Cyborg Soldier

Much like R.O.T.O.R., which features a Robotic Officer of the Tactical Operations Research, Cyborg Soldier has an I.S.A.A.C., or Intuitive Synthetic Autonomous Assault Commando.

But it’s not as if R.O.T.O.R. is held up as the pinnacle of originality, dismissed at the time (with ample reason) as a cut-rate Terminator or a discount RoboCop.

Cyborg Soldier, is a knock-off of a knock-off of a knock-off, and it’s a pretty precipitous slide from the aforementioned classics (and Universal Soldier too!), and the film’s hampered by a budget that’s not so much shoe-string as flip-flop.

Former UFC middleweight champ Rich “Ace” Franklin plays the cyborg.

He’s “The ultimate weapon,” and this is the ex-Ultimate Fighter’s first acting stint, playing a prototype not surprisingly, birthed from a secret government lab (where the best evil plots are hatched).

He’s a super-being, a genetically modified Ubermensch who speaks in clipped tones, and has never met a contraction apparently: “I DO NOT KNOW, I CAN NOT SAY.” Then again, that’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to robo-speak.

And he’s pretty much indistinguishable from your average human, save for a complete lack of emotion (OK, he shares that trait with sociopath humans) and weirdly, he’s never heard of Jesus: “Who is this Jesus you speak of?” You’d think that his Frankenstein creators would’ve added deities to this nano-tech automaton’s vocabulary for Christ’s sake!

He’s on the run and kidnaps a lady cop, Lindsay (90201’s Tiffani Thiessen), while evil government ops try and track him down.

It’s up to the cyborg and new ally Lindsay to find out his identity, and this leads to a bunch of exposition from the awesome Bruce Greenwood about a secret plot to turn federal inmates into cyborg warriors.

Sounds like a plan.

R.O.T.O.R. asked the question, “How do you stop a killing machine from going berserk?” And the answer in Cyborg Cop is apparently, get Tiffani Thiessen to humanize him. She does this while draped in a too-big plaid shirt, and looks like at any minute she’ll bust out a Crip walk.

Cyborg Soldier puts two words that when slapped together, should mean action movie gold. It doesn’t measure up, but has one amazing goon-kill, and some serious explosions. Plus, there’s the compulsory bullet self-removal scene.

** (out of 5)