Brought to us by the redoubtable PM Entertainment Group -- namely, Joseph Merhi and Richard Pepin, would-be successors to Cannon's Golan and Globus -- this leaden rip-off of "The Terminator" and "Robocop" imagines a not-too-distant future in which the U.S. government has instituted a computerized justice system that is, of course, easily controlled by the megalomaniac head (an overblown Joseph Ruskin) of the corporation that developed it. The lack of imagination and sophistication of the political allegory this is vaguely trying to spin is best summed up by the Ayn Rand quote that pops up near the end, a quote that is as leaden as most of the rest of the film's dialogue.
There are basically two assets here, both of which unfortunately are largely wasted. One is the bad guy's henchman Richard Norton, the usually entertaining action film stalwart who is given too little to do, save one half-way decent fight scene. (The fight choreography is by Art Camacho, who also appears as a protester.) The other is title character Jim Maniaci, a sort of cut-rate Arnold, who looks impressive but is allowed no personality and given no characteristics that might make him somewhat intriguing. The rest of the cast, including star Don "The Dragon" Wilson, is pretty awful. It's hard to tell if the dialogue is so bad that the actors are defeated by it or if the actors are so bad that they couldn't possibly bring off any dialogue that had more wit or sparkle. Fans of Wilson -- and I presume he had some, because he made a lot of movies -- may feel differently, but I found him thoroughly dull and unimpressive here, as in most of his films I've seen.
Aside from the one decent fight amidst the abundance of uninspired action sequences, the only other aspect of this that held my interest is the low-budget 1994 ideas about what future technology might be like. It seems people have home computer assistants they can talk to and interact with almost as if they were human, but no cellphones. The coolest thing was a device that will let you go to sleep on command -- no more tossing and turning. Of course, if you really want to sleep, just queue up this movie.
There are basically two assets here, both of which unfortunately are largely wasted. One is the bad guy's henchman Richard Norton, the usually entertaining action film stalwart who is given too little to do, save one half-way decent fight scene. (The fight choreography is by Art Camacho, who also appears as a protester.) The other is title character Jim Maniaci, a sort of cut-rate Arnold, who looks impressive but is allowed no personality and given no characteristics that might make him somewhat intriguing. The rest of the cast, including star Don "The Dragon" Wilson, is pretty awful. It's hard to tell if the dialogue is so bad that the actors are defeated by it or if the actors are so bad that they couldn't possibly bring off any dialogue that had more wit or sparkle. Fans of Wilson -- and I presume he had some, because he made a lot of movies -- may feel differently, but I found him thoroughly dull and unimpressive here, as in most of his films I've seen.
Aside from the one decent fight amidst the abundance of uninspired action sequences, the only other aspect of this that held my interest is the low-budget 1994 ideas about what future technology might be like. It seems people have home computer assistants they can talk to and interact with almost as if they were human, but no cellphones. The coolest thing was a device that will let you go to sleep on command -- no more tossing and turning. Of course, if you really want to sleep, just queue up this movie.