Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow (1993)

Movie Info

Yeah, the age difference and the teacher-student power dynamic doesn’t make this skeevy whatsoever…

Casella “Cash” Reese (Angelina Jolie) has been created as a weapon of corporate espionage for the Pinwheel Robotics to destroy the Kobayashi Electronics corporation.  When Cash and her human handler Colt “Colt 45” Ricks (Elias Koteas) are contacted by someone named Mercy (Jack Palance), they find themselves on the run and hunted. Cash has the “Glass Shadow” inside of her and is a walking timebomb…but exposing the truth might be Cash’s only hope.

Written and directed by Michael Schroeder (with additional scripting by Mark Geldman and Ron Yanover, Cyborg 2:  Glass Shadow (often just going by Cyborg 2) is a low budget sci-fi action adventure.  The movie is a loose sequel to Jean Claude Van Damme’s Cyborg from 1989 and was Angelina Jolie’s first starring role.  The film was released straight-to-video and received poor reviews.

Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful

I remember the poster to Cyborg 2 in our video store and it being there a while…and the poster might be one of the better things about the movie.  While Cyborg was barely a movie (it was pieced together from scripts from a sequel to Masters of the Universe and a live action Spider-Man film), Cyborg 2 doesn’t have that excuse…Cyborg 2 is just dull and cheap looking.

The corporate espionage storyline isn’t a bad starting point and feels in line with something like RoboCop, but it is poorly executed and becomes a typical “on the run” movie. The film tries to dip its toes in a lot of other films from Blade Runner to The Terminator, but it largely just is one dull event to the next.  The ending features a needless coda on the characters that doesn’t add anything (but it also doesn’t detract because there is no vested interest in Cash and Colt 45 despite following them for the movie.

The cast at least (at points) seems to be having fun.  Jolie has reported that the experience was miserable and Elias Koteas’s character is almost a generic non-character (and he is too old for the young Angelina Jolie).  Billy Drago has fun as the bounty hunter assassin sent after Cash and Colt 45.  Jack Palance (like always) chews up his scenes with gusto (though I’m guessing it was a short and easy shoot for him).  Tracey Walter is underused, and Allen Garfield also hams it up as the leader of Pinwheel.  Jean Claude Van Damm is briefly scene in a flashback sequence from the first film.

I don’t know what I’m doing in this movie, but I get to blow crap up!

The movie looks extremely cheap.  The sets are almost non-existent and look like every other dystopian (cheap-version) future.  The movie is especially bad when compared to some of its contemporaries which show what the effects of the time looked like.  At least if it had computer effects that were bad, it would have an excuse.

Cyborg 2:  Glass Shadow is a dull outing in the world of sci-fi.  It had potential with some basic story ideas, but it doesn’t utilize them or feel like it even tried.  Instead it is the type of movie that throws a lot of “stuff” at the wall and hopes that something stick…but nothing stick here in Cyborg 2 and it just ends up a mess.  Cyborg 2:  Glass Shadow was followed by Cyborg 3:  The Recycler in 1995 with Khrystyne Haje recast as Cash.

Related Links:

Cyborg (1989)