Kungfu Cyborg: Metallic Attraction
(aka Kung Fu Cyborg)
2009; directed by Jeff Lau

Heavily promoted in China as their home-grown answer to the juggernaut of the Transformers movies, Kungfu Cyborg certainly does ape the style of Michael Bay's blockbuster series, even to the point of throwing in Chinese rap-core music in place of Linkin Park. And like Bay's films, when Kungfu Cyborg concentrates on metal mayhem, it's decent enough brainless entertainment -- but when any sort of actual story-telling is attempted, the film's myriad of shortcomings become painfully clear.

Taking place in 2046, Kungfu Cyborg centers on K-1 (Alex Fong Lik-Sun), a cyborg sent to a village to assist Xu Dachun (Hu Jun) in cleaning up local cases. K-1 is so effecient that Xu is thrown to the side, and along with a growing romance between the robot and Sumei (Betty Sun Li), Xu begins to try and stop K-1. But after a renegade cyborg named K-88 (Wu Jing) begins wreaking havoc, the two rivals must join forces.

Science fiction in Chinese cinema is still a rarity, so I'll be a bit forgiving when it comes to the overall lower quality of the special effects, or even somewhat jarring facts that apparently this is a world where cybernetics have been fully realized, but people are still talking with cell phones that look they came from 2002, and communicate with each other via text-based IM clients. The action scenes are decent enough that the viewer can forgive at least some of the fluff which surrounds them.

However, they are not nearly good enough to truly forgive all of the cinematic faux paus present here, most notably the absolutely awful acting. Even Alex Fong, who is playing a robot -- a goddamn ROBOT, people -- overacts. I never thought I would be pining for the salad days of Ekin Cheng trying to emote while sitting in front of a greenscreen in Hot War.

Anyway, there's also just way too many elements thrown into the mix. Even in the schizophrenic world of Hong Kong movies, you really can't expect your audience who just got their eyes and ears melted by a special effects ejaculation to take a romantic scene seriously, especially when the dialogue is delivered with all the sincerity of a Billy Mays infomercial. Actually, watching Billy Mays schill Oxi Clean would probably be more entertaining than sitting through this over-long and over-blown mess. At least you would get some genuine laughs and enjoyment, unlike this production, which more often than not, just conjures up boredom or spite.

RATING: 4