2026 - MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, a very strange film

This is not a good film, in fact it's a very stupid film.  Mattel owns the rights to the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe characters. They were looking for a studio to make a live action version of their cheesy syndicated cartoon series. Mattel managed to get MGM/Amazon to sign on to create a feature film.  And what brought this on?  Well one word Barbie.  Barbie another Mattel character made so much money that all these corporate interests thought they had a potential money source converting plastic toy doll characters into actual films. 

Unfortunately nobody seemed to understand the success of Barbie.  The film had an excellent screenplay, good direction and casting.  Barbie also pitched a message of female empowerment and you can rest assured Masters of the Universe really had no such message just a cowardly tiger called Cringer and a floating magic guy called Orko.

As poorly as this film turned out there was the gem of a decent idea in it.  Add the usual action and fantasy stuff but also stick in lots of self deprecating humor with a wink to the audience that all this sword and sorcery stuff is actually mighty silly.

Half the time the actors look like they can barely contain the smirk on their faces while playing these silly characters.  The action scenes are the usual bunch of overblown computer graphic animations. After a while it just looks so outrageous it ceases to be remotely believable even for a fantasy world.  But maybe that was the point. 

The director Travis Knight had primarily been associated with animated cartoons. I suppose he was considered to be a safe choice for what is essentially a live action animated cartoon.  But in the end the whole thing just came off as another  flop that ended up on streaming almost immediately after it was released.  If you are for some reason interested in the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe world I would recommend watching the Dolph Lundgren version.  Released in 1987 by the Cannon Group who at least recognized this was B-Movie junk instead of the wasted $170 million dollar budget that this film spent.

 The film went through a lot of screenwriters but only four got credit.  Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee and David Callaham.  The running time is 140 minutes for a film that is an updated toy commercial, 

2025 - THE RUNNING MAN, the remake

The director Edgar Wright had a big desire to remake the old Arnold Schwarzenegger version calling it a dream project.  Apparently Wright had not cared for Arnold's film of the Stephen King story and wanted to stay closer to the original. Careful what you wish for when it comes to dream projects.  The final result of this film is a jumbled mess that ends up in a series of individual action scenes which don't tie together. 

 

Wright went about creating a story about a totalitarian government now in charge of the United States tusing the media to manipulate the public to stay in power.  Apparently Wright didn't read  “1984” in school like everyone else was forced to do.  Glen Powell plays a contestant in The Running Man game show.  He's desperate to make money for his family and his sick child needs a doctor of course.  Nothing like dragging that old trope out.  The film follows Powell around from one situation to another as he is pursued by some government agents all the while being stalked by video cameras that transmit his situation over network TV for the entertainment of the public.  

This film is just a big miss for Edgar Wright.  Normally he is a director with an entertaining visual style who really knows how to move a story along.  Wright's other skill is adding humor to his films which he is usually very good at.  However the pace of this film is off and a lot of the film's attempts at humor are just not that funny.

Edgar Wright besides being a director is a serious film nerd as he has demonstrated on one podcast after another.  He started out strong in his career with his very funny television show Spaced.  He moved into film with Shawn of the Dead,  Hot Fuzz and his tribute to Walter Hill's The Driver with his version called Baby Driver.  Wright had his misses with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Last Night in Soho but at least they were interesting films.  However The Running Man is a complete failure from conception to execution. 

Frankly this film also has some very disappointing casting decisions in it.  I hate to say it but Glenn Powell as the lead can't even begin to generate the charisma of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold's film also had Richard Deacon as the evil game show host who is really fun to watch.  Josh Brolin is the head of the game show in this version but he can't compete with Richard Deacon’s funny performance.

I think the major problem with this version of The Running Man is that it's just not as much fun as Arnold's goofy version was.  As film critic Andrew Sarris liked to say there is a "strained seriousness " throughout this film.   The Running Man  is also ungodly long running over two hours.

The writers were Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall.  The running time is 133 minutes. 

2026 - THE ODYSSEY, on the big screen is long and very loud

This is the big summer movie filmed in 70mm with a big budget and a big Hollywood cast.  It has it's good points and not so good points.  As a high school student who along time ago was forced to read the Robert Fagles translation of Homer's poem I can say that Christopher Nolan changed a lot of stuff.  But there have been so many translations and interpretations of this epic Nolan certainly has the right to create his version.  The biggest change is the addition of the Trojan horse and the siege of Troy which I believe are not mentioned in the poem.  Odysseus is also now a doubting leader racked by guilt about his role in the war and haunted by the deaths of his men  He's a candidate for some serious mental health counseling and maybe a prescription of Prozac.

