Automatic Reviews

This futuristic martial arts opus is satisfying B-movie action fare. Goddard Marx (John Glover), president of Robgen Corporation, makers of the popular android Automatics ("your personal servant and protector"), tells disgruntled board member Raymond Hammer (Dennis Lipscomb), a banker who has threatened to shut down the failing company, that he plans to announce to the press a new line of profits-revitalizing androids. That night, after her friend, Julia (Penny Johnson), leaves work, workaholic secretary Nora Rochester (Daphne Ashbrook) is saved from Robgen executive Seth Barker's (Stanley Kamel) attempt to rape her by Automatic J269 (Olivier Gruner), who accidentally kills Barker. Corporate security chief Buck James (Troy Evans) summons Marx to the scene, and he seals off the building and orders in SWAT-like forces led by Major West (Jeff Kober) to track and destroy the pair. Becoming reluctant allies, Nora and J269 slowly work their way down the building to the ground floor, fending off West's pursuit, aided by reinforcements led by a female soldier (Marjean Holden). Through on-the-scene broadcasts by reporter Gloria Takamatsu (Annabelle Gurwitch), Julia brings in the police, but Buck forbids them to enter the building. In a subbasement standoff, Nora kills the Epsilon leader, then discovers that she (Nora) is the prototype of Marx's new line of Automatics, presumably designed for erotic purposes. West kills Hammer, who's afraid all this publicity will hurt the company. J269 kills West, and Marx is thrown into a bank of TV screens and electrocuted. Buck lets in the police, but hordes of unemployed workers, protesting the market success of Automatics, attack and set fire to the building. The next morning, Nora and J269 walk together out of the smoldering ruins. AUTOMATIC starts off promisingly and--surprise of surprises for such movies--keeps getting better. Scripted by Susan Lambert and Patrick Highsmith, the film, mixing elements from FRANKENSTEIN (1931), BLADE RUNNER (1982), ROBOCOP (1987), and DIE HARD (1988), is essentially one long chase through the sealed-off high rise, but it welcomely works in some thematic elements, such as the de rigeur idea that androids can prove more "human" than the people who created them. Still, the movie would be nothing without its action hijinks, and the quality and ingenuity of stunting, coordinated by veteran Chino Binamo, as well as the fight choreography, by star Olivier Gruner, is excellent. John Murlowski's direction, given his background in low-budget schlock horror (AMITYVILLE: A NEW GENERATION) and gore pictures (RETURN OF THE FAMILY MAN), is surprisingly deft; he not only keeps the movie moving in lively fashion and delivers some suspense but also achieves some subtlety and humor. Gruner, who's the straight-to-video equivalent of fellow Belgian Jean-Claude Van Damme, is a much underrated genre performer (ANGEL TOWN, NEMESIS) who also gets in some licks as an actor. Although plagued by a thick accent, it's not much of a problem here, since he plays an Android-With-No-Name and only a bit more dialogue. Downplaying erotica for a brainy action camaraderie, genre stalwart Daphne Ashbrook (SUNSET HEAT, MURDER SO SWEET) is more than adequate, as is the chief bad guy Jeff Kober. Most entertaining of all is John Glover as the fanatical Frankenstein. Unflappable, he continues to call the deteriorating situation in his building, even as the bodies pile up around him, as "a minor hiccup." The film was released direct-to-video and pay-cable. (Violence, nudity, profanity.)