As a fan of mecha anime, I was looking forward to seeing Gunhed, a 1997 live action mecha movie that was made in Japan. While I knew it wouldn't be a great movie, I figured it would be fun. I was wrong for the most part. Though there are some entertaining scenes at the end, the plot is confusing to the point of being nonsensical, and it takes way to long to get to the action scenes.

In the year 2025, Kyron-5, a giant computer which operates a large production plant on a remote island declares war on humanity. Forces are dispatched, and a pitched battle is fought with no winner. The human solders were killed, but the computer seems to have gone dormant.

Twelve years later, a group of scavengers land on the island looking for valuable computer parts. They find that the computer isn't as dormant than they thought, and it activates defense systems that pick off the scavengers one by one. Soon only Brooklyn is left, along with a tough female Texas Ranger who came to the island to retrieve a power source, Texmexian, that was stolen from the State and brought to the island by an android. The two team up, but when Brooklyn finds a Gunhed (giant robot) he repairs the weapon and goes after Kyron-5.

Based on that description, you might think that there was a good amount of action in this film. You'd be wrong. To say that this film has a plot is very generous. The movie mainly consists of people walking through warehouses and across factory floors spouting nonsensical gibberish. It's never clear why they go to certain places, or what they are trying to do. If the movie was just action for the sake of action, I could understand it, but this is non-action for the sake of non-action. In the film's defense there is some fight scenes, and the one before the credits is pretty good. However many of them are shown in closeup shots that make it hard to tell what is going on. You get a feeling of confusion rather than excitement.

From the opening shots, it is easy to tell that this movie is heavily influenced by the Terminator movies and the Alien films. Unfortunately the creators didn't realize that a spooky atmosphere doesn't make a good movie you have to have a script, with things like plot and characterization and dialog to make a good film. These are elements that this movie lacks. Apparently the director realized that, since he removed his name and inserted "Alan Smithee" in its place.

Audio:

This film comes with the original Japanese track and an English dub, both in stereo. The dub sounds like it was done a while ago, and it's pretty poor. ADV usually has much better job with their dubs, but this was not good at all. The voice actors overacted in just about every scene and a lot of them put on fake sounding accents.

The Japanese track was pretty strange too. Half of the actors spoke in English, the rest Japanese. There would converse, one side in English and the other in Japanese, as if they understood each other. Only the Japanese half of the conversations had optional subtitles, so people who are hard of hearing will have a hard time with this disc. For some unknown reason they made the giant robot speak in English too.

As for the audio quality, it was adequate, but not outstanding. The movie could have really used a 5.1 mix. As it is, the explosions and gun battles don't have the force that they should. The movie sounded a little flat, and there was a little bit of background hum, but it was at a low level.

Video:

The widescreen image wasn't not enhanced for 16:9 televisions, which is a shame. Aside from that the image isn't very bright. The whole picture looks a little muted, which may have been what the director intended, but I felt it was a little too much. There was some minor aliasing but no major digital defects.

Extras:

The only extra included on this disc is the Japanese trailer for the film.

Final Thoughts:

When all is said and done, this film was badly edited, poorly written and amateurishly shot. The confusing story and slow pace make this a DVD to avoid. Skip it.