The film includes all the greatest hits of The Odyssey.  The encounter with Polyphemus the cyclops (probably the best scene in the film) who munches on his crew like they were after dinner mints.  A battle with the Laestrygonians, some giants that attack and destroy his ships. We are spared the scene from the book where they also eat some of Odysseus's men.  Apparently one cannibal scene was enough for this film.  Circe and Calypso are here and there's a side trip to Hades.  The final slaughter of the suitors in the banquet hall is for the most part unchanged.  About the only mythological character Nolan missed was Bobo from Clash of the Titans. 

The cast much to my surprise was fairly decent.  Matt Damon isn't bad as Odysseus and doesn't look to silly with that broom helmet on his head.  Anne Hathaway is his wife the faithful Penelope.  She's actually very effective in her scenes.   Robert Pattinson is one of the suitors of Penelope he makes a good hissable villain in the great tradition of these "sword and sandal" epics.  Tom Holland an actor now in his 30's is also good playing Odysseus's young son Telemachus.  Every time he refers to Odysseus with the anachronistic name of "Dad," that played a little cringy for me.  Tom Holland's wife Zendaya is Athena the muse of Odysseus.  However Zendaya makes absolutely no impression in this very small role. 

Yes the production is impressive considering the challenges of filming with 70mm cameras.  The Odyssey does have plenty of fighting and battle scenes to satisfy the action fans.  For a 2700 year old poem a lot of the story still works fairly well.  The soundtrack on this film is very LOUD.  I actually sat in my car for a few minutes after the film to wind down.

I will give Christopher Nolan credit this guy isn't afraid to think big and go over the top in his film making.  If he doesn't always succeed with his approach at times at the very least he is trying to go there with his large scale approach to storytelling.  Nolan's in the great tradition of super epic filmmakers like David Lean and Sergei Bondarchuk, directors who worked on a large canvas. 

 The running time is 173 minutes, screenplay by Christopher Nolan.

1979 - CITY ON FIRE, aka burning people

Why review a film called City on Fire?  Well it's a nostalgic look back to a time in my life when I was younger and forced to watch movies on television which were loaded with lots of commercials.  Well to get to the point, City On Fire was one on the earliest films that got the Mystery Science Theater 3000 comedic voice over treatment. 

MST3K originally aired on a Twin Cities UHF channel KTMA 23.  At the time much of the show's comedy revolved around references to Minneapolis and St. Paul.  Being a resident and younger I found all of this stuff quite funny.  Well the rest is history as they say.  The show got picked up and they were off and running.   Watching the unaltered (original) version of this movie was a chance to see if it was as dumb as it seemed in 1989.  The answer is a resounding yes.  

An extremely disgruntled employee of a large metropolitan city sabotages an oil refinery which ignites a fire that basically consumes the entire city.  Coming to the rescue is a group of television and past their prime actors trying to save the day.

And what a cast.  Henry Fonda in a where's my paycheck role is the fire chief.  Fonda probably shot this film in a couple of days since he never leaves the command center set.  Whoa, Ava Gardner one time screen queen is a television reporter and she's looking mighty rough after years of partying.  Leslie Nielson is the slimy mayor of the city.  Nielson was a Canadian by birth and that's only right because this film was shot in Canada.  Hammy actor Shelly Winters is a nurse.  

Finally there are the supposed leads of this film.  Barry Newman's career started out strong with the cult film Vanishing Point but descended into mediocre made for television films.  He's the lead playing the ER doctor running around saving people's lives.  His leading lady was played by Susan Clark who I swear was in just about every other piece of junk Universal Studios cranked out.  Seeing her in a television show was like visiting an old friend.  Clark actually started her career playing in the classics on the stage.

This post could go on and on but it's safe to say the plot, the dialog and the acting are shall we say not exactly something Harold Pinter would write.  Actually the burning city fire effects are fairy well done for this poor man's version of The Towering Inferno.

It took three writers to put this together,  Jack Hill, Dave Lewis and Céline La Frenière^.  

The running time is 106 minutes.

