Early Screener Review: Android Cop (2014)
In the year 2045, a Los Angeles Police Department detective and his new Android partner enter the Zone, a forbidden section of the city plagued with an unknown disease. There, they discover the source of the illness and uncover a troubling Government Conspiracy at the center.
REVIEW: I'm still anxiously awaiting for my BluRay copy of Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark, the third movie in the infamous Mega Shark series, to arrive in the mail, however in the meantime the fine folks at Asylum sent my way a screener of another new movie of theirs to review, Android Cop, set to be released this upcoming Tuesday on February 4th.
As you might guess, Android Cop is very much Asylum's glorious return to mockbusters by riffing on the upcoming RoboCop remake. Asylum has landed themselves in plenty of legal troubles over the last couple years because of their mockbusters (The Day The Earth Stopped, Age of Hobbits aka Clash of the Empires, and American Battleship aka American Warships being the top guilty parties), and because of that it seems lately they just don't do as many mockbusters as they once did. In fact, off the top of my head, the last one I can remember them doing was the After Earth mockbuster, Apocalypse Earth, and that was almost a full year ago in just a couple more months. I love their original stuff as well, don't get me wrong, but I've always held a special place in my heart for Asylum's mockbusters. For one, it was what originally led me to them way back in the days of Snakes on a Train, H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and Transmorphers. Secondly, it's always fun to see just how close to the real Hollywood blockbuster it turns out and in turn which one ends up being more entertaining. So yeah, of course I was pretty excited to come home from a crappy day at work to find a screener waiting for me for Asylum's much-anticipated return to mockbusting by way of Android Cop.
REVIEW: I'm still anxiously awaiting for my BluRay copy of Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark, the third movie in the infamous Mega Shark series, to arrive in the mail, however in the meantime the fine folks at Asylum sent my way a screener of another new movie of theirs to review, Android Cop, set to be released this upcoming Tuesday on February 4th.
As you might guess, Android Cop is very much Asylum's glorious return to mockbusters by riffing on the upcoming RoboCop remake. Asylum has landed themselves in plenty of legal troubles over the last couple years because of their mockbusters (The Day The Earth Stopped, Age of Hobbits aka Clash of the Empires, and American Battleship aka American Warships being the top guilty parties), and because of that it seems lately they just don't do as many mockbusters as they once did. In fact, off the top of my head, the last one I can remember them doing was the After Earth mockbuster, Apocalypse Earth, and that was almost a full year ago in just a couple more months. I love their original stuff as well, don't get me wrong, but I've always held a special place in my heart for Asylum's mockbusters. For one, it was what originally led me to them way back in the days of Snakes on a Train, H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and Transmorphers. Secondly, it's always fun to see just how close to the real Hollywood blockbuster it turns out and in turn which one ends up being more entertaining. So yeah, of course I was pretty excited to come home from a crappy day at work to find a screener waiting for me for Asylum's much-anticipated return to mockbusting by way of Android Cop.
Much like with Universal Soldiers,
we're kind of just plucked down into the middle of the story without
much backstory to go off of, which has always been an annoying story
format that I hate. We have to kind of figure out the characters and
their relationships with one another on our own, in addition to
having to pick up on little throw-away dialog lines here and there in
order to grasp just what's going on at the point in the story that
we're dropped into. From what I could gather in the opening minutes,
Android Cop takes place in a semi-post apocalyptic future. I say semi
because we do see shots and have scenes that take place in bustling,
glistening, beautiful cities of glass, however this portion of the
movie takes place in the rubble and debris of a destroyed and
radiation-infected Los Angeles, dubbed "The Zone" by our lead cop
character as played by Mortal Kombat: Legacy, Arrow, and Spawn starer
Michael Jai White. He and his partner are on some kind of mission
into The Zone in search of a specific suspect that is moving among
the leftover homeless people, crime lords, and mutated cannibals that reside
in what's left of the city. During this mission, something malfunctions
with a computer-controlled sentry gun at the border and it
accidentally shoots and kills Michael Jai White's partner, thus
leading to his distrust of anything computerized and mechanical that isn't fully operated by a human.
