Cyborg

"He's the first hero of the 21st Century... and he's our only hope."

1989 1h 26m EN

😐

5.7

MID

🥫

22%

ROTTEN

😬

METACRITIC

⭐

IMDB

★5.7TMDB · 864🥫22%Rotten Tomatoes●24Metacritic★5IMDB · 35,162

Science FictionActionThrillerAdventure

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

A martial artist hunts a killer in a plague-infested urban dump of the future.

“He's the first hero of the 21st Century... and he's our only hope.”

WhatsApp X Facebook Telegram

Where to watch · US

Amazon Prime VideoSubscription

PhiloSubscription

MGM Plus Roku Premium ChannelSubscription

MGM PlusSubscription

Amazon Prime Video with AdsSubscription

Amazon VideoRent

Apple TV StoreRent

Google Play MoviesRent

YouTubeRent

Amazon VideoBuy

Apple TV StoreBuy

Google Play MoviesBuy

YouTubeBuy

Cast

Jean-Claude Van Damme
Gibson Rickenbacker
Deborah Richter
Nady Simmons
Vincent Klyn
Fender Tremolo
Alex Daniels
Marshall Strat
Ralf Moeller
Brick Bardo
Dayle Haddon
Pearl Prophet
Blaise Loong
Furman Vux / Pirate / Bandit
Haley Peterson
Haley

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Albert Pyun
Writers: Albert Pyun
Languages: English
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

RUNTIME

Did you know

86 minutes exactly — the "classic feature" runtime most directors aim for.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Shot for just $0.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Grossed $10M — a 20.3× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

ERA

Did you know

37 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

CINEMA

Did you know

Part of the "Cyborg Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Albert Pyun, shot by Philip Alan Waters. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Kevin Bassinson. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Sheldon Lettich shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Albert Pyun directs. Philip Alan Waters behind the camera. Kevin Bassinson scores. Sheldon Lettich cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

186 minutes exactly — the "classic feature" runtime most directors aim for.
2Shot for just $0.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
3Grossed $10M — a 20.3× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.
437 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.
5Part of the "Cyborg Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.
6Directed by Albert Pyun, shot by Philip Alan Waters. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
7Original score by Kevin Bassinson. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
8Editor Sheldon Lettich shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
9Jean-Claude Van Damme and Deborah Richter and Vincent Klyn carry the top of the cast.
10Marketing tagline: "He's the first hero of the 21st Century... and he's our only hope.".
11IMDB entry: tt0097138 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
12Classified under 12 themes, including "future", "new york city", "martial arts", "cyborg".

The technical file

Cinematography: Philip Alan Waters
Original score: Kevin Bassinson
Editing: Sheldon Lettich
Production design: Douglas H. Leonard
Costume design: Heidi Kaczenski
Makeup / hair: Larry Odien
Stunt coordinator: Tom Elliott
Runtime: 86 min · 1h 26m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $500,000
Box office: $10,166,459
Return: 2033% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): R
IMDB: Cyborg (1989)
Rotten Tomatoes: 22% 🥫 Rotten
Metacritic: 24/100
IMDB rating: 5/10 · 35,162 votes
MPAA: R

Part of

Cyborg Collection

It's high-tech corporate warfare in the year 2074, when cyborgs (robots in human form) have replaced humans at all levels.

Also by

Albert Pyun

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

Kenneth Axel Carlsson2014-12-29
★ 1/10
I remember seeing this movie in my youth, back when it was normal to make movies like this. Back then, the stars were named Stallone, Van Damme and Schwarzenegger, and no matter what they did, they couldn't go wrong. We all wanted to be like these. Today, luckily stars need acting skills and not just muscles and a bit of martial art skill. In fact, had this movie been made today, it might even have been a masterpiece to be compared to such post-apocalyptic movies as Children of Men and The Road. Lets take a brief look at the story, because there is a story hidden here somewhere. We are in The States, a world that has been destroyed completely by anarchy, genocide and starvation, a world where the plague has spread, keeping the population down to an absolute minimum. Somewhere, scientists have found a cure, though, a cure that everyone wants, for good or bad. A cyborg named Pearl is sent into the world to retrieve this cure, and at the beginning of the movie, we learn that she has found it and is taking it back to the doctors who created her. A cyborg, by the way, is a man (or woman) who have been so heavily implemented with cybernetics that they could no longer be recognized as being humans. Pearl is taken by Fender, a madman who also kicks off the movie as our narrator, explaining how he enjoys this new world. Gibs (played by Van Damme) briefly encounters the cyborg, but is really only interested in killing Fender. Those two have a dark past, a past that Gibs (or Gibson) relives throughout the movie in long flashbacks. He was once charged to get a small family to safety outside the city, but Fender interfered and tried to kill them. Now he even has one of the children, a girl named Haley, among his pirates. Gibson is followed by another girl, one named Nady. She is interested in the cure even though Gibs care little for this. They are unlikely travelling companions, but starts out on a big journey towards Atlanta, hoping to catch up with Fender and Pearl, to get revenge... and the cure. Along the way, they encounter many dangers, and finally catch up with the pirates. Cyborg is a low budget movie that tries too hard. Just take a look at the first scene, in New York. Less is more, and if only the director would have remembered that. If only I had had the option to remove the music, then I might actually have enjoyed the movie a little, but no, there is music in nearly all scenes, with only a few exceptions. Music that wants us to feel certain things, and that wants us to be prepared for what is coming. If only we were talking about a beautiful score by Hans Zimmer, but alas, we are not. So why do I ask if this is a failure, or a masterpiece? Well, what if the director deliberately used poor actors, to tell us something of the human race. What if he wanted us to think that all humans in this future were somehow cyborgs, part man, part machine? Unfortunately, this is not so, the director wants us to feel something for Gibs, Nady, Haley and Pearl, and therefore he makes them all human, a humanity that their acting skills cannot handle. Alas, this is not a masterpiece in any way, but a big failure, a movie with a tolerable plot, but that fails to deliver it in a believable way. Last words... my only star goes to the two beautiful paintings of New York and Atlanta that we see in the beginning and end of the movie. These are hauntingly beautiful, but unfortunately, the rest of the movie... is not.
CinemaSerf2024-07-18
★ 5/10
Nope, this is not good and we might as well get that out of the way first. Jean-Claude Van Damme does, however, manage to show off his rippled torso quite frequently whilst everyone else just shows off the fact that they can't act and that even if they could, the dialogue is so pathetic that they'd decided not to bother learning their lines. He's "Gibson", a retired fighter who has to come to terms with an apocalyptic scenario that has reduced these United States to rubble ruled on the basis of survival of the fittest by the "Pirates". Scientists in Atlanta might be onto to a cure for this pestilence, but for that to work then cyborg/human combo "Pearl" (Dayle Haddon) has to get some information to them. Meantime, the well informed gang leader "Tremolo" (Vincent Klyn) wants the cure for his people instead and so rather easily captures her. With the pieces all in place "Gibson" and his feisty new friend "Nady" (Deborah Richter) have to fight the ostensibly un-winnable fight against overwhelming odds to try and rescue "Pearl". There's not the merest hint of jeopardy here and the action scenes are so badly choreographed and edited together that it makes "Conan" (1982) look like Fellini. The repetition in the storyline really becomes irritating after the seventh scene when our hero is slashed to ribbons only to recuperate into an even more deadly ninja - and he's not even the robot. Auteur Albert Pyun clearly had too much time and money on his hands to waste on developing characters or story and what we are left with is unlikely to be on Van Damme's audition tape.