FILM REVIEW OF ''SOLO" (1996)

Actor Mario Van Peebles plays a cyborg with a conscience in “Blue Tiger” director Norberto Barba’s“Solo” (**1/2 OUT OF ****), new science fiction thriller.  This ballistically paced testosterone thriller recycles familiar plot elements from movies such as “Universal Soldier” (1992), “Rambo: First Blood, Part II,” and the western classic “The Magnificent Seven.”  Although “Solo” appears initially as little more than a derivative African-American android opus, Barba has cleverly woven some traditional philosophical ideas about appropriate human behavior into the strands of their violent melodrama that goes beyond its cinematic pyrotechnics.

“Solo” opens aboard a U.S. spy trawler off the coast of an unidentified Latin American country.  Army General Clyde Haynes (Barry Corbin of “My Science Project”) introduces Solo, a $2-billion bionic soldier prototype designed as the ideal military killing machine.  According to Haynes, Solo has no feelings and is ultimately disposable.  Furthermore, Solo comes equipped with bullet proof skin, infrared vision, and the amazing ability to intercept radio messages during transmission.  Despite his formidable arsenal, Solo has been programmed with conflicting commands by its designer, Dr. Bill Stewart (Adrien Brody of “Splice”) has failed to tweak before the cyborg is sent into battle.

Colonel Madden (William Sadler of “Die Hard 2: Dead Harder”), a battle-seasoned adrenalin junkie, heads up a commando team dispatched to destroy an airfield that rebel guerrillas are constructing.  The Americans slip in under the cover of darkness, and Solo plants the explosives to blow up the airfield.  While he is setting up the explosives, Solo scans the area with his infrared vision and spots several noncombatants being used as slave labor.  Because these civilians may die from the blast, Solo’s command directives prevent him from following orders.  When the android decides to defuse the explosives, Madden triggers the remaining charges.  Explosions and machine-gun fire erupt, and the Americans scramble for their helicopters, deliberately abandoning their robotic warrior.  Solo receives a messianic wound low on his left side that fires his power management chip.  But that doesn’t keep our super-soldier protagonist from grabbing onto one of the choppers as it lifts off.

Back aboard the trawler, Stewart removes the damaged chip.  He explains to Solo that the android must switch over to back-up power until the chip can be replaced.  This make the super-soldier just a little less invincible.  Meanwhile, a furious Haynes and a vindictive Madden demand to know why Solo refused to obey orders.  Stewart explains that a glitch occurred when Solo tried to resolve a discrepancy in his command menu.  Madden wants to shut Solo down, but Haynes decides to salvage their expensive prototype.  Solo intercepts the outgoing transmission and learns that Haynes wants him reprogrammed.  Solo consults his menu of functions and learn that his prime directive is self-preservation.  Before “Solo” fades to black, our android hero learns that to act selfishly may be logical but is not appropriate human behavior.  Solo steals a helicopter and flies off to the mainland.  Madden chases him and watches as Solo crashes into a mountain.  When Madden sifts through the wreckage, he cannot find a trace of the wily cyborg. Solo managed to survive the crash and has vanished into the bowels of the jungle. 

A small boy from the village discovers Solo resting in an underground temple and nearly gets bitten when a snake attacks him.  Solo goes on line on the spur of the moments and grabs the snake before its venomous fangs sink into the vulnerable child.  Horrified, the lad runs back to his village, but later returns with his father and the rest of the village.  When they find the considerably run-down Solo, they believe at first that he is dead.  The little boy demands they give him a proper burial.  At the church, he bad guy rebels storm in, interrupting the burial ritual, and shoot up the church.  Solo springs into action and single-handedly wipes them out.  The villagers reveal that the rebels were forcing them under threat of death to clear an airstrip.  Solo agrees to teach the farmers how to fight if they will allow him to use parts from an old black and white, portable television to recharge himself.  At this point, Peebles emerges as “The Magnificent Seven” stacked into one.  They arrange elaborate traps around the village, and Solo shows them how to use bows and arrows to lethal effect.  When the rebels return, the villagers give them a reception that throws them off-balance.  