1957 - HELL DRIVERS, the world of macho British truck drivers

Stanley Baker is an ex-con looking for work.  He ends up getting a job at a company that hauls gravel for a road construction project.  The catch is that the drivers are expected to drive really fast in order to meet their daily quota.  A young Patrick McGoohan is the leader of the truck drivers.  He's a nasty bully and we know this because he always has a cigarette dangling out of his mouth.  Peggy Cummins is the office secretary who knows where all the dirty secrets are buried at the trucking company,  Sean Connery and Gordon Jackson are also in the cast as truck drivers in smaller roles. 

As some critics pointed out at the time this was an unusual film since it was filled with lots of macho posturing and tough action.  Usually British films had a more shall we say refined approach to excitement as in the boring film The Scarlet Pimpernel.  For a change Hell Drivers was a rare film at this time that focused on the lives of the British working class.

The film was directed by a blacklisted American writer/director Cy Enfield.  Enfield relocated to England and filmed some tough crime and action films.  Enfield's big picture was Zulu which he produced with Stanley Baker.

Peggy Cummins had an aborted career in Hollywood after being recast in Forever Amber is in this film to sex it up.  Cummins most memorable film was the classic Gun Crazy.  Perennial British character actor Herbert Lom shows up playing Baker's Italian friend.  Ace cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth shot the exciting driving scenes.  Overall an entertaining action film. This film is dripping with testosterone and mano a mano fighting.  The action is rough and exciting.

The screenplay is by Cy Enfield and John Kruse, the running time is 108 minutes.

2022 - SISU, apparently the first in a series of two films.

Probably should have watched this film first instead of Sisu: Road to Revenge.  However both films are essentially the same plot our hero kills a hell of a lot of people but he does it very creatively.  

As it turns out the guy's name isn't Sisu.  Sisu is evidently a state of courage or something. The film is set in Finland.  Our hero, Aatami Korpi digs up a load of gold.  Unfortunately for him a German patrol finds out about his stash of gold and we are off and running as Aatami fights them off with probably some of the most graphic violence possible.

Is Aatami tough?  Well at one point he takes off his shirt and his body is covered in very large scars.  He's also clearly been working out at the Helsinki YMCA because he is very buff and he's got a dog just like The Road Warrior.  Those German soldiers are clearly outclassed in the brutality department.

 

This mayhem is once again orchestrated by the director Jalmari Helander.  Heander is very skilled at staging the action stuff in his films.  He has an interesting sense of humor, the violence at times gets mighty ludicrous.

Sisu is recommended for the action movie fans who like it tough and fast.

The film was written by Jalmari Helander, the running time is 91 minutes.  

 

2025 - SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE aka SI2U

From Finland comes the second in the Sisu series a film about one really pissed off citizen from Finland. He's about to raise holy hell on some of the Russian military after (what else) his family is murdered by them.  Apparently in the first film he took on the Nazi's but I guess he's an equal opportunity killer.

 

The film's rather sketchy plot has our hero transporting what is left of his family homestead by semi-truck.  In hot pursuit are the Russians led by the man who killed his family naturally.  The first half of the film is a road chase that is very reminiscent of The Road Warrior except this film wants to really top that film by being a lot more brutal.

 

In the second half of this film, the Russians finally catch this guy, put him on a train to transport him back to Russia.  Bad mistake, this Sisu guy after being tortured escapes from his railway car prison cell and wreaks even more havoc if that's possible.

 

What can you say?  The film is extremely well made.  The mayhem inflected on the cast is considerable.  If you are looking for a lot of graphic bloody violence but well staged graphic bloody violence this film should satisfy you.  The ending seemed a little over the top but in reality the whole film was over the top.

Written by the director Jalmari Helander, the running time is a brisk 89 minutes.

1979 - CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79 aka The Concorde Affair

Released in the same year as the ridiculous The Concorde... Airport '79.  This film was a typical attempt by the Italian film industry to do what they do best rip off current American films. Basically stealing their plot lines and loading them up with past their prime American performers.   In this case instead of releasing just another crappy rework of an American film this is actually more entertaining than The Concorde... Airport '79, well go figure.

There is a conspiracy by a nameless corporation to sabotage the then fashionable faster than sound Concorde airplane.  They want to sell their own version of that plane by blowing up Concordes apparently. An investigative journalist played by American actor James Franciscus manages to locate the last survivor of  the latest Concorde plan crash played by actor Mimsy Farmer.  (Now there's a woman who had an interesting career).  Well the chase is on as the two of them have to avoid being killed by assassins so they can reveal the truth of these Concorde plane crashes.

