlights beaming, fighting off Ponytail (who had hidden in the room service cart, that old trick), escaping out the window and running down the street (still soaked, and with no pants on). I was surprised at how much action Susan had in this scene. The best part is when she runs along the hoods of parked cars with her persuer trying to knock her off with his own car. Then she rolls under a tram!

There's a few other good parts in the movie like the chase on foot through the derelicts, the fight with Ponytail's fat friend ("No speak English good!", "Then speak English bad!"), the foiled sniper attempt on the President at the opera (which Susan gets all prettied up for) and the finale is classic bad action material with Armstrong armed with twin AK47's trying to defeat ticking clocks, untie Susan from a chair, and stop bad guys that come back from the dead for a final shot. Joe Lara isn't bad as the sleazy Mafia guy, but I loved his daft accomplice that kept getting in trouble from his boss for doing the wrong thing ("I kill her now boss?").

There's nothing at all new in this movie; you've seen all of it before, and you've seen it done better, but "Armstrong" is still a fun ride. What I found strange was that this came out in 1998 - it certainly feels more like a 1990 movie, but I guess that's what happens with cliched bad action flicks: you lose all sense of time. It's not done particularly well or anything but it's pretty serviceable as a late night bad action flick and doesn't overstay its welcome.

The Video:

Being a Nu Image from the 90's the picture is full-frame. The picture is perfectly fine with good colours and deep blacks for a movie of this quality, and the audio is clean and clear. Nothing to complain about here. I reviewed the R2 DVD. Runtime 95 minutes.

Sourced From:

eBay for 93c.

Trailer:

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