The Age of Commercialism

People are voting emotionally.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Although she's working alongside some fairly big name stars, here, it's Kathy Long who steals the show in KNIGHTS. Albert Pyun's direction is, as usual, one part low-budget exploitation and one part Art House (it's an interesting combination, and a blend Pyun has fairly patented) and he has the good sense to showcase what made Kathy Long famous- her outstanding full contact martial arts experience. The highlight of the movie, without a shadow of a doubt, is the sequence where she singlehandedly wades through a veritable army of evildoers. Had I been unfamiliar with her professional fighting career, I might've mistook this extended sequence for some lesser filmmaker's perverse wish-fulfillment. It's not: having seen her fight, I can attest to the fact that Kathy Long COULD wade through a veritable army of evildoers. (And, like ravishing Rhonda Rousey, she's a looker...) (Either one of them could kick MY a** any time...)

Set in a post-apocalyptic environment, cyborgs led by warlord Job rein over the human population. They basically keep them as livestock, as they need fresh human blood to live off. Nea and her brother managed to survive one of their attacks when she was a kid, and years have past when she came face-to-face with the cyborgs again, but this time she's saved by the cyborg Gabriel, who was created to destroy all cyborgs. Job and his men are on their way to capture a largely populated city, while Nea (with revenge on mind) pleads Gabriel to train her in the way of killing cyborgs and she'll get him to Gabriel.Cheap low-rent cyborg / post-apocalyptic foray by writer / director Albert Pyun (who made "Cyborg" prior to it and the blistering "Nemsis" the same year) is reasonably a misguided hunk of junk with some interesting novelties. Very little structure makes its way into the threadbare story, as the turgid script is weak, corny and overstated. The leaden banter tries to be witty, but it pretty much stinks and comes across being comical in the unintentional moments. Most of the occurring actions are pretty senseless and routine. The material could've used another polish up, as it was an inspired idea swallowed up by lazy inclusions, lack of a narrative and an almost jokey tone. The open-ended, cliffhanger conclusion is just too abrupt, especially since a sequel has yet to be made. Makes it feel like that that run out of money, and said "Time to pack up. Let's finish it off another day (or maybe in another decade). There's no rush." However it did find it rather diverting, thanks largely to its quick pace, some well-executed combat and George Mooradian's gliding cinematography that beautifully captured the visually arresting backdrop. Performances are fair. Kris Kristofferson's dry and steely persona works perfectly as Gabriel and a self-assured, psychically capable Kathy Long pulls off the stunts expertly and with aggression. However her acting is too wooden. A mugging Lance Henriksen gives a mouth-watering performance of pure ham, as the villainous cyborg leader Job who constantly having a saliva meltdown. Scott Paulin also drums up plenty of gleefulness as one of the cyborgs and Gary Daniels pouts about as one too. Pyun strikes up few exciting martial art set pieces, involving some flashy vigour and gratuitous slow-motion. Seeping into the background is a scorching, but mechanical sounding music score. The special effects and make-up FX stand up fine enough. Watchable, but not quite a success and it's minimal limitations can be a cause of that.

For its genre, I guess this film was OK. Post apocalyptic Earth, lots of deserts, dirty people in rags, fighting, even blood sucking cyborgs. The only beef with it is that it seemed to be made in the 80's. I even imagined myself commenting on IMDb about how Kris Kistofferson and Lance Henriksen made movies before Alien and Terminator. It turned out that this movie was made afterwards.I must define the notion of OK. I knew it was trash, therefore I expected things like bad picture editing to make the fights look cooler, obvious stunt men instead of the real actors and ridiculous fighting. I also expected to see cardboard characters in a movie without plot. The only surprise was that the fighting was half decent, as the female star (also a good looking one) is an actual kick boxer.If you see this movie on TV, it might be worth a watch. It's not too bad, so you can't rent it to make fun of it too much. So it's a bad idea to rent or purchase it, basically :)

You can't really go far when the initial story isn't all that great. The premise of cyborg's needing blood is just dopey.The script is blasé'. The actors don't have much to work with. The sets were staged out in the desert to cut costs. It's a trademark that if the background is the desert, then the movie has no budget.Lack of budget is okay, if there's a story. "Solarbabies" and "Blood of Champions" are examples of decent work from no $. but this movie looks as if they had to scrape their change together just to buy the cameraman a sandwich. Again, forgivable if only the story didn't just plain suck.Finally, this movie commits the biggest crime of all: It doesn't finish! It simply ends as if it's a commercial break away from the rest of the movie. But the rest never comes. Just odd.Just bad.