Video Goo Goo: Automatic

AUTOMATIC, 1995, Starring Olivier Gruner, John Glover, Daphne Ashbrook, Jeff Kober, Directed by John Murlowski


Let me get this out of the way.  I love this picture.  I almost feel it could never live up to the hype I bestow upon its shoulders, but such is the territory with these little movies each of us decide to champion.  I claim this movie, this is my thing.  If there's a cult following out there for Automatic, I haven't found it.  It's hard to find anybody else who has actually seen it, let alone cherish it.   If I'm the lone supporter, so be it.  Yet I have this compulsion to share, to preach, to spread the good word.
So let me proselytize.

What is Automatic?  Think cyberpunk Die Hard.  If I was pitching this to Griffin Mill while he dines at Spago's circa 1992, I would switch it up and bellow "the Terminator meets Die Hard".  Set in the year 2033, the Automatics are a line of personal servants/protectors that are sold by the RobGen corporation.  The "J" series, which all look and sound like Olivier Gruner (it could be worse, they could look and sound like Frank Zagarino), is five years old and facing increasing competition from cheaper competitor androids.  RobGen is on the eve of introducing a new line of Automatics.  The head of the company, Goddard Marx, really needs this new product to be a hit, and he barely convinces the blustery bank representative to give him an extension on his outstanding debt. 

Meanwhile, slimy executive Barker (the late, great Stanley Kamel) asks secretary Nora Rochester (Daphne Ashbrook) to stay late to work on the new ad campaign.  He has ulterior motives, though, and before long is sexually assaulting the young lady.  Automatic J-269 hears the commotion and enters Barker's office.  Even though Barker orders the "tin man" to mind his own business, J-269 cannot help but to save the damsel in distress.  After a short tussle, Barker retrieves a gun from his desk - part of the movie's sardonic sense of humor- when Barker needs the gun he says the word gun, a female computer voice repeats the word, and bam, a gun pops out of the desk.  In this world, a desk gun is standard issue for the desk jockeys.  When a bullet proves ineffective to the Automatic, Barker threatens Nora with the gun, and J-269 accidentally kills Barker while in the act of disarming him.

What do you say, Sport?

After reporting this incident to the head of security, J-269 decides to invoke protocol and sit tight until the police can arrive.  This means also keeping witness Miss Rochester on hand, despite her wanting very much to leave the premises immediately.  The head of security (the always fun Troy Evans) calls in Goddard Marx, who quickly decides that he doesn't need this headache the night before the unveiling of his new product.  To make matters worse, there are a group of sign wielding protesters outside the building, along with a contingent of the press.  The protesters are upset because they fear the new line of Automatics will be labor units, thus costing them jobs, even though it has been repeatedly assured to them that this was tried in Blade Runner, with disastrous consequences, and nobody wants a repeat of that shit.  Did you see what Roy Batty did to Tyrell?

Promises to never crush your head

Marx calls in a team of mercenaries led by Jeff Kober as Simon West, not to be confused with Simon West, the guy who directed Con Air.  J-269 now must protect Nora while eluding the mercs.  The rest of the movie is the cat and mouse game between the two protagonists and the mercs, as J-269 and Nora try to escape the building.  That's obviously the Die Hard component.  It's very ingenious, really, confining the action to one locale like this.  Saves a ton of money on your futuristic movie.  It's a conceit that was also used in another cyberpunk thriller from the same time period, DEATH MACHINE.  I prefer Automatic, it's more intimate, and has a nice sci fi payoff at the end.   Plus, model work.  I miss that stuff so much.

I adore model work

I never know if I am selling this thing right when I describe it to like minded individuals.  There's no groundbreaking action here, just well staged mayhem as J-269 uses his considerable martial arts programming to take on the well armed mercs.  It hits my sweet spot; I'm a sucker for anything remotely cyberpunk and I love a well done B action movie.  Seriously, on the cyberpunk front, I could see this story being ripped straight from a roleplaying sourcebook circa 1989.  There is some nice stuff simmering under the surface, whether the robots are indeed "more human than human", they are the only ones in the story willing to show some compassion and unselfish behavior.

Movies like this, though, can wither right away if they don't have the proper star.  Olivier Gruner, who was seen by many as a knockoff of Van Damme, which carries a certain kind of irony since Van Damme was seen as a Schwarzenegger knockoff, has an easy child like charm as J-269.  He's so damn likable here,  playing a robot, the "tin man" who wonders if he's a real boy.  Okay, I might be mixing my children's lit metaphors there.  Gruner was born in France, he still carries the accent, but as Schwarzenegger showed us, accented  English is no detriment to effectively playing a cyborg.

You know it's funny if Jeff Kober laughs

The best I can hope for is that someone out there who hasn't seen the movie will check it out.  If they end up liking it, all the better.  There are folks who can tell you I never let an opportunity pass to talk about this movie.  When I think of the similarly themed movies that made it to theaters- EVE OF DESTRUCTION, SOLO- I wonder why Griffin Mill passed on this thing in the first place.  Maybe after UNIVERSAL SOLDIER the world was just not ready for another Eurobot* to storm the silver screen.  It's a damn shame.

I almost forgot to mention another Olivier Gruner cyberpunk movie that DID get a theatrical release- the Albert Pyun directed NEMESIS.  That movie has a cult following.  It really doesn't deserve it.  I think I'll track that one down and write it up soon.

Poster looks cool, movie must be good right?

Seriously?

*Fellow nerds, I'm aware that Van Damme was not a robot in UniSol.  He was an alien.  Duh.