Eyeborgs (2009)

Once in a while you stumble upon something that you don't expect is good, at least that's the case for normal mainstreamers who only watches what they "know" its good because someone famous fancy schmancy critic said it is so. Me, an many others, never trust the mainstream and digs deep into the swamp of direct-to-video movies on the hunt for something out of the ordinary, and Eyeborgs is one of those movies. I'm not saying it's a classic, an unknown masterpiece of something like that, but it's worth a lot more than the stupid comments it gets on the IMDB or those who rather watch I, Robot than something more edgy and interesting.

In a not so distant future ODIN rules the US. Odin is a security and surveillance system monitoring every part of the country with a lot of different robots and cameras. But soon some people is getting killed by the robots, for small crimes like smoking tobacco (which is forbidden) and weird enough the surveillance cameras shows nothing odd - just accidents, or people killing other people. Who's controlling who here and what's the goal of this manipulation of the media... and robots? Homeland Security agent, "the father of the Eyeborgs", R. J. 'Gunner' Reynolds (Adrian Paul) soon gets involved against his wishes and understands that someone has tampered with his "babies"...

Eyeborgs is a fine budget-aware movie (IMDB says 3,7 million dollars, which sounds reasonable) with a more ambitious vision than the title or the back of the cover makes you think. Paul Adrian might not be the most charismatic actor alive, but he's still good enough for these semi-mainstream affairs and has both the locks and the charms to carry the movie. Everything about Eyeborgs looks and sounds good, which makes me thing it once was written to be a bigger, more star-driven vehicle, but somehow ended up on the lower end of the budget-universe. The computer animations, the robots, is a mixed bag - from bad to not bad at all, but they're still just Eyeborgs and there's nothing silly with them not being ultra-realistic. Instead the stunts and action around them is good and they're well-animated.

The nice story feels like a mix between RoboCop, Starship Troopers, more or less every modern conspiracy thriller made in the same budget range. It works fine and is highly critical to the surveillance-civilization we're getting closer and closer to be. This one makes several references to 9/11 and what seems to be the republican party, even if no political agenda is mentioned. This one also has a couple of interesting characters and there's more layers in them than in a normal DTV production. Danny Trejo makes an extended cameo and its nice to see him as a smart guy, not the normal thug - even if he's a tough guy even here.

It also questions what we see and who the terrorists actually are. If simple screenshots from movies or highly faked Photoshop-creations can be used as real photos in news media today without anyone questioning it - or maybe you remember the animated video game sequence being used as real war footage in the news - you also also understand that everything is possible and as long as the audience accepts everything without using some basic critical thinking, we WILL be fucked sooner or later.

Eh, now I'm going political again. As usual. Eyeborgs is a good and well-made action-thriller with cool robots, nice explosions and ambitious production values for being such a low budget production. I think you will like it.