Before even the 6 minute mark he's retrieved from The Zone, only to be sent right back in with another team for backup where, once again, they're almost all taken out, this time by street gangs, until a new mysterious robotic police officer shows up, decked out in black body armor gear and a tinted helmet visor – the title character himself, the low-rent RoboCop wannabe with no personality and a strong unwavering attitude against law-breakers, Android Cop (named Andy, but honestly Android Cop sounds so much cooler, so that's what I'll be referring to him as for the review). Of course there's distrust towards him on the part of Michael Jai White's character because he simply just does not trust machines anymore, which frustrates him all the more once they reach back to the precinct in the city and he finds out that this Android Cop, the first prototype in what the higher-ups hope will be the future of Law Enforcement, is to be his new partner.
As you can probably already tell since all that makes up only the first 10 minutes or so, the movie moves at breakneck speed, starting off right in the thick of things and hardly letting you even have a moment to breath till the end. The rest of the movie plays out pretty much as you can expect, with the two of them working together on a top secret case that leads them through the underbelly of their city and out into the anarchy-ridden Zone, with Michael Jai White learning along the way to accept his robotic partner and even, eventually, trust him while the Android Cop finds his humanity, as these things tend to go in these movies, while also inadvertently uncovering a vast Government conspiracy that also involves some of the top-ranking officers in the police force and their very own Mayor.
So yeah, the movie is pretty generic,
but it still manages to be a hell of a lot of fun, largely in part
cause of the fast pace of it but also because it's another example of
an Asylum mockbuster done right. It has tastes of what it's
mockbusting (really, the whole robotic cop angle and most of the
subplots dealing with that is obviously directly lifted from RoboCop,
and the fact that its body is black, as is the new upcoming reboot of
RoboCop's, so that isn't fooling anyone), but there's so much more to
the movie that it does separate from all that - For example, there's a
subplot in here where they discover that when citizens are in
life-threatening accidents and are rendered unconscious, their bodies
are kept on life-support while their consciousness are secretly transported
into replica android bodies, but without their knowledge so they
never know (a debate as to the legalities and moral issues of that also pops up),
meaning there could be potentially hundreds if not thousands of
sleeper Androids walking around, just ready to be activated by a
corrupt person in a position to do so. Stuff like that in this movie
actually reminded me quite a bit of the final few episodes of Power Rangers RPM (sorry, spoiler for those
not caught up on a 5-year old TV show). Hell, there was even a plot
twist in regards to that, late into the movie that I initially called earlier on, but
totally forgot that I had called while the movie went on, so it still
came as a surprise to me when it happened, and it was a very logical and
welcomed plot twist at that.
Even the CGI effects, though there's
not much with this one, which is an odd thing to say about an Asylum
movie as they're usually all decked out in crappy-but-fun CGI money
shots, the few we do get consist of some very well-done futuristic
flying vehicles and a couple decent explosions. The rest of this
movie was done with practical effects, from the Android Cop himself
to the Mad Max-style spiked cars and mutant cannibalistic savages
that populate The Zone. In matter of fact, while on the topic here, it's pretty safe to
say that more than RoboCop gets mockbusted, as there are plenty
of shades of movies and shows I've already mentioned, such as Mad Max and even Power Rangers RPM (though I'm doubtful that last one
was on purpose), while I also got some vibes reminiscent of The Terminator, Nemesis, and even
Lethal Weapon at times. Even if for some strange reason
the movie is not keeping your interest on it's own, you should at
least be able to have a fun game of 'Guess That Homage/Rip-Off' with
your pals, which will keep you occupied right to the end.