Back aboard the trawler, surveillance devices warn them about a battle raging in the jungle.  Haynes orders Colonel Madden to lead in an elite unit of hand-picked mercenaries to recover Solo.  Madden secretly wants to destroy the prototype.  If Solo performs well under fire, Madden fears that similar prototypes may eventually replace career soldiers like him.  He believes that his men can kill Solo because the android is not only vulnerable but heavily damaged.  Once he reaches the mainland, Madden cuts a deal with the slimy rebels to ice Solo.  First, Madden fakes evidence so it appears that Solo has gone crazy and torched the village.  The Colonel broadcasts deceptive images of a burning hut back to Haynes aboard the trawler and he swallows the lie.  As bait to lure Solo out, Madden persuades Haynes to send in Stewart, who learns too late that Madden duped him.  Solo manages to rescue his creator in a way that would make Indiana Jones envious.  But Stewart is fatally wounded during the escape.  “I should never have left college,” Stewart laments and hands Solo a rebuilt power chip before he dies.  To divulge any other details about the story would undercut the entertainment value of the movie.

“Solo” breaks no new ground for this specific type of character or adventure film, but Narba stages the action well.  Most audiences have seen everything that Solo eventually learns, especially if they’ve kept track of Mr. Spock’s progress over the years in the original “Star Trek” movies.  If you enjoy fast-moving, well-crafted actioneers, “Solo” is worth watching once.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE TERMINATOR'' (1984)

“Piranha 2: The Spawning” director James Cameron scored his first major cinematic hit with “The Terminator,” (*** out of ****) a gritty, on-the-run, rough-hewn, low-budget science fiction actioneer about time travel with a curious twist. Body builder Arnold Schwarzenegger of the “Conan” movies virtually guaranteed that this 107 minute exercise in murder and mayhem would be a blockbuster with his villainous, straight-faced portrayal of a relentless cyborg that will allow nothing to stand between its programmed objective of executing a woman, Sarah Connor, in the past. According to the Internet Movies Database, sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison took James Cameron to court over “The Terminator.” Ellison accused Cameron of plagiarizing two “Outer Limits” episodes that the former penned, specifically, "The Outer Limits: Soldier (#2.1)" (1964) and "The Outer Limits: Demon with a Glass Hand (#2.5)" (1964). Cameron has stated that these two episodes inspired him to make “The Terminator.” He may also have lifted the idea of "Skynet" from Ellison’s short story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." The producers reached an out of court settlement with Ellison and acknowledged the writer in the ends credits. Later, director Franklin Adreon’s “Cyborg 2087” (1966) with Michael Rennie featured a similar plot about a cyborg dispatched back to the past, but it had a different mission. The cyborg in “Cyborg 2087” sought to curb government abuse in the future by going back to the past where free thinking is coming under attack.

“The Terminator” opens in Los Angeles in 2029 A.D., at night while enemy Hunter Killer hovercraft prowl the post-apocalyptic rubble of the city for human prey. Heavy combat vehicles with massive treads on their wheels crush hundreds of human skulls into powder while human survivors exchange fire with skeletal metal terminators with fiery red eyes. A preamble of sorts comes up and sets the scene: The machines rose from the ashes of the nuclear fire. Their war to exterminate mankind had raged for decades, but the final battle would not be fought in the future. It would be fought here in our present . . . tonight. The actual story unfolds at 1:52 AM when a garbage truck driver watches crackling blue plasma-type waves envelope him and his vehicle.

A garbage truck operator is emptying trash bins when a plasma-like web of jagged blue lighting bolts envelopes his vehicle and shuts off the vehicle’s power. He flees when the T-101 Terminator assassin (Arnold Schwarzenegger) appears naked out of nowhere. Skynet has sent the T-101 from the future back to the year 1984 to kill the mother of resistance leader John Connor. The naked t-101 saunters up to a trio of punks at the Griffith Park Observatory overlooking Los Angeles. An obnoxious, blue-haired punk (Bill Paxton of “Aliens” and “Twister”) and his friend (veteran heavy Brian Thompson of “Sudden Impact” and “Cobra”) ridicule T-101. The Terminator kills both of them while the third strips off his clothing. Meanwhile, elsewhere in L.A., another naked man, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn of “The Rock”) materializes from the future. He steals a homeless man’s pants, evades the L.A.P.D., and breaks into a clothing store, steals Nike sneakers and a trench coat. Whereas the T-101 wants to kill Sarah, Kyle wants to save her! Not surprisingly, young Sarah Connor doesn’t have a clue that anybody yearns to either murder her or save her life.

