CYBORG COP II (1994)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

All three CYBORG COP films are bad even compared to most of the merely formulaic efforts of DTV action-films. But so far as one can make a measured choice between bad, badder, and baddest, Number Two is right between Number One and Number Three. And all of them create the same dissonance with their titles, since they are not about cops who ARE cyborgs, but cops who FIGHT cyborgs.

The strongest elements of the first film were (1) John Rhys-Davies' performance as a rather impish mad scientist, and (2) maverick cop Jack Ryan's middling motivation to get the bad guys because they turned his brother into a cyborg. This time, the villain is just one of Ryan's old enemies (Morgan Hunter) converted into a cyborg, who plays his role as a colorless monomaniac, and Ryan's maverick-cop doesn't have even the tiny moral compass he did in the first film. Bradley's just as bad an actor here as in the first film, but his histrionics are more noticeable because he seems like a complete dick.

Though a lot of DTV films seem to think it's easy to make an audience sympathize with a cop who makes his own rules, it's actually a balancing act that can easily lose a given character audience-sympathy very easily. I'm sure that a lot of filmmakers would like to think that action-film lovers will just line up as long as there are plenty of explosions and fights. Director Sam Firstenberg had made one or two decent action-movies by that time, but here he's just grinding things out. Bradley, whose only assets are his skills at fake-fighting for the movies, also doesn't bother blocking the fights out competently, so that it looks like every time he fights a normal human, the other guy's practically racing to hit the floor.

In the movie's final third Ryan gets a weapons upgrade, and that allows him to take out the evil cyborg, variously called "Starkraven" and "Spartacus." Frankly, not having seen CYBORG COP III in many months, I can't absolutely swear that one's worse. But I could see some viewers getting entertainment value just by bagging on Bradley's terrible performance-- as indeed the Rifftrax comedians did, calling him something like a "wannabe RENEGADE."