 

The film was directed by Ruggero Deodato who in his film career made the very extreme horror film Cannibal Holocaust and one of the craziest science fiction action films ever made Raiders of Atlantis.  Besides Franciscus, Joseph Cotton and Van Johnson show up in the film as is the way with casting in these Italian productions.

 

This is an entertaining action film that zips along at a decent pace and as I indicated at the top of this post is a lot more entertaining and believe it or not more plausible than The Concorde... Airport '79 which frankly wouldn't take all that much. 

The film was written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Renzo Genta, the running time is 96 minutes. 

202 - NORMAL, another shoot em up with more of a sense of humor than usual

Normal is sort of the third part of a Bob Odenkirk action trilogy.  Odenkirk is an unlikely action hero for this stuff.  In a previous incarnation he was a comedian the first part of his career.  He hit his stride as sleazy attorney Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and it's spinoff  Better Call Saul.  Odenkirk pivoted into the action film franchisee with the Nobody series about a retired government hit man.

Normal finds Odenkirk as a a temporary sheriff in a small Minnesota town called Normal.  As it turns out the town of Normal is actually a holding area for gold and money that the Yakuza have been using to launder their ill gotten gains.  To make matters worse the entire town is in on the money laundering scheme and is armed to the teeth to keep their secret safe.  Let the shooting begin and there is a lot of shooting to be sure.

 

Odenkirk takes a producer credit on the film along with a story credit.  The director is Ben Wheatey a Brit who is an expert at staging shoot outs which he twists around with lots of bizarre violent humor.  He's found his perfect partner in Odenkirk who contributes his own brand of unconventional humor.  It's a match made in action movie heaven. 

The film is entertaining it does have a really warped sense of humor between all the gun play and body counts.  Odenkirk's wry sense of humor is definitely and asset.

The screenplay is by Derek Kolstad, the running time is 91 minutes.

1945 - A GAME OF DEATH, decent remake of "The Most Dangerous Game."

A Game of Death is a remake of The 1932 film The Most Dangerous Game which was in turn based on a short story by the author Richard Connell.  The story is a very entertaining melodrama about a famous hunter Don Rainsford stranded on a remote island who becomes they prey of a nutcase hunter Erich Kreiger who is bored with killing animals and has resorted to stalking and killing humans instead.  So the chase is on in this fast paced film.

Robert Wise directed this version after working with producer Val Lewton on his legendary series of horror films.  It's competent and decently made but I miss the flamboyance of the earlier film with it's over the top Max Steiner film music and it's really fast paced structure.  It's now a film making legend that The Most Dangerous Game was simultaneously filmed on the same jungle sets as King Kong with several of the King Kong actors primarily Faye Wray and Robert Armstrong in roles. English actor Leslie Banks in a very flamboyant performance was the crazy hunter who in this film is called Count Zaroff.  It's a very fun 1930's film.

 

The remake is not without it's merits, John Loder plays Rainsford and he gives a good competent performance.  Playing the madman hunter Erich Kreiger is the actor Edgar Barrier who was a member of Orson Welles' Mercury theater.  He may not have been as over the top as Leslie Banks but he gets the job done as a creepy menacing character.

 

This man hunting man plot has been so durable that it's been filmed many times.  I originally read this story in high school although I suppose it's not exactly a  P.C. kind of story anymore.

 The screenplay was by Norman Houston, the running time is an efficient 72 minutes.

2026 - SHELTER, this year's Jason Statham film

With the inevitability of a returning season this is the yearly Jason Statham action film no better or no worse than any of his other films.  In Shelter, Statham is a man living alone on a deserted island with an abandoned lighthouse on it.  Washing up onto the beach is a teenage girl who has survived a ship sinking.  It turns out Statham is an ex special ops agent skilled at killing a lot of people all at once or one at a time.  His cover is now blown and so the chase is on.   Will Statham be able to stop the army of assassins sent out to kill before he can save the girl and get her to safety?  Have you guessed the very obvious answer to that question?

The teenage girl is played by somebody with a tongue twister of a name called Bodhi Rae Breathnach she interacts with Statham fairly well.  Award winning actor Bill Nighy (as in what am I doing in this film) is the leader of the assassins and since this a Jason Statham film you know he's going to get it.

 

The director Ric Roman Waugh was a former stuntman who had worked on The Last of the Mohicans, The Last Action Hero and the bizarre meta universe film The One, so he knew his way around staging the action scene stuff which is for the most part fairly well done. 

