“This guy is cool!” – security guard under his breath, watching a cyborg on a monitor wipe the floor with a crack team of mercenaries.
Automatic (1995) is a sci-fi action flick Die Hard knock-off which is mostly shot in the shadowy interiors of a corporate building, the HQ for robot/manufacturing company RobGen. Some movies are “warehouse action flicks”, this one is mostly a “conference room action flick”! Watching a DVD upload onto YouTube meant that the film was mostly swimming in darkness, as if you were watching a LaserQuest match from the sidelines with a florescent bar for lighting.
French martial artist Oliver Gruner (from Nemesis) is once again playing an emotionless cyborg, thankfully wearing a buttoned-up white shirt, so you can actually see him. When the sleazy boss of secretary Daphne Ashbrook attempts to sexually assault her after hours in his spacious office, the cyborg steps in and terminates him. This concerns John Glover – back playing a chipper yuppie CEO after Gremlins 2 but this time more evil – who wants to ensure his series of “Automatics” – his production line of buff-male cyborg security systems – won’t grow hearts and malfunction en masse. Sleazy Jeff Kober and his team of mercs are sent to “retire” these employees, and cover up the situation. What follows moves at a quick pace, an on-going chase through corridors, elevator shafts, ventilator ducts, and giving plenty of opportunities for Gruner to do a roundhouse kick or two, and fire off a bulky futuristic machine gun.
Clocking in at 90 minutes, Automatic is enjoyable straight-to-video cyberpunk trash with enough action and John Glover chewing the scenery to keep your attention. Bonus points for including character actor Troy Evans (you won’t know the name but you’ll recognise him) as that schlub security guard and Penny Johnson from The Larry Sanders Show as comic relief. Obviously echoes Robocop, Total Recall and Terminator, and has enough flashes of old-school computer graphics and fleshy mechanical props to appeal to any cyber-head. On YouTube. Recommended.
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