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Major Black (Reb Brown) and his team of mercenaries are hired to ...
well, for some sort of jungle mission anyways. They are accompanied on the
mission by Mascher (Mel Davidson), an employee of hte shady corporation
that has hired him, and a man who makes no secret about having his own
agenda - which is why he is not well-liked. Soon, something starts killing
Black's men ... Along the way, Black and company run across a gang of
machete wielding militants who chase a couple of locals to death, and
always the heroes, our mercenaries kill the militants and this way save a
woman, UN-worker Virginia (Catherine Hickland) from certain death. Taking
Virginia with them, our heroes run into more and more problems, and more
and more get killed, and they finally find out what they're up against: A
robot. An indestructible robot it turns out built by the very corporation
that got them there, not to destroy the thing actually, but to see how the
robot would fare against them. Mascher even carries a machine that makes
him immune to robot attacks. It's only when one of Black's men destrroys
the machine that he starts opening up about the robot, and that he
actually carries a remote control with him that could destroy the thing -
but first he is too far from the robot to use it, then he loses it to the
robot and ultimately loses his life ... but now before confessing to Black
that the robot was actually built from the human remains of his old army
buddy. After much to and fro, our heroes are down to Black and Virginia
(naturally), and after Black has made sure of Virginia's escape, he goes
on the offensive - and when the robot recognizes his old army buddy in
Black, he hands him over the remote to kill him, which Black does ... Basically,
this film is an unofficial remake of Predator, from the premise and
story structure as such to whole sequences lifted from the earlier film.
Sure, the enemy is no longer an extraterrestrial that can render itself
invisible but a robot with shades of RoboCop that looks a bit like
a midieval knight, but that's not too much of a stretch now is it? This
all doesn't say too much about the actual quality of RoboWar
though, does it? Perhaps the best way to label this film would be so-so,
both within director Bruno Mattei's body of work and within trash cinema
history as such. Sure, the whole film is derivative as can be, and the low
budget shines through a few times too often, but the jungle locations work
in the film's favour, as does Mattei's flat but competent direction. In
all, you will probably get a few chuckles out of this one, but there are
films (by Mattei and others) of the same ilk that are a whole lot funnier
(in an unintentional way of course).
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