 

Shelter is the usual time killer of a film.  It keeps the viewers interest from beginning to the end or at least until the next Statham film comes rolling along in 2027.

The film was written by Ward Perry, the running time is 107 minutes.

2025 - DUST BUNNY, a fantasy horror film for the kids.

It must be the weekend for strange films.  Dust Bunny has been described by it's writer/director as a "horror film for the family" and that's probably not far from the truth.  The plot has a little girl convinced that a monster is hiding under her bed.  Unsurprisingly there is a monster under her bed and it proceeds to eat her parents.  To stop the monster, she robs from a collection plate during a Catholic Mass and uses it to hire a hit man who just happens to live in the apartment across the hall from her to kill the monster.

The film mixes the fantasy elements, action scenes and the budding relationship between the hit man and the little girl quite well.  The director Bryan Fuller is an experienced hand at this kind of storytelling.  He's written for the television shows Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, Star Trek Voyager and Deep Space Nine.  I think it's safe to say he knows his way around macabre stuff like this.

 

Dust Bunny has a great cast.  Mads Mikkelsen is the hit man and when I think of him he's usually an unrepentant bad guy.  Sigourney Weaver is Mikkelsen's contact for hit man jobs.  She first played an action hero in Alien and 40 years later she's still kicking butt.  The young girl Sophie Sloan was about 10 years old when she acted in this film and she gives a very droll performance.  Mikkelson and Sloan work very well together in this film.

 

Dust Bunny is another off the wall film that really should find an audience it's a lot of weird fun especially for fans of the fantasy genre.

The running time is 106 minutes. 

2011 - FLYING SWORDS OF DRAGON GATE - sort of a remake of Dragon Gate Inn

Filmmaker Tsui Hark's sort of update of Dragon Gate Inn which came out in the mid 1960's and was directed by one of the best wuxia filmmakers King Hu.  Tsui Hark brought his usual vigorous staging over the top action and crazy visual effects while updating the plot to fit his style of storytelling.

 

Hark cast Jet Li who was pushing 50 when this film came out.  Li still was pretty agile of course it didn't hurt that he was assisted by the wild wire work that the Asian stunt arrangers like to use during the action scenes.  As usual with Hark the film was loaded up with not one but in this film three gorgeous Asian female actors, Zhou Xun, Chris Lee and Gwei Lun-mei.  As in many of Tsui Hark's films the women are equally as good at  sword fighting as the men.

 

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate involves the Emperor's main consort (mistress) attempting to eliminate the Emperor's harem in order to retain power.  One of the harem's consorts flees into the desert where she ends up at the Dragon Inn and is protected by Jet Li.  Throw in a roving gang of outlaws, soldiers loyal to the main consort, a mystical desert dust storm which threatens to blow the Inn off the face of the earth and you have a lot of opportunities for Tsui Hark to top one action scene after another.  Just for good measure there is also a hidden city buried in the desert made out of gold for the outlaws to loot when the pacing of the film slows down which it never does.

I usually enjoy Hark's films.  Watching one of his films usually guarantees you are in for a pretty entertaining time.  Hark is definitely one of the masters of the action genre and at age 75 he's still working.

This film was written by Tsui Hark, Zhu Yali and Ho Kei-ping.  The running time is kind of on the long side at 125 minutes, but it's never dull. 

2026 - WAR MACHINE, science fiction action junk which is entertaining

The latest streamer action movie and there are a lot of streamer action movies is War Machine.  It's an entertaining time waster and no one will confuse it with Wild Strawberries.  War Machine is essentially a remake of Arnold's Predator action classic and it does have as it's star another man mountain Alan Ritchson.

Ritchson plays a soldier who gets admitted to the Army Ranger training program although in real life he would probably be considered a little old.  Ritchson is suffering from PTSD from a previous tour in Afghanistan but he's still one tough SOB.  Anyway on the final test of his Ranger training he and his classmates get dropped into the middle of the Colorado woods although Australia is the substitute for Colorado.  They run into a robotic killing machine released from where else space aliens who apparently want to take over the earth.  So now the plot sequels into a rehash of that other space alien invasion epic Battle:  Los Angeles.

 

Lots of shooting, ray gun blasting and chases the usual stuff.  The War Machine seems unstoppable until Ritchson finally gets his hands on a bulldozer.  So now the film borrows from the climax of Aliens which had Sigourney Weaver battle it out in a mech suit with the prime Alien monster.  The War Machine looks a lot like the ED-209 from RoboCop by the way.

