In a Nutshell. Mini reviews of movies old and new. No fuss. No spoilers. And often no sleep.

Tuesday 19 August 2014

The Guyver (1991)

aka Mutronics

An alien device changes crap martial arts student Sean into a space-armoured, bioboosted suited, alien-hybrid super-soldier, which comes in useful when he goes up against fugly Zoanoids, humans mutated as part of a biogenetic alien experiment millennia ago… or something.
The transformation from blank nobody into the actual Guyver hero is really excellent, as is the suit. Brian Yuzna's involvement (producer) means we hope for a certain kind of icky finesse when it comes to the FX, and it delivers in style during the finale.
Unfortunately, Mark Hamill thinks he’s in a noir cop movie while everyone else thinks they’re playing for a free lunch at the local community centre.

1½ pulsating neck-lumps out of 5

4 comments:

cuckoo said...

All signs point to "wrong way" with this one.

How? XD

Neg said...

I'm going to assume this is the American adaptation since everyone I've ever heard mention Guyver has loved it.

Dr Faustus said...

The sign should’ve read 'Cul-de-sac' but they made a second one!

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Yup, it’s the American live action.

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Something I didn’t have room to say was that the cover art lies. Hamill isn’t the one in the suit.

Borderline said...

The film just didn't know what it wanted to be. It was half kid-friendly super heroics (including the pointless acrobatics and non-existent fight choreography), half creepy-crawly sci-fi goo-fest. Hamill's buggy transformation in the final act was extremely unnerving. I think it would have succeeded had it gone whole-heartedly one way or the other. 1 1/2 from me as well.