MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Cyborg’ Power-Walks to an Agonizingly Slow End

The ads are right--”American Cyborg: Steel Warrior” (citywide) really is “the ultimate science-fiction battle of the new year,” at least given the dearth of other science-fiction battles in competition since the Rose Parade.

It’s also the quintessential “Terminator” rip-off of the new year. And, as far as shoestring-budgeted, Israeli-made movies with “American” in the title go, this one’s unqualifiedly the tops since Jan. 1.

Joe Lara, who rose to fame as “Tarzan in Manhattan” on CBS five years ago, gets to wax slightly more articulate here as the wired-up warrior of the title. (With his beefy looks and long locks, he comes from the Fabio line of future social engineering, presumably.) He’s first introduced drifting through stock post-apocalyptic shantytowns some 17 years after the world goes boom, still impervious--not having watched his own dailies, apparently--to the fact that he’s not human.

The audience susses it much sooner: There must be some reason Lara’s slow in putting the moves on heroine Nicole Hansen, who’d be high on any end-times dance card, since she’s not only “the last fertile woman in the world” but also the last one bold or built enough to flaunt cleavage in the daunting face of radioactive fallout and acid rain.

These two meet up as Hansen is fleeing from John Ryan, the movie’s other terminator--er, American cyborg--who just shot up everyone in her underground science-lab bunker. Seems she’s got a test-tube baby in her backpack, and the evil machines that have been running what’s left of the U.S. would just as soon have the race not propagate. (How circuit-breakers conquered the world isn’t really explained; the spoken intro might as well include the disclaimer, “For further reference, cf. James Cameron.”)

Their goal is to cross what looks like the Bronx and get the unborn baby to a European rescue vessel waiting off the coast, before the amniotic fluid expires, and before his shampoo or her lip gloss supplies run out.

This impossible quest doesn’t turn out to be as hard as it sounds. Mute, blond baddie Ryan is supposedly a much more sophisticated model of cyborg than hero Lara, but for all his advancement he’s the world’s worst shot, even with a semi-automatic, and never uses a door when he could waste time punching his way through the nearest wall. These delaying tactics allow “American Cyborg” to drag on for 94 thrill-free minutes of mostly shootin’ and missin’ in abandoned Tel Aviv factories.

If the film consists mostly of power-walking disguised as one long chase scene, it does pay off in at least one unforgettable laugh.

As world-saviors Lara and Hansen jog their way through the ruins, with the menacing bag o’ bolts who couldn’t hit the side of a barn close behind, director Boaz Davidson at one point cuts improbably to a shot of the developing fetus in the beaker inside the contested knapsack. It’s seen being jiggled up and down hilariously, and apparently surviving mom’s sprint like one of our best-made Walkmans. For fleeting moments like this do bad-movie lovers live.

‘American Cyborg: Steel Warrior’

Joe Lara Austin

Nicole Hansen Mary

John Ryan Cyborg

Yoseph Shiloa Akmir

A Global Pictures production, released by Cannon Pictures. Director Boaz Davidson. Producer Mati Raz. Executive producers Amnon Globus, Marcos Szwarcfiter. Screenplay by Brent Friedman, Bill Crounse, Don Peqingnot. Cinematographer Avi Karpick. Editor Alain Jakubowicz. Music Blake Leyh. Production design Kuly Sander. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

MPAA-rated R.

Times guidelines: Salty language, and plenty of violence against humans, androids and common sense .