The acting was also filled with lots of
good stuff to entertain – Michael Jai White especially was in top
form, as he always is, and was just as good here as he is in anything
else. A lot of bigger named actors, when in movies such as this, tend
to not really bother trying I find, but Michael Jai White, I tell ya,
really seems to be a professional when it comes to these things. He
also had excellent, and at times humorous, chemistry with his Android
partner, which is saying something considering one of them purposely had no
personality of their own. They only part of their partnership I
wasn't a fan of, was the actor they got to play the Android Cop,
Randy Wayne of Honey 2 and Dukes of Hazard: The Beginning fame. It's
not that he was bad at it, on the contrary he played the role
perfectly and put into the buddy-cop chemistry just as well as Michael Jai
White did, but my issue comes down to the fact that he's just so short and scrawny, especially when standing next to Michael Jai White, that even with the thick robotic body armor on, he came across like
a pipsqueak when on-screen at the same time as him, and that guy only
had to bring himself to the table to look pretty threatening. There
were times when criminals were sweating off their fear when
face-to-face with the Android Cop and I was just left wondering... Why? If anything they should have busted a gut laughing at the visual
gag that is this duo of a tall muscular man in nothing but a tight
t-shirt and this short skinny guy decked out in thick body armor, yet
the level of intimidation being felt by them was reversed from how it
should be.
Admittedly though, he did look pretty
damn cool whenever he was firing guns off, but considering this is a
sci-fi action movie, I wouldn't expect anything less when it comes to
the gunplay scenes (of which there are plenty). Other than that, the only times in the movie that
he actually came across as looking all that badass and intimidating,
was when he had his tinted-visored helmet on, something that doesn't
happen very often; He's wearing it when he's first introduced and
then he doesn't put it back on again until far later into the movie,
however it's in a scene that is almost cheer-worthy when he finally
does pick it back up and put it on, because you know he's about to
kick some ass and shit is gonna get real.
In addition, Charles S. Dutton even shines nicely
here as the corrupt Mayor and plays the role with such gusto that I'm
sure he probably thought he was in a theatrical movie, because I can
just not see such an established actor putting that much effort to
good use in such a low budget B-Movie. Not that I'm complaining, mind
you - I'll never, ever, complain about top-notch acting in a B-Movie.
Sure, the movie has a bit rushed and
sloppy of a beginning, and the Android Cop himself may have been
slightly miscast when it comes to his size and overall visual intimidation
level, but there is so much other stuff to love in this movie, and so
much more of it that's done surprisingly well, that it's easy to
overlook those minor issues and not really be bothered by them come the time the credits roll at the end. Android Cop is more than just a good,
fun, entertaining return to mockbusting for The Asylum, it's an all
around good, fun, entertaining movie, period. I know that unless
the word 'shark' is in the title somewhere than it seems like Asylum
never does sequels anymore, but I would love to see a second movie
with these characters on another case and foiling another
conspiracy of some sort.
If this is the caliber of movies we can be expecting from The Asylum during 2014, than this is going to be one hell of an awesome year to be an Asylum fan.
Dead or Alive, you're coming with... oops, sorry, wrong movie.
If this is the caliber of movies we can be expecting from The Asylum during 2014, than this is going to be one hell of an awesome year to be an Asylum fan.
Dead or Alive, you're coming with... oops, sorry, wrong movie.
9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward
Ever since I heard that the kickass Michael Jai White was cast in this, I just knew I had to see it (I do try to see all of the Asylum's movies, but this one jumped super high on that list).
ReplyDeleteI am very pleased to read that's as fun as I am hoping!
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Deleteomg 9/10 i want to see it
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind that's 9/10 in relation to other B-Movies. I rate B-Movies in relation to each other, separate from big budget theatrical movies, so a 9/10 for a B-Movie is not the same as a 9/10 for me for a big budget theatrical movie.
DeleteI liked it. I would say it was a B+ movie
ReplyDeleteI have this sitting on my shelf ready to watch, i never bothered. But thanks to this review i might give it a watch soon when i have some free time as i love micheal jai white.
ReplyDeletehttp://wildcinemamoviereviews.blogspot.co.uk/