Pentathlon

1994/USA/97 minutes

Tagline- The most challenging sport has just become the deadliest game. (Courtesy IMDB)

 

Dolph Lundgren is one of my favourite action heroes, so I always look out for his movies with interest. I recently saw Hidden Assassin (The Shooter) which was quite fun and showcased the emotional acting range of Lundgren beyond his action skills. Dark Angel (I Come In Peace, 1990) is another great slice of sci-fi, buddy cop action and thriller hybrid flick which I saw a few years back. In Dark Angel, two human cops and a good alien chase a thrill killing inter-galactic alien who loads victims with heroin and extracts the resulting endorphins from their brains, which is then used as a drug in his home planet. The movie is well acted and executed and good enough for an entertaining fix on a weekend.

The plot of Pentathlon starring Lundgren also sounded interesting and thrilling, so I thought about watching the same. In the movie, the actor plays an East German Olympic gold medalist Eric Brogar who wins the prize for acing five sports in the Seoul Olympiad of 1988. The five games are swimming, fencing, shooting, horse-riding and running. After the game is over, Brogar runs away to America, much to the chagrin of his abusive and possessive coach (who is so hell bent on Brogar winning the Olympiad that he even plods him to take performance enhancing drugs and steroids).

The main events of the film unfold four years after Brogar’s escape or ‘defection’. Mueller is no longer a coach but has become a Neo-Nazi terrorist with a ‘most wanted’ tag to his neck, courtesy his role in killing several German government officials and policemen. He hunts down Brogar’s father and beats him to death savagely, while muttering that he had moulded Brogar into a fine athlete, and that Brogar belonged to him. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Brogar has become a shadow of his former self, working in a local eatery and drinking like crazy, with no aim in life. His former girlfriend has left him, and he is all alone and bitter. His boss however takes an interest in his past ‘sport’ life and begins to train him in races and swimming.

Simultaneously, Mueller flees to the US after his home country becomes too hold to hold him and lands up in LA. There, he takes refuge in a restaurant run by another former student Reinhardt (who was also Brogar’s arch rival) and plans to spread Nazi propaganda in the country. He also stumbles upon Brogar’s whereabouts and begins his attempts to kill him for his perceived ‘betrayal’. But as this is an action movie and Lundgren is the hero, one can imagine how hard it is to really kill him ! Even when the chance presents itself, Mueller opts to blurt nonsense about ‘how he made Brogar and taught him discipline’ rather than finish him off. This is of course an attempt to pad the running time with meaningless and derivative sequence of events, but the end result is lack of logic. Why else would Mueller not kill Brogar (when he clearly intended to) in the middle of an isolated forestland, but rather choose to shoot at him at a crowded stadium where security is tight and escape is impossible ?

In terms of storytelling and visuals, the picture is bland and unexciting. Lundgren gives a monotonous, washed-out and half-hearted performance as the former athlete with conflicting emotions, and is never convincing in portraying the dilemma of a person who has escaped far from home (for a better life presumably) and is yet very moved to see the fall of the Berlin wall and the ensuing violence in his home country. He is mostly silent and expressionless, and the only parts where he acts animated are when he trains with his boss Creese. Speaking of the latter, Roger E. Mosley essays the role with energy and enthusiasm, and as such the parts with him are the only scenes where the movie picks up pace and shows promise. As for Mueller, the actor David Soul tries hard to be menacing but his antics are more comical than effective. It is never really shown as to why Mueller is so obsessed with Brogar and why he regards the latter’s flight from Germany as a ‘defection’ to justify brutal revenge on his family, friends and the man himself.

 

All in all, this a film for Dolph Lundgren completists only, as it is neither fun nor exciting !

 Robotrix

Hong Kong/1991/94 minutes

So the plot goes something like this.. A dead policewoman Linda has her brain and memories transferred to a robot (by a scientist aiding the befuddled police), so that she can take on a rogue robot created by an evil Japanese robotic scientist. The scientist has kidnapped a rich oil tycoon's son and has murdered the policewoman, who was providing security to the son. He does this out of revenge because the oil tycoon refused to collaborate with him on a robotic legion programme. 

Over time, the two opposing forces (i.e. the good government sponsored robot and the villainous robot) collide and participate in some lame action scenes, a laboratory explosion and a car chase. The two robots have human exteriors and human thoughts, so they go about acting like one till their vulnerability is tested, at which point they exhibit their machine reality. The evil scientist/robot rapes and murders a young girl he meets at a bar, kills the girl's boyfriend and later three men who had helped him kidnap the young heir.

The regenerated policewoman is also able to bond with her boyfriend and emotionally connect to others around her, while at the same time focusing on her mission to destroy the renegade robot. In the climax, the evil guy is finally killed, but not before a lot of mayhem and destruction has occurred. The Japanese professor who had designed the robot policewoman is brutalized by the evil robot, and he also badly injures the kidnapped guy. 

The movie is not as much thriller or sci-fiction as an exploitation flick, focusing on the denigration of the female characters at the hands of the evil robot and other human characters. There is plenty of skin on show, with the male police force coming out as a little too horny ! For instance, there is a scene where the cops are trying to catch the robot/killer through baiting a prostitute, so they set up a female robot designed by the Japanese professor as the bait. Though the killer fails to show up at that point of time, other male customers are seen having sex with her and the male cops have a gala time and get off by watching her through a spy camera. One of the cops even shows up as a customer, before he is caught by the others. When the Police Commissioner arrives to check the success of the mission, he instead sees a horde of men waiting to have sex with the robot ! Though meant to be funny, it was quite pathetic to see the filmmakers reduce a well trained robot with superhuman capabilities as nothing but an object for horny and leering men. In one of the scenes, the male protagonist even protests to the Commissioner that having three 'fragile' young girls in their team for finding the bad scientist/killer would distract them from functioning well. Wow, great way to treat women colleagues and respect them for their abilities! 

The humor is quite cheap and even a little offensive, and the central premise is silly and far fetched. However , it is an interesting trash pick and should please exploitation aficionados  !