Cybercity (1999)

It's the year 2017, the Earth's surface is destroyed and its citizens flee to an underground wasteland ruled by warring religious cults. In this sinful Cybercity, mercenary Dakota's (C. Thomas Howell) family is murdered by a perverse virtual prophet (Roddy Piper) bent on world domination. Seeking justice, Dakota, beautiful assassin Lilith, and an arsenal of hi-tech weaponry battle for the Earth's most precious resource--humanity. It's time for the false prophets to meet their makers! Packed with innovative special effects and teeth-clenching action, Cybercity will make you rethink the Millennium.

This is bad.

It's sad really because the premise of Cybercity is quite interesting, but too bad the script didn't take advantage of that. This movie is just a mess of incoherent scenes tacked on with some Elmer's Glue (even I know not to use that stuff). I never thought anyone could make such a wreck of a movie. Cybercity is just sad when it comes to lots of technical film making stuff like pace, development, atmosphere, special effects, and more.

The biggest problem with Cybercity is how the movie is laid out. Why is it even called Cybercity?? There is no cyber ANYTHING in this entire movie. I think it was originally released as "Sheppard", which makes tons more sense. In any case you jump from one scene to the next with not much warning and those scene changes don't mix well with each other. It's almost like they took little parts of other movies and tagged them together. A lot of these scenes either don't make any sense or are just a waste of frames. Then you have the scene changes that make me feel like a commercial is about to come on. Did director Peter Hayman mean to do that in order to prepare for the movie's inevitable release on Sci-Fi Channel or is it just a bad cut and paste job? You got me there.

I have a hard time trying to peg what to say about character development. In my opinion there isn't any, but the movie does show the attempt to develop its characters in some meager way. Dakota, the lead dude played by C. Thomas Howell, has this motivation to do things in order to get his memories back. The problem is they never tell us HOW he lost them to begin with. Little blank spaces in the story like that show up a few times in Cybercity. Howell doesn't do a bad job on the acting and some of the other leads like Roddy Piper and Hiedi Von Paleski are okay too, but for the most part the acting is bad with a capitol B.

I would have liked to see someone else use the same premise of a post-apocalyptic society run by twisted religious sects and make a much better movie out of it. Hayman blew it. I can only recommend this movie to those of you who would like to play this drinking game: Take a shot every time you see somebody drive through the same warehouse interior. It happens enough to get ya really blitzed. Everyone else I wouldn't waste your time unless you have to see every Cyberpunk/post-apocalypse movie out there.
February 27, 2008

Yuck.

This "film" is beyond decription. The word awful doesn't even begin to describe how terribly bad it is. I've seen high school video projects that were better than this. The acting is piss poor, the directing - what directing?, the sets look like they're going to fall over at any moment, and the story is worse than anything you'd find in a porno film.

Don't be led astray by the review above by "Malcolm Genesis dantemontana". This reviewer has given a good review to every film by "producers" Dan D'or and Phillip Jackson. An "insider" writing those reviews? Hmmmm? But the one thing I will tell you, "Malcolm Genesis dantemontana" must be deaf, dumb, and blind to think that this film deserved anything more than one star. May 17, 2005

Land of Cliches

I had to think long and hard about this one. Was this movie so bad, so awful, that it then became good? It lies in the intent of the writer and director. Were all the cliches scenes meant to be sincere? Was the dialogue unoriginal on purpose? Was the direction decively devoid of cleverness? There was no sense of irony that could redeem this film. But worst of all - this Sci-Fi "action" flick was....BORING.

Bottom line - this movie is so bad, it's just plain bad. But the bigger bottom line - How these people still get hired to make this? January 2, 2002

CYBERCITY funny, in a twisted way.

My friend didn't like this movie, but she was taking it straight. This is toung-in-cheek satire about a post appocalyptic world in which deranged cyber-evengelists compete to control a dimishing population.

As a somber comedy, this works nicely much of time. First time director Hayman acquits himself with style and some great sets, and C Thomas Howell pulls off an interesting bleak character full of explosive remorse. You see "shepherds: are assiasins, who "protect their flock" by killing the guys who work for competing evangelists. Thomas tires of the gig, but fate won't let him leave peacfully. So, there's a lot of decent action, but it's just a bit more twisted and interesting than you'd expect for low budget sci-fi. If you like the Genre give it a shot. Oh, Roddy Piper - the WWF guy- does quite well here.

I see this is another one By the infamous Roger Corman working with the Producing team of Daniel Dor and G Phillip Jackson. (see Falling Fire). December 12, 2000

Unappreciated cult classic

This futuristic action flim contains all your favorite plot lines rolled into one.... From post-war,underground cities and evil leader(s), over policed downtrodden masses and the hero that car chases, gun fights and kung-fu's his way through seemingly unsurmountable odds, it is difficult to say too much about the story with out giving too much away. Once you start watching, you may think that you have figured it all out immediately. While this may or may not be the case, the fun is watching the story unfold, while yet another classic scenario of this genre folds itself into the plot. The characters are all readily recognizable and respond true to form. The dialog, acting, special efffects and props suit the over all effort to a tee. The viewer, when done, may be left feeling that they have seen this before, but, they haven't... not all at once and never all in the same movie! Get a group together to watch this one ala MST2000. The more the merrier for a guaranteed fun evening. June 18, 2000

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