Reaction & Review | The Demolitionist

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering a sci-fi film from 1995. That movie is "The Demolitionist".

Now, I know two things about this movie. I know that the film stars Nicole Eggert, who's only real claim to fame, from what little I remember about her, is being one of the many stars of "Baywatch". Which isn't really saying much, considering "Baywatch" wasn't really known for it's strong writing. Hell, I barely watched it as a kid, and I don't remember a fucking thing from that show, other than the obvious when it came to it's female stars running on the beach. And if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, then you're either probably too young, or you most likely forgot that show even existed in the first place.

But anyway, the other thing that I know about this movie is that it's apparently a knock-off of "RoboCop". Which, for some people, might view that as a negative thing, especially considering they probably grew up watching "RoboCop". But I have to make a confession about something; I've NEVER seen "RoboCop". Yeah, I know that may sound shocking, but I honestly have never seen any of the movies. I know the general premise of it, but I've never had a chance to watch it for myself yet.

So with that said, I'm gonna go into this movie completely blind. And any comparisons I could make with "RoboCop" are most likely not going to be present here. I don't know if the movie's gonna be any good. I kinda have my doubts about that, but hey, who knows? This thing could surprise me in someway, and actually be halfway decent. But the only way I'm gonna find out whether or not this thing is gonna be watchable at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "The Demolitionist".

7 minutes later

So one of the Burne Brothers got electrocuted, after they pulled a switcheroo with the warden and a priest to where they get the electric chair treatment, because the warden pissed his pants long enough to where it traveled near one of the brother's foot, thus him dying as a result. I didn't know that could actually happen with piss water, but hey, you learn something new everyday, don't ya?

13 minutes later

Wait, so the miniature spy camera that our main character used to spy on Mad Dog and his gang came from her contact lens? I genuinely thought that it came from her earrings that she wears, but her contact lens?! I would ask a bunch of questions on how the hell you could install miniature spy equipment into contact lens of all things, but I'm going to try to get past all of that, because I know it's a very trivial and stupid thing to bring up, but it just sorta bothers me a little bit, you know?

3 minutes later

So our villain, Mad Dog, just gave a loaded gun to Nicole Eggert's character, and tried to use her to play a game in which if she pulled the trigger on herself with a single bullet, then she would die. If not, then her friend, who's also a part of the spy job, would die instead. What does she do? She gets up and shoots one of Mad Dog's gang members instead. What fucking logic does that make ANY sense for Mad Dog to give his gun to our main character for her to use?! Good god, this movie's just started, and this writing is already fucking stupid as hell! I'm hoping it gets better, but at this point, I strongly doubt it will.

12 minutes later

OK, I've been holding this off until now, but I need to ask this. So, earlier in the film, Mayor Grimbaum enacted an anti-gun law where all guns would be confiscated, thanks to what happened 2 years prior involving the Burne Brothers and their heinous crime. So...did nobody even challenge this sort of law? I ask this, because Mayor Grimbaum's office has 2 U.S. flags standing across from her on each side. So that means that she must rule over some sort of fictionalized city in the U.S. Meaning that this kind of law would have way too many legal ramifications going against it, such as being sued for trampling all over the constitution as a prime example. And I totally understand that I'm trying to put logic into a movie that seems to be allergic to it, but guys, I have something resembling a functioning brain, and the people who wrote this didn't.

20 minutes later

So, guys, the movie's now going from our hero demolishing the crime syndicate in the city, to now the media trying to figure out who our masked vigilante is. So, in other words, it's less "RoboCop" and more leaning towards Batman. Granted, I don't know if any of the "RoboCop" films ever tackled RoboCop's identity in any of the movies, but the very fact now that this movie is trying to lean towards the Batman aspect of things by trying to figure out our Demolitionist's identity is really making this movie more shit than it already is. I honestly cannot wait for this movie to fucking end. And unfortunately, I still have around 40 minutes more of his crap to go.

20 minutes later

Why the hell isn't this movie finished yet? Seriously, guys, you have no idea how boring this fucking movie is. I really thought that a knock-off of "RoboCop" would be kind of decent, but no. This movie's made that concept boring. How the fuck is that even possible?! Again, I've never seen any of the "RoboCop" movies, but even I don't think that they're marginally as boring as this thing is. This is just horrible, guys.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "The Demolitionist". Thank god, this thing is fucking over. Let me shut this crap off...OK. Christ almighty, that was terrible. Um...so, where to begin with here?

