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CYBERJACK
aka
VIRTUAL ASSASSIN
Rating: 
USA/Canada. 1995.
Director – Robert Lee, Screenplay – Eric Poppen, Producer – John A. Curtis, Photography – Allan Trow, Music – George Blondheim, Digital Visual Effects – The Magic Camera Co (Supervisor – Angus Bickerton), Special Effects – Paller Special Effects (Supervisor – Gary Paller), Makeup Effects – Gitte Axen & Shawna Magrath, Production Design – Linda Del Rosario & Richard Paris. Production Company – Everest Entertainment/Fuji Eight Co Ltd/Prism Pictures/John A. Curtis/Catalyst Films International.
Cast:
Michael Dudikoff (James Nickolaus), Brion James (Nassim), Suki Kaiser (Dr Alex Royce), Duncan Fraser (Dr Phillip Royce), Topaz Hasfal-Schou (Meghan), Gavin Cross (Numb), Dean McKenzie (Reef), Jerry Wasserman (Neil Jervis), Alvin Sanders (John), Jon Cuthbert (Devon), James Thom (Travis), Hiro Kanagawa (Kenji), John Tench (Shreck)
Plot: Terrorists break into a computer research lab to steal an artificially intelligent bio-linked computer virus designed by Dr Philip Royce and intended for use in protecting computer systems against intrusion. But just as they enter Royce activates the virus’s self-destruct. The terrorist leader Nassim shoots Royce and takes the other employees hostage to force Royce’s daughter Alex to crack the self-destruct codes before the virus is destroyed. It is up to burned-out former cop James Nickolaus, working as the building’s janitor, to save the day.
Forget the sf pitch that this is sold with. This for the most part is only a thin pretext for a film that has no other pretensions to be anything other than a cheap Die Hard (1988) copy that sits on the 50c video shelves. As an action film it is singularly routine. Everything in it comes written to cliché – the burned-out cop improbably working as a janitor in a building just as it is taken over by terrorists. And the action lacks anything more spectacular in scale than a laser cannon blowing up a stationary car. (The one cool thing about the film is Topaz Hasfal-Schou in a striking strapless Amazonian suit, who goes through the routine moves with a vicious litheness).
As action it is dull and unimaginatively staged – but as sf it verges on the near laughable. It is clearly written by people who know next to nothing about computers. First there’s the idea of an artificially intelligent computer virus: “Please explain to us how you can make a virus think?” someone not unreasonably asks early on. “By merging it with neurological protoplasm,” comes the preposterously straightfaced answer. And by the climax the film goes from the barely plausible – an AI virus – to the outrightly laughable with Brion James downloading the virus into his brain, becoming a megalomaniac, going crazy, shooting lightning bolts from his eyeballs and turning cops into zombies via their radio headpieces. Of course the film’s pretensions are added to by Brion James in full OTT mode, made up as a goatteed zombie and not taking a bit of it seriously, bawling out lines like [after someone accuses him of playing God]: “After tonight God’ll be lucky if I even return his phone calls.”
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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