646f9e108c A murdered police officer is brought back to life by a cold-hearted scientist to serve&quot;The Demolitionist&quot;, the ultimate crime-fighting weapon in a city overrun by criminals and internal corruption. If you&#39;re in the mood for a fun low-budget, cheesy sci-fi/action Robocop ripoff, then boy do I have the film for you. It won&#39;t blow your mind or anything, but if you&#39;re into this kind of stuff, then The Demolotionist will make you happy. I mean, look at this cover. It&#39;s incredible. Just judging from that cover alone, if this was the type of film you were in the mood for, I can guarantee you that you will not be disappointed. The Demolitionist will deliver the goods and then some.<br/><br/>Essentially just a female Robocop ripoff, this film seems to revel in it&#39;s cheesiness, never taking itself too seriously. Everything is over the top, from the hammy acting, to the dialogue, to the cartoonish violence and the bright neon lighting. Some may be put off by some of these things, especially the pink powder squibs instead of blood when victims are shot, but I actually quite enjoyed it for all of these reasons. In fact, it&#39;s when the film tries to be serious that it starts to fall apart. Luckily these scenes are few and far between, and the film recovers.<br/><br/>I have to assume that the hamminess of it all was intentional, because there&#39;s just so much of it, but in a really fun and entertaining way. So if that sort of thing turns you off, then maybe this isn&#39;t for you. But if it doesn&#39;t deter you, then I can tell you&#39;re in for a great time, with quite a few surpriseswell.<br/><br/>For starters, the casting in this is just insane. I don&#39;t even know where to begin, but pretty much every few minutes you&#39;ll see an icon pop up in a bit part, and then there&#39;s the main cast, all notable cult icons. Again, it&#39;s insane and I spent more time picking out all the familiar faces than paying attention to the actual plot, which like I said, is just Robocop but with a female instead.<br/><br/>Something else that surprised me was how well this was made. When you go into these types of films, you have to expect it to have a certain low-budget quality, and this one does. But what surprised me was how good everything looked for the most part. There are moments where certain sequences or shots have a professional quality, like something out of a big budget film. And then the remainder of the film definitely puts a lot of style in every shot. I wouldn&#39;t say it works all of the time, but when it does work, it adds something to the overall experience.<br/><br/>I&#39;ve only seen 2 other films with effects wizard Robert Kurtzmandirector. The first being Wishmaster, which I absolutely loved, and the other one being the ultra-low-budget horror film The Rage, which I disliked so much that I couldn&#39;t even finish it. So while the cover of this one just screamed awesome and attracted literally every one of my senses, I was still on the fence about whether I would actually enjoy it or not. Kurtzman fell so hard from one picture to the next that I found it hard to work up any real excitement over this. But that cover man. It&#39;s amazing. I was in. What I didn&#39;t realize until now was that this was Kurtzman&#39;s first filma director after co-founding KNB Effects Group. I had always thought Wishmaster was his first film for some reason, but that would be false. This film was made 2 years before Wishmaster. He does show some promisea filmmaker, especially with his one and only big budget film Wishmaster, but I don&#39;t know how much of that was attributed to his DoP or Cinematographer. Sadly, he never built on that promiseThe Rage clearly shows his decline in style, substance, and quality.<br/><br/>Moving on. There are several area&#39;s where the film does falter quite a bit. First and foremost, when it tries to be serious and throw emotion at us. Another area would be that a lot of the action sequences just aren&#39;t choreographed and edited very well. And much to my surprise, the film isn&#39;t gory, or even very violent. Yes, there is a lot of action in here, but it&#39;s all very cartoony and silly. In fact, I don&#39;t even recall much blood at all. And lastly, there was this annoying thing that kept happening with nearly every shot. The camera angle would be set, and whether it was a still shot or a tracking shot, it would begin to slightly tilt towards a dutch angle. It happened so often that it became a constant annoyance, and sadly, it ended up ruining some rather stunning shots where it would have been better without that happening.<br/><br/>All in all a very fun experience. Deeply flawed, yet there&#39;s so much to enjoy that you can easily overlook a lot of this low-budget films shortcomings. I guess the best way I can describe it is that it&#39;s a hot mess. Plot Synopsis: In the not-too-distant future, the mayor of Metro City introduces a law banning all guns in the city. Her mortal enemy, Mad Dog Burns, escapes from Death Row &amp; stages an unsuccessful attempt to kill her. He then exposes an undercover police officer, Alyssa Lloyd, &amp; kills her. A police scientist resurrects heran invincible zombie warrior, gives her weapons &amp; a motorcycle &amp; sets her loose on Mad Dog &amp; his gang.<br/><br/>Film Review: It is probably an unwritten rule that any genre film directed by someone who is better known for producing visual effects is going to be a dud. The Demolitionist comes from the mind of Robert Kurtzman, one of the founders of KNB EFX Group, a prominent makeup effects company. Following in the footsteps of Chris Walas (THE FLY II), Gary J. Tunnicliffe (WITHIN THE ROCK), Bob Keen (PROTEUS), the Brothers Strause (ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM), Tom Savini (the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remake) &amp; the late great Stan Winston (PUMPKINHEAD), Kurtzman tries his hand at directing.<br/><br/>Of those films, only three actually stood out from the pack. Savini&#39;s remake of NOTLD was the best of the bunch, while not beating the original, it was still a good zombie film. Within the Rock was a passable monster film that had the indignity of having half its plot stolen by a certain Michael Bay flick the following year. And the most notorious of them all, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, despite all the crap poured on it by practically everybody, was slightly better than the first AVP, mainly by delivering on the action that the original failed to do (although its biggest mistake was not having a fully-fleshed out plot &amp; having the monster attacks being shot in the dark).<br/><br/>Which brings us to the $62, 500 question: is The Demolitionist a good film or is it a bad one? Well, to be honest, the film is one of the shoddiest genre actioners ever to come out of the 1990s. I don&#39;t think it even had a theatrical release. Anyway, the film has a slightly interesting premise – female cop is killed by a wanted terrorist, resurrected from the deada cyborg zombie super-warrior, goes after the bad guys with a vengeance. But the poor script does it no favours.<br/><br/>The Demolitionist does have the occasional moment where it looks halfway promising – Richard Grieco conducts a business negotiation between his police mole &amp; a guard dog – but the poor plotting, atrocious dialogue &amp; under-cooked action scenes conspire to weaken it considerably. Not to mention the fact that the visual effects, despite being produced by a top-shelf EFX group, look very cheap.<br/><br/>On the acting front, the performances range from the okay to the very bad – Richard Grieco overacts wildly (though you can&#39;t fault him for not having any fun) but the real worst actor here is Susan Tyrell – her relentless mugging of the stage causes any scene with her in it to collapse to the ground in a heap of flames. Look out for Tom Savinione of Grieco&#39;s fellow gang members &amp; Joe Pilato (Captain Rhodes from the original DAY OF THE DEAD)a drunken gangbanger.
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