Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

In the near future, we, the Good People of the United States of America, have endured and survived yet another terrorist attack. Having had enough of this nonsense we have expanded the Patriot Act to network every single surveillance camera in our land and have created a group of mobile robot camera sentries, called Eyeborgs, to form the Optical Defense Intelligence Network or O.D.I.N. which will monitor pretty much everything that everybody does. Sounds good. The script writers apparently couldn’t reverse engineer an acronym for Z.E.U.S. or G.O.D. or O.P.P.R.E.S.S.

Surprisingly the majority of the American People seem cool with more of their privacy and civil liberties being whittled away, except for those few troublemakers. This is where we meet Homeland Security Agent Reynolds (Adrian Paul) who is tracking down one of these troublemakers who has some bad intentions. It seems this cat wants to do in a lowly, purple haired grunge rocker named Jarett (Luke Eberl), but why? Fortunately Reynolds disables this dude and subsequently learns that Jarett is the nephew of the President of the United States and that somehow these troublemaking loons were striking a blow against forced surveillance by killing the Presidents nephew. It makes no sense to me either, but there you go. It will become clearer.

This loon, upon interrogation, informs Reynolds that the robots are taking over and nothing is as it seems. Reynolds completely dismisses the rantings of this crazy dude who is quickly attacked by some of the tiny cute Eyeborgs the minute Reynolds leaves the interrogation room. This guy then flees the interrogation room and subsequently tosses himself off the highest floor of this building committing ‘suicide’. Video tape shows clearly that Reynolds pressed the ‘unlock’ code as opposed to the ‘lock’ code of the room though Reynolds vehemently denies this to be the case.

Now Reynolds is a little curious. Particularly since he is called the ‘father’ of the Eyeborg program considering it was his testimony before The Senate Committee about the murder of his wife and abduction of his son, even more so than the terrorist attack, which greenlit the whole kit and kaboodle. There’s also a nosy reporter bouncing about (Megan Blake) who might have proof that somehow O.D.I.N., or somebody involved with O.D.I.N., is tampering with video evidence towards some greater, more nefarious purpose.

Reynolds thinks he’s figured it all out. Terrorist have seized control of the Eyeborg’s and it is imperative that he gets his findings about this to the President who’s life, it turns out, is in danger. Only his nephew, who will be playing his guitar at the nearby debate hall can get the President this information and hopefully save the President’s life. As it turns out Reynolds doesn’t know anything.

‘Eyeborgs’. Rare is the movie title that’s going to prompt me to watch it sight unseen. Good one. It’s almost like naming your movie ‘Plump Titties’ or something. ‘Eyeborgs’. That’s outstanding. Now all we need is for this cleverly titled film to not suck and surprise, despite some flaws, ‘Eyborgs’ does not suck. Not in the least. Here we have a movie that is topically relevant, exploring the continued expansion of government into our lives under the guise of keeping us safe, and maybe even borderline Libertarian propaganda, and who doesn’t love a little propaganda? Somewhere Ron Paul is beaming with pride.

Also for a movie that I’m sure didn’t cost a whole lot of money to get made, the Eyeborg’s were pretty impressive and integrated nicely into the surrounding scenery. They had the cute ones with the big eye who weren’t so cute when the setting stuff on fire or using there handy dandy rotary blades to slice tendons, there were the bigger more oppressive spider Eyeborg’s who drilled holes into peoples heads, there were the military Eyborgs that folded up into nice machine gun turrets and then there were daddy Eyeborg’s who would make The Terminator take a step back.

The problem I had with ‘Eyeborgs’ were some of the story elements. Ultimately it became clear, but getting there was a little muddled. Danny Trejo shows up as guitar repair man / resistance leader… I guess, who, I think, planted explosives in the guitar of our nephew. I think. I think they want to kill the president and use him to do it. But early on this same resistance… I think… is trying to kill this nephew… but the eyeborg’s won’t let this happen. Because they need him for the same task. I guess. There’s a lot of confusion there. Does the resistance know the Eyeborg plan? And if so, how? Did Danny Trejo plant the explosives? Did the eyeborg’s fix the guitar and plant the explosives? It would be mighty hard to fix a guitar without opposable thumbs. Director Richard Clabaugh probably could’ve scaled some of that unneeded complexity back a little because this was certainly the type of movie that didn’t need it.

Overall ‘Eyeborgs’ was a nice little science fiction propaganda filled movie. Adrian Paul brought his special brand of stoic everyman heroism to the role, the story, when it wasn’t bogged down with overly complex nonsense, was clever and humorous at times and the Eyeborgs themselves were pretty cool to look at. A pleasant surprise.