Sarah works at a fast-food restaurant. The T-101 finds three Sarah Connors in the L.A. phone book and kills the first two and then invades Sarah’s apartment and kills her roommate Ginger and Matt (Rick Rossovich of “Top Gun”) her boyfriend. Eventually, Sarah discovers what is happening and holes up at a night club called Tech Noir where the T-101 tracks her down. Kyle Reese rescues Sarah and they flee, but the L.A.P.D. capture them and Reese has to cough up his far-fetched story to a by pompous psychologist Dr. Peter Silberman (Earl Boen of “Alien Nation”) who doesn’t believe a syllable of Reese’s saga. Silberman diagnoses Reese as suffering from paranoid delusions and boasts that he make a career out of analyzing the guy’s stories. During Reese’s interrogation scene at police headquarters with Silberman, Cameron and co-writers Gale Ann Hurd and an uncredited William Wisher, Jr., provide audiences with crucial expository information about Skynet and the war with the cyborgs that seek to annihilate mankind.

The bulk of “The Terminator” concerns the T-101’s tireless efforts to kill Sarah while Reese struggles to lead her to safety. During their flight, Reese and Sarah become romantically involved and Reese gets Sarah pregnant with future resistance leader John Connor. Talk about twisted time travel?! Cameron intersperses a flashback to the future where a T-101 (Schwarzenegger’s pal Franco Columbu of “Beretta’s Island”) invades a resistance bunker and goes on a murderous rampage before he is eliminated. Throughout the blazing action sequences, Cameron gradually strips the T-101 down to its alloyed metal endoskeleton. Reese explains to Silberman that a Terminator is a cyborg, half-man, and half-machine that will never stop until it kills Sarah. Everybody at the police station regards Reese as a fruit cake with his unbelievable story until the T-101 shows up with an arsenal of weapons and shoots up the premises, killing at least 17 cops. Reese and Sarah escape, hid out in a motel where they build pipe bombs, but the resourceful T-101 finds Sarah’s mother, kills her off-screen, and imitates her so that it can learn Sarah’s whereabouts. Another ramped up chase ensues with the T-101 caught in a blazing 18-wheeler. The fire scorches its entire body in the last 15 minutes so that all that remains is the skeleton. Reese dies blowing the skeleton in two. The torso of the T-101 continues to stalk Sarah until she crushes it in a tool manufacturing factory so that only the hand and forearm, which appears in the sequel “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

James Cameron has more road trip action in this thriller than actual science fiction, but the action-packed scenes more than deliver their quota of thrills and chills. One of the earliest scenes in a pawnshop has the T-101 gathering an arsenal of hardware from an unsuspecting clerk (Dick Miller) and then killing him instead of paying for it. The “I’ll be back” scene at the police station massacre is probably the best scene in this supercharged little spine-tingler. The irony in the last scene is that Sarah Connor destroys the T-101 in a machine press.

The chief science fiction element in Cameron's film is the use of predestination paradox where it appears the history is being altered, when in fact, it is really being fulfilled. Cameron rehashed much of the "Terminator" action in the sequel, but he made the Schwarzenegger more sympathetic by having him serve as young John Connor's bodyguard. Ironically, again, this $6-million plus movie (remember the ABC cyborg series "The Six-Million Dollar Man?")wasn't that original because cyborg type characters have been around in fantasy literature as early as Edgar Allan Poe's writings. Nevertheless, "The Terminator" put cyborgs on the marquee more than "The Six-Million Dollar Man" ever did and eventually inspired the "Robocop" franchise.