Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

One of my all time favorites.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

THE RETALIATOR is a fairly middling entry in the field of low-budget TERMINATOR rip-offs which were all the rage back in the late '80s. There's an abundance of action, some of it done well, some of it done not so well, and a plot which also manages to drag in elements of ROBOCOP (the cyborg recovers her memory, which causes her to go berserk), but it's the low budget which ends up flooring this otherwise interesting epic-wannabe. Lots of the film takes place at night, which makes half of the action sequences hard to see and lessens their impact. The daytime scenes look and feel cheap and the film resorts to disorientating flashing lights at the climax in a vain attempt to be frightening.Location filming was done in Israel, to give the movie an impressive international feel, but even that's not entirely successful (yeah, so it's been filmed in a foreign country - it still ends up looking cheap!). The only people I can think would want to watch this movie are those who are fans of the two leads. Robert Ginty (a dependable B-movie hero since THE EXTERMINATOR) is on hand as a tough mercenary who gets injured a lot and runs around looking hard with a big gun, giving one of his customary stony-faced performances. Sandahl Bergman (CONAN THE BARBARIAN) is the female robot, and scarily looks like James Woods in this movie. Although she's saddled with really cheesy '80s big hair at around halfway through the movie, she still manages to create quite a scary persona by looking very alien-like. Bergman is given a good, tough role and gets to do lots of amusing things like talk to a computer over the telephone! There are a fair amount of car chases, cool car crashes, and plenty of explosions to keep things moving, along with lots of stunts (my favourite is when Ginty slides down the roof of a building to make his escape). The death scenes are frequent and often filmed so that they are powerful, with maximum impact (my favourite comes when the Retaliator squeals down a phone, bursting a guy's ear drum!), and there's a high body count for action lovers to enjoy. The violence level is high, with loads of shootings and people getting burned to a crisp, but the gore is low and limited to a severed hand and foot and there are no robotic special effects like the box would have you believe.Instead we must make do with some cheap rip-off robo-cam work which, whilst colourful, is hardly in the same league as the one used in THE TERMINATOR, or even the alien-vision in PREDATOR. Bergman finally gets cut in half by a bulldozer of all things, and the best effect they can muster is to have the old trick of burying her body in the ground with a gruesome body (severed at the waist) above. But the end result is that this has all been done before, on a higher budget, and with the style, suspense, and excitement that this movie lacks, despite the best efforts of a genre cast. My advice is to give it a miss.

Cyborg movies were all the rage in the mid-80s after the release of THE TERMINATOR. That movie worked so well because it depicted a nightmarish vision of the future dominated by rampaging, killer machines. And while it had plenty of nifty sci-fi and cyborg effects, the human story was equally strong. Several years later, this movie came out. The version I saw called it THE RETALIATOR, but it's sometimes referred to as PROGRAMMED TO KILL. Personally, I like the shorter title better. But you can definitely see where the filmmakers wanted to cash in on the Terminator craze. Now then, the story: The movie opens in Crete where a group of terrorists open fire on innocent civilians and kidnap two children. The terrorists flee to Beirut with their hostages. So the CIA contacts a team of mercenaries led by the wooden Robert Ginty (from WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD, uh, fame?) to go in, kill the terrorists and rescue the children. In the course of the operation, they manage to rescue the kids and take a female terrorist as a prisoner. The terrorist, played expertly by Sandahl Bergman, is then subjected to a top-secret government project (aren't they all!) whereby they replace parts of her with machines, reprogram and transform her into a killer cyborg. The CIA then sends her back into Beirut to kill a top priority terrorist. As you probably suspect, not even two minutes after she completes her mission, the cyborg goes haywire and starts a rampage against her creators. So Ginty takes it upon himself to stop her. The kills are impressive, my personal favorite is the moment where she kills a guy using a car phone. But Ginty doesn't have much of a screen presence. Granted, he's mildly better in this one than in WOTLW, but that's not saying much. The biggest problem with this film is that it has a cheap feel to it. While it may not be all-that-cheap, afterall it was filmed in several countries, the movie looks and feels cheap. If you're just looking for some mild entertainment, then look no further. But if you want to really see the cyborg movie shine, go out and watch any or all of the following: THE TERMINATOR, TERMINATOR SALVATION, BLADE RUNNER, and ROBOCOP.

Still-timely plot involving a female Middle Eastern terrorist who is caught and re-programmed to go after her former comrades ... all well and good, until the programming goes awry. Straightforward, simple plotting, the action is never allowed to lapse, AND ... this will never happen again ... NO political grandstanding on who is right and wrong in the Middle East situation. Suitably unpretentious production and very workmanlike acting all around, and Sandahl Bergman turns in a rather unnerving performance as Samira, the death machine; the only other actress this good in such a role at the time was Claire Wren in "Steel and Lace," another movie which will appeal to those who like this one. This movie cries out for a remake, maybe with Michelle Rodriguez, though it won't happen; a DVD release of this one would be better.

I believe this to have something for everyone. 1) The female lead 'kicks ass'! So advocates of females in action-dominant roles is well portrayed. Though this is common today this movie was made in the 1980's! 2)This is a great 'Sci-fi'/Action story! Complete with plots & counter plots! It's cerebral- not just 'T & A'. Think of it as the 'Original Universal Soldier' before Van Damnn. 3) Though it involves U.S. intelligence and foreign terrorist, it takes a passive position of the 'right & wrong' of the parties involved. So, government cynics (e.g. X-File types, etc.) will love the U.S. being a 'dark' good guy and does get their ass kicked along with the foreign guys! <LOL> 4) This movie really deserves to be re-done using modern methods and upgrade the story line to include current events. It's a great idea! 5) Lastly, did I mention the actress portraying our cyborg is a 'piece of a--' ... Well you get the idea! <VBEG>Baltimore, Md