Well, I guess I may as well just start with the writing. I'm gonna start with a point that I brought up WAY early on the film, but I'm gonna expand on this point further. So, as I mentioned earlier, Mayor Grimbaum enacted some sort of law where all the guns would be confiscated because of what happened 2 years earlier. Where the Burne Brothers ended up killing 9 people at a mall, which includes 6 pedestrians and 3 Metro City cops. And because of this, it lead to the Mayor creating this anti-gun amendment, where all of the guns around the Metro City area would be confiscated, so that no one would have access to any sort of guns. Two things I want to bring up here. One, as I mentioned earlier, Mayor Grimbaum's office had a couple of U.S. flags present, so I'm going to assume that Metro City is, in fact, some kind of fictionalized city in the U.S. I don't really know what state this city resides in, but that doesn't really matter. So anyway, as I mentioned before, this kind of amendment would have to go through some serious legal issues, such as the case in point where the constitution briefly states that the 2nd amendment protects people's right to bear arms. Which basically means that this law should be null and void by default, and that the U.S. Supreme Court would strike this down without question. Now I understand, again, that I'm trying to put logic into a movie that clearly doesn't have any of it, but the very fact that those U.S. flags existed in her office kinda gave me that impression that this kind of law would mostly likely not have passed in the U.S. If this thing were set in a city like, say, Mega City from the Judge Dredd comics, then I would've given this thing a lot less slack than what I already gave it.

Which then leads me into another issue with this stupid anti-gun law. Now let's give this movie the benefit of the doubt that this kind of law was very lax in whatever state that this movie takes place in, and that Mayor Grimbaum was able to get away with passing all that. Which then leads into my second issue, in which a very simple thing known as the black market exists. Meaning that criminals would always get their hands on guns, no matter what kind of anti-gun law that Mayor Grimbaum enacted. Because we find out pretty early on in the movie that Chief Higgins, who's apart of Grimbaum's administration, ends up making a deal with our villain, Mad Dog, to get the guns out onto the streets where Mad Dog and his gang would rule the city, so long as Higgins would be able to become the new Mayor of Metro City as long as they take out Mayor Grimbaum first before she gets re-elected. So basically, it makes this whole anti-gun law pretty fucking pointless. And if anything else, this movie pretty much teaches you that gun laws don't fucking work, no matter how much one tries to push it. But then again, I could also just chalk this up into me putting way too much logic into a movie that really doesn't seem to care about it.

So let's put all that aside, and talk about the rest of the movie. Our characters here are all shallow, flat, and lifeless. I could not find a single character here who even has a likable personality. Now I am not expecting Shakespearian character depth or anything, but the only thing I ask is to give the viewer a reason as to why anyone should care about these characters. And I want to mention Nicole Eggert's character, Alyssa Lloyd. Because Alyssa is, I'm going to assume, suppose to be our Robocop knock-off, where she gets killed on duty and is somehow brought back to life through science. And you know what? That's perfectly fine. Like I mentioned before back in my review for "Munchies", knock-offs aren't necessarily a bad thing. As long as you're able to produce something decent, then I'm all for it. Unfortunately, this movie, even though it's from a movie series that I have no experience with, doesn't really have much of anything going for it. Alyssa has all the personality of a fried brain chip. Which is ironic, given what this movie is suppose to be a knock-off of. And she's suppose to get revenge against Mad Dog, who ended up killing her partner in battle, whom was also part of the spy job with Alyssa from early on in the movie. Well correction, Alyssa's partner doesn't die. He actually suffered from brain damage and is on life-support. Which Alyssa, later, pulls the plug on him after finding out that she can't die naturally anymore, unless she keeps taking her injections that's suppose to make her super-human. So she ends up pulling the plug on her lover, letting him die. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. Apparently, they were suppose to be lovers, but this movie gave no indication of that fact from before we're introduced to these two characters. And as such, I really did not feel a thing for any of these two characters, especially considering that I can't even remember the male character's name that Alyssa's suppose to be in love with. Not just them, but nobody else has any real defining character traits worth mentioning, or even worth caring about.

