Appropriately arriving the week after the intergalactic-level dumbassery of Transformers 3, here's refreshing proof that you can make a film about robots without pandering to the clueless idiot demographic. You can actually produce something funny, slick, amusing, sharp and reasonably intelligent rather than just blowing things up and knocking skyscrapers over. It may not be a masterpiece (hell, it isn't by a long shot) but, despite being about an hour shorter and made on less money than can be found down the back of a Scotsman's sofa, it's rather fun.
In the future, the Department Of Homeland Security has come up with the Eyeborgs: mobile remote cameras that can monitor the whole population - benevolently, of course: if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear. But it gradually dawns on widowed cop Adrian Paul and dogged TV reporter Megan Blake that the eyeborgs have been armed: they can enter private property, they can even kill. But why? Who - or what - is in control? What's it got to do with the President's purple-haired rock guitarist nephew, suddenly invited to perform during the election campaign?
Eyeborgs is pretty silly, obviously. But it's generally entertaining, with some good (and admittedly some variable) CG and physical effects - nothing on the scale of Michael Bay, but perfectly acceptable for a zippy B-feature. There are the obvious bumper-sticker quotations about freedom "he who sacrifices liberty for security deserves neither" and nice lines about the dangers of taking video evidence from the Eyeborgs without question - "how can we ignore what we see with our own eyes?" / "We're not seeing it with our own eyes, we're seeing it with theirs".
The Eyeborgs themselves are niftily designed, from the grapefruit-sized camera types (with lethal hidden accessories) to the larger, more violent ones reminiscent of ED209 from the RoboCop movies. If the movie doesn't entirely work, it's down to some colourless and uninteresting leads (not counting Danny Trejo's cameo as a guitar repairer and subversive), and that the plot switches from killer robots to the more unlikely video manipulation - starting off like Chopping Mall but morphing into the silly Eagle Eye. But despite that, it's got a sense of humour and for its miniscule budget it's still a perfectly acceptable Friday night rental.
***
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