What Not To Watch: Cyber Vengeance
What originally grabbed my attention about Cyber Vengeance was the fact that it featured two candidates for future editions of our Know Your Role series, Robert Davi and Matthias Hues. I enjoyed Davi’s work in movies like Die Hard, Action Jackson, Wild Thing and Licence to Kill. Oh and let’s not forget The Goonies! Then there’s Matthias Hues. His look made him the perfect bad guy in movies like I Come In Peace, Mission of Justice and Fists of Iron.
With two notable stars like Davi and Hues, Cyber Vengeance had to be worth watching. Right?
Wrong! Watching Cyber Vengeance had me yearning to check out American Cyborg: Steel Warrior or Cyborg Cop II again. In comparison to Cyber Vengeance both of those movies really weren’t that bad.
- The Real Star: The biggest problem with Cyber Vengeance is the actual star of the movie. The movie suckers in unsuspecting action fans with the star power of Robert Davi and Matthias Hues. Both are prominently featured on the cover of the DVD releases here in the United States and around the world. But when you actually start watching Cyber Vengeance you find out that your leading man is a guy by the name of J. Gregory Smith. Smith plays Will Singleton, a guy who likes to play virtual reality games, has a girlfriend who brow beats him and who we get to witness humping his couch as he has virtual reality sex. A word to any action star hopefuls out there… you really need to build up a lot of credibility with the movie going public if you think you can get away with doing a couch humping scene and be taken seriously as the hero of a movie. A scene like that could kill an actor’s career. Coincidentally this was J. Gregory Smith’s last film. In total, Smith was in 4 movies. What an illustrious career! There were years where Matthias Hues was in 4 movies in a single year! If his appearances in all his movies were like the 5 minutes or so he had in Cyber Vengeance, Hues probably could have starred in about 24 movies in a calendar year. Only Britton K. Lee from Ironheart would rank lower on my list of worst action heroes.
- Dangerous Combination: Cyber Vengeance combines a high concept story with a low budget. This is never a good thing. Cyber Vengeance does manage to put an interesting twist on the whole man hunt concept that has been seen in movies like The Running Man and Hard Target. Having the rich and elite hunt humans in a virtual reality world was interesting and putting the game in different points of history (World War II, Prohibition, The Revolutionary War etc) was a nice touch. But when you don’t have a lot of depth of talent on your roster of actors, the movie will suffer and more importantly so will the audience. It felt like Cyber Vengeance was trying to jam too much into its 90 minute run time. I’m not suggesting they extend the run time, the bare bones run time was one of the movie’s more redeeming qualities. But the script could have been restructured and polished. I think it was a matter of some of the pieces of the puzzle not being in the right place.
- Action Movie Rescue: Cyber Vengeance does throw a good amount of nudity into the film to help serve as a distraction from the crap on the screen, but even if you doubled the boob time, it would not make Cyber Vengeance a watchable movie. I hate to beat a dead horse or a dead movie career, but if they did want to make Cyber Vengeance watchable they needed to get rid of the boob they chose to star in the film. Replace J. Gregory Smith with anyone but Britton K. Lee (I’d have gone with J. Eddie Peck of Lambada fame). Give Matthias Hues some more screen time. Work Robert Davi into the movie earlier than a third of the way through. Those three changes could have potentially saved this movie. Maybe I should host a Bar Rescue type show for action movies. Consider that last statement me trademarking that concept.
From its abrupt start all the way to the bitter end, Cyber Vengeance was a chore to watch. The best thing the movie gave the world was this quote, “You can suck my f#*k you!” I’m not really sure what it is supposed to mean, but I’m positive that anyone who saw the movie and then encountered the “star” of the movie J. Gregory Smith on the street, at the grocery store or even at church would have gone up to the man, looked him dead in the eyes and said “You can suck my f#*k you!”
If anyone reading this ever bumps into me, I’ll expect you to say “Thank you for advising me not to watch Cyber Vengeance.”
