Robowar - A Review!

Wow.  If you had asked me last week if Reb Brown had ever been in a bad movie my answer would have been, "Of course", but I would have quickly followed that with, "...but they're always entertaining."  I'm not so sure I can say that now.

"Robowar" is another of those "blender" style mockbusters from the 80s, when VHS was still a thing and cable ran almost any competently produced movie (meaning it had audio and visual that basically matched up), especially late at night.  Explosions, gunfire, a "name" and nudity ( I don't recall any in this movie) also helped get movies to your TV sets.

Another thing producers liked to do back then to ensure an audience is something many still do now.  They would take well known movies and sort of mix them together.  "Robowar" is "Predator" if you take the alien hunter out and put the robot run amok in his place.  So, "Predator" mixed with "The Terminator", or "Robocop", maybe a little bit of "Chopping Mall" or "Deadly Friend".

A bit of disclosure here: I spent a good portion of this movie checking updates on my phone.  So, while that didn't give the deep plot a chance to truly take hold of me, it also speaks to the movie's ability to capture my attention at 3 AM.  Honestly, I was paying enough attention to notice how many scenes were nearly direct lifts from "Predator".  I mean, there are bound to be similarities between movies about an unstoppable hunter chasing soldiers through the jungle and I'm the first to admit that the concept alone isn't really enough to say that this is a rip-off, but to have one character stay behind to "buy the others time" while facing this unstoppable hunter with a blade (a machete instead of a huge knife) seems like they just took the original script there and changed the names...and maybe the weapon a bit.  Perhaps it was more an homage, like our stuffed dog in "Stopped Dead".

I would say to watch the movie and judge for yourself, but I don't feel good recommending this movie to anyone.  It has its moments, as any Reb Brown action movie does, but the picture quality was mostly poor on the stream I saw and the sound was "eh".  I suppose if you have Amazon Prime, have watched your way through everything else you want to see and keep your finger ready on the fat forward button  you can give about 25% of this movie a watch and have a good time.  Or, watch it back to back with "Predator" and marvel at the fact that at least now we acknowledge when a movie is being remade.