Hardware

Review by -sic_est-

Under a fiery sky, a ragged zone tripper discovers a metal hand, sticking out of the radioactive desert. Little does he know what beast the earth has so graciously swallowed and unravels a head of maintenance droid - he thinks. What we have here is a dream by Richard Stanley, which he has transformed into an opening of his debut feature, with Fields of Nephilim vocalist Carl McCoy as the tripper. Needless to say that the discovery of the head was a big mistake.

The head is meant to be sold forward to a short and shady dealer Alvy (Mark Northover), trooper-scavenger Hard Mo Baxter's (Dylan McDermott) regular buyer. But Alvy wanders off just at a nick of time for the tripper to arrive. Mo, having just returned from the military, remembers it's Christmas and gets the head as present for his artist-girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis). Naturally, nobody has a clue about what the Hell the head really is. It's in fact a prototype of the new MARK-13 series. Named after a Bible passage ("No flesh shall be spared"), it's the goverment's response to the uncontrollable population growth. Equipped with cell-destroying toxin, which "smells like apple pie", the droid is actually a real humanitarian, because the toxin makes the victims enjoy their rabid demise. The subtext isn't left with something so discreet as the pie; Jill paints the stars and stripes into the droid's head and also attaches some scorched baby dolls to it.

The droid is awakened when it detects sexual intercourse, which can be labeled as 'illegal breeding'. Mo takes off after convincing Jill he's going to be around more, since Alvy's (finally) gotten a lead on the droid. One of the advantages of the MARK-13 is the capability of building itself a torso from basically any kind of metal components at hand. Jill's apartment, loaded with junk and the equipment to deal with it, is like a candy store to the exhilirated machine, which is ready for a kill. Now Jill has face to this doomsday device loaded with 2nd hand arsenal all by herself...

Hardware introduces a bleak world. The streets are left for beggars and traders, to cover them up with their feces. Everybody who can afford it, lock up in their apartments and spend time smoking dope, watching TV and searching for peace and meaning from religion. Mo's a Christian, Jill occasionally reminds a Buddhist and ex-astronaut Shades (John Lynch) comes out a Hindu. Isolation from the real world is achieved by making your own apartment a bunker - and your mind, too. The depth of the environment is partially explained by the fact that Hardware's based upon Stanley's short film, Incidents In an Expanding Universe. This time the world wasn't created into the film, it was vice-versa.

Now comes the films greatest asset and flaw. In a world as twisted as this, it's not really a question about will a droid assume responsibility of population control. Here, it's all about when shit like that hits the fan. And when it does, it steals the show. The film shifts from illustrating a fiendish, raped planet to the exploits of a droid who literally hates your guts.

As for the potential victims, Stacey Travis handles herself quite well as Jill. Her peeping tom neighbor Lincoln Wineberg Jr. (Bill Hootkins) is gas, but the two male leads, Mo and Shades, are more or less out of place throughout the film (which actually fits Shades' character pretty well). Mo's trying to be a bad boy, a downright selfish survivalist. McDermott is too nice and superficial in his attempt to portray this side of his persona.

Hardware looks good. Steve Chivers' cinematography paints the world in the shades of red, which can refer to the boiling point at hand in the form of MARK-13 - or better yet, Hell on Earth. When the droid goes on rampage, the urban Hades transforms to a more shadowy place with occasional highlights. This proves to be a good idea FX-wise, amplifying the element of the unknown and eliminating unintentional humor from old fashion animatronics. The soundtrack has a suprisingly lot of variety. Simon Boswell's creepy score is accompanied by Mötorhead's hard rock, Ministry's industrial sound - and opera. That's right, the 19th century Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini's Stabat Mater plays in the background of what I think is one of the film's most impressive scenes.

Despite some shortcomings in the plot and the occasionally wooden acting, Hardware somehow manages to rise above its familiar "the people vs. killer robot"-plot and deliver a solid action movie, which ultimately has more going on when the droid isn't around. But when the bugger itself is one of the most menacing creatures since Giger's Alien, one really can't complain.

And in the end, we are still left in the dark on whether or not the future has a future.