 

There are really no original ideas anymore or so it seems in the movie business.  Still this film does a decent job with the action stuff. Alan Ritchson has been kicking around the film business since 2004 until he finally hit the big time with the "Jack Reacher" series.  I'll say this for Ritchson at least he's young, it's getting a little hard to stomach all these geriatric action stars still working, I'm talking to you Arnold, Sylvester and Harrison.  Time to take your millions and maybe retire to a turkey farm or something.

War Machine was written by Patrick Hughes and James Beaufort, the running time is 107 minutes. 

2018 - OCCUPATION, space alien invasion stuff from Australia

Yet another space alien invasion story.  Let's get this out of the way the film is clearly beholden to War of the Worlds, Battle:  Los Angeles, Independence Day and particularly Red Dawn.  Space aliens have landed on earth in particular the Australian Outback.  A plucky group of survivors flee into the woods and set up a makeshift camp where they learn survival skills and begin to carry out a commando war against the aliens who are up to a nefarious purpose.

You can't argue there isn't enough action in this film, it has lots of shooting, ray gun blasting, car chases and explosions to keep the non discriminating action freak satisfied.  There is some attention paid to characterization.  One guy suffers from depression, there is a pregnant young couple, an ex-con whose family has been put in an alien concentration camp, the usual stuff.  

 

The is a B-movie with a fairly decent budget but it's still a B-movie.  It's entertaining in it's own way and has the required big action climax which feels a little tacked on.  The acting is decent for the most part. The special effects are not that bad.  

 

An attempt is made to send a message of brotherhood between the earthlings and the space aliens but who the hell is interested in that.  Peace is peachy but fighting is more exciting.  There is actually a sequel to this thing called Occupation: Rainfall. 

The film was written by the director, Luke Sparke, the running time is 119 minutes. 

1964 - THE BLACK TULIP, entertaining update of a traditional swashbucker

French star Alain Delon does the Errol Flynn swashbuckler thing in this entertaining throwback to one of Flynn's 1930's or 1940's sword fighting films.  Delon's in a dual role as Guillaume de Saint Preux, The Black Tulip sort of a Robin Hood type of role.  Delon also plays his look alike brother brother Julien de Saint Preux who has to step into the role of The Black Tulip after Guillaume is injured.

This film is set just before the French Revolution and it's a handsome production filmed in 70mm by Henri Decaë who had an extensive list of credits working for directors Francois Truffaut, Louis Malle, Claude Charbol, Jean Pierre Melville, Roger Vadim, Robert Wise and Wim Wenders, a very impressive resume.

 

The film also stars Italian actor Virna Lisi an attractive woman who as it turns out could act.  Also showing up in this film is perennial ham actor Akim Tamiroff who as usual just plays the same character from film to film.  Tamiroff was a favorite actor of Orson Welles and showed up in a couple of his films.

 

The director Christin-Jaque keeps the film moving with some very entertaining action scenes and the whole film has a very fast moving light touch to it.  It takes a lot of skill to pull off this kind of a fun film.

The film was written by Henri Jeanson and Christian-Jaque, the running time is 110 minutes.

1988 - I LOVE MARIA, aka Roboforce

Filmmaker Tsui Hark is the producer and stars in this pretty wild film which mixes about every conceivable genre possible for one film.  The obvious inspiration for this film was Robocop but instead of just doing a rehash of that film I Love Maria is jammed with lots of crazy action and comedy scenes.

In brief, a criminal gang known as The Hero Gang has built an impregnable robot called Pioneer 1 who can tear through the police like a piece of paper.  The stated goal of The Hero Gang is to eliminate the police and create chaos.  In addition they have developed another more humanoid looking robot called Maria played by Sally Yeh.  Yeh was the actor who was the blind women in John Woo's The Killer but I digress.  Anyway a scientist from the police force, a former member of The Hero Gang and a goofy reporter manage to get control of Maria and take on The Hero Gang along with help from the robot girl.  

 

As with a lot of these Hong Kong action films from the 1980's the fighting and shootouts are very well done. However you have to sit through a lot and I mean a lot of some really dumb comedy.  But that's the price you pay when you watch some of these Hong Kong action films.

 

I Love Maria is an entertaining film and a very fun ride of a film for the most part. 

The film was written (if that's the word) by Yuen Kai Chi, the running time is a frantic and never dull 96 minutes.