Bionic Commando was one of those video games on which I could never
quite get a grip. I suppose, like Khan
Noonien Singh, my thinking is a little too two-dimensional (and if you’ve been
reading these reviews for long enough, I’m sure you probably think it’s more
like one-dimensional). So, you’re now
thinking to yourself, “But, Todd, Bionic
Commando is a side scrolling game, and there’s nothing more two-dimensional
than that.” Yes and no, and if we’re out
to lay blame at anyone or anything’s feet, I would blame the eponymous wrist
tool (that just sounds dirty) of the eponymous soldier. You see, you don’t just go from left to right
in the game. No, you have to go up and
over and sideways (not in and out of the screen, I grant you, but I’m the type
of guy who needs boundaries), and I wind up missing more goodies and getting
hit by more baddies than is acceptable.
Give me something like Mega Man
any day. And never even mind games like
(non-bionic) Commando which were
vertical scrollers and your guy could go anywhere on the screen to get blown
up. What’s more, you couldn’t even see
their faces. How the hell can you trust
a video game character like that? You
can’t. They should be banned like asbestos
(thanks and apologies to Berke Breathed).
Now, I was going to write an introduction about how Steve Rogers appears
in Junn P Cabreira’s (as JC
Miller) No Dead Heroes (aka Commando
Massacre aka War Machine) as
some anonymous green beret. For those
who don’t know, Steve Rogers is the no-longer-secret identity of one Captain
America, and what he’s doing in this puddle is beyond me. But there you have it. I got sidetracked. It happens more than I’d like.
The year is 1972, and the
soldiers of some unnamed American unit in Vietnam are being ritually tortured
and killed by yellow-haired (not blonde, yellow) Russkie nutjob Ivan (Nick Nicholson, who is tied with
the entire rest of the film’s cast for the BEM Award - a first), who believes
absolutely everyone is a CIA agent.
Meanwhile, actual CIA agent Frank Baylor (played with beady-eyed zest by
Mike Monty) recruits grunts
Richard Sanders (Max Thayer,
oddly enough not playing a colonel) and Harry Cotter (the granitelike John Dresden) from Colonel Craig
(David Anderson) to exfiltrate
or kill the captured Americans, take your pick.
After much shooting and exploding, Sanders makes it to their chopper at
the rendezvous point, but Cotter is shot and captured by the evil Reds. Fourteen years on, Cotter is implanted with a
microchip which now-handler Ivan can use to control the man’s actions via his
Casio calculator watch. Next thing you
know, Sanders is being hauled out of retirement to track down his old pal.
If you’ve ever seen a film from
the Philippines, then you sort of know what to expect when you sit down to
watch this one. There is a story. There is a progression to that story. But the way the film follows it is akin to
being on a roadtrip. If you close your
eyes for a few minutes, let’s say (and assuming you’re not the driver), when
you open them back up, you can still recognize where you are and what’s
happening. Nonetheless, there’s still a
gap of those scant minutes in which something may have happened but surely
couldn’t have, because you weren’t watching.
And yet, you’re now in the present and continuing to move forward. That’s the best way I can describe the
experience. However, unlike the more
fantasy-related films from the region, where these oddly-chosen elisions can be
more readily forgiven due to those films’ more outré nature, films which are
meant to be set in what we commonly regard as reality tend to call out and draw
attention to themselves for these jumps (think like skips on a record, if you
know what a record is). It’s not that
they ruin the film. If anything, they
accent it in the same way you wouldn’t expect to get chicken parmigiana in a
Chinese restaurant, but you could still get chicken. From what I have seen of Philippines cinema,
this seems to be more of a cultural trend, an accepted means of telling a story
which, I’m sure, to Filipinos makes perfect sense but to ugly Americans (like
me) can seem sort of jarring and incompetent.
But since they get these films as they are (in the sense of
comprehension, not physical delivery), and we generally don’t, I would be very
reluctant to say that these films are necessarily inept nor that we are
necessarily correct in such an estimation.
Like almost every film of the
time featuring soldiers, No Dead Heroes
deals with that eternal struggle against the oppressive overlords of the Soviet
Union, and it illustrates the struggle through Cotter. Disregarding the basic idea lifted straight
from The Manchurian Candidate (and
sans the matriarchal overtones), this film still makes a very strong statement
about the feelings regarding communism during the 1980s (by accident or on
purpose is yours to debate). Cotter
starts as a good soldier and fighter who follows orders but is also
self-sacrificing and knows when to disregard his orders if it means saving human
life (like Captain America but not played by Steve Rogers). Naturally, after the microchip is inserted in
his brain stem, his individuality vanishes.
Now, he is an even better soldier, his only purpose to serve his
masters. But his willingness to place
other peoples’ safety over his own, that thing which made him a unique soldier (and
we could argue human) has evaporated.
Yes, he will still lay his life on the line to protect another, but now he
has no choice in the matter, and individual choices are what make us ostensibly
better than them. He is a cog in the
communist machine. He may be the first
to successfully have this chip implantation procedure, but he will certainly
not be the last, and consequently, he is now more disposable. That Ivan cavalierly throws Cotter into
life-threatening situations speaks to this fact. If he were valuable to the Party, more care
would be taken in selecting how he is utilized.
By contrast, Sanders is the
typical All-American, and in pitting him against Cotter, it’s like Rocky boxing
Drago. Not only are the two men
embodiments of their respective sides in the Cold War, but they were once close
friends. That said, once Cotter crosses the
line, Sanders really no longer has any compunction about taking his erstwhile
brother-in-arms out. In fact, Sanders
even lights a prisoner on fire once he has extracted information from the
man. This act serves to further equate
Sanders with Cotter, but what it also does is brings Sanders down in the
audience’s eyes (or elevates him, depending on your particular view of things,
but I go with the former) to the level of that which he is fighting. He has become the monster which monster
hunters run the risk of becoming by dint of vocation. I don’t think I’m ruining anything by saying
that the filmmakers’ handling of this juxtapositional story element could
charitably be described as inconsistent.
But again, not being Filipino, could it be I’m complaining about the
speck of sawdust in someone else’s eye while ignoring the plank in my own? At the risk of sounding immodest (me?), I
don’t think so, but by that same token, I don’t feel that the approach (or my
grousing about it) ruins what I found to be a fun, goofy Action film.
MVT: All of the film’s
over-the-top elements make this an interesting watch. Nothing seems too much or goes too far (did I
mention there is a martial arts/communist guerilla training camp in the middle
of this movie or a woman (Toni
Nero) who makes Rosie Perez seem understated and coherent? Well, there is). Movies from the Philippines are experiences
for which no amount of writing can truly do justice. They must be witnessed.
Make Or Break: In a scene as
eyebrow-raising as it is nonchalant, Cotter comes home to America briefly and
forces Sanders to commit to hunting his old Army buddy down. It’s the Make, because it dances across the
line this type of film so gleefully straddles.
Score: 6.25/10
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