On top of all that, the pacing here is just horrible. Mostly because of the fact that we don't get to see our titled character in action until almost an hour into the movie. Which is pretty bad, considering that the film itself is a little over an hour and a half long. I guess this movie really wanted to try and make you care about our main character's turmoil, but, like I said, it really doesn't work, because her character is just that flat and boring. And while I'm on that note, I may as well segue-way this into the acting. The acting here is OK for the most part, but the 2 actors who phone it in here are Nicole Eggert and Bruce Abbot, who plays our doctor that is suppose to be responsible for creating our Demolitionist. I wasn't really expecting miracles from Nicole Eggert, considering that she came from a show that had mediocre performances at best, but I was still kind of expecting her to try, and unfortunately, she mostly sounds pretty bored throughout most of the movie. But somehow, she's not the worst actress here. That honor goes to Bruce Abbot. He mostly sounds very stoic, thus gives out an incredibly lifeless performance on his part. There is just no emotion at all coming from him, and thus, he gives out the weakest showing from the entire cast in this movie. And like I mentioned before, when you're given a lifeless script such as this, you can only do so much with it, so I guess maybe I was expecting too much from these 2 particular actors. But honestly, aside from them, everyone else here did OK with their given roles. It wasn't great, but at least they were able to try and work with the material that they were given. So overall, the acting here is OK, minus Nicole Eggert and Bruce Abbot.

Let's get to special effects. And I have a question that I know I'm not gonna get an answer to, but I want to ask this, because this is something that kinda bothered the shit out of me when watching this thing. Why is it when most people who end up receiving gun shots have pink smoke coming out of their bodies? I'm serious, guys, most of anytime whenever someone gets inflicted with bullets on their bodies, there's always this pink smoke that pops right out of them, as if this movie couldn't afford any blood effects for any of our kills that happen in this movie. There are rare instances of blood, but, like I said, they're rare to spot, and they're not all that memorable. Because they're either shown in darkly lit scenes, or they exist through certain makeup effects. Speaking of which, there are certain makeup effects in this movie that look REALLY good. Especially towards the end of the movie, which I'll try not to go into too much detail, if you seriously have to watch this movie for some baffling reason. But I still don't get WHY this movie had to go for pink smoke for anyone that gets hit with bullets. I mean, it's not like this movie was set in the future or something, it mostly looks like it took place around modern times. Well, at least modern times for 1995 standards anyway. But whatever, the special effects here are sort of a mixed bag.

Camerawork here is OK, but there are some shots in this movie that looked to be filmed using a dutch angle. And for those of you who don't know what that is, a dutch angle is where a camera is tilted at an angle while filming, and it looks kinda awkward to watch. Now to be fair, it's not as obnoxious as something such as "Battlefield Earth", but it is still pretty noticeable in certain shots. Lighting here is OK, despite some darkness in certain shots. Sound-mix is here is fine. The score here is completely forgettable, and I couldn't remember a single piece of music that was even worth listening to over and over. So yeah, the music here is not even worth caring about.

And that pretty much sums up this movie in a nutshell. It really is not worth caring about whatsoever. So with that being said, can I recommend "The Demolitionist"? No. In no way can I recommend this, unless if you want to riff on it with some friends on a bad movie night. But honestly, you can find much better films to riff on with friends that are bad in a hilarious way. This movie doesn't really fit that mold. While I can't judge how much this thing is a knock-off of "RoboCop", I'm going to take a wild guess that it does a really poor job of being a knock-off of a popular movie. I mean, at least with "Sinister Squad", it still tried to be creative in it's own way, even though it was a blatant knock-off of "Suicide Squad". But this thing is not even trying to be creative with it's storytelling. The only thing that is creative are a few awesome-looking makeup effects. But that's not really good enough to save this movie. It's boring as shit, the characters all suck, there is just NOTHING here that I could say is even worth watching for. And yes, I know you guys can watch this thing off of YouTube. But I seriously cannot recommend doing that, because of how truly boring this fucking movie is. And I just noticed something else, as well. This movie's director goes by the name of Robert Kurtzman. I bring this up, because he was a director for the first "Wishmaster" movie. A film that, not only have I reviewed for this series, but I also really enjoyed, as well. So I'm just gonna go and watch that movie next, because that thing was a lot more fun than the shit I had to suffer through for about 90 minutes or so.

And with that, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.