Working my way slowly through the Enter the Video Store “Empire of Screams” Box Set by Arrow, where they have a bunch of the fun Empire Pictures movies collected. Which was basically Full Moon before they became Full Moon. After finding nothing else that was appealing to me streaming, I chose ROBOT JOX as tonight’s movie, and I was not disappointed. I had seen it before back when I was a teen in the early 90s, but a lot of it was mixed up in my head with the pseudo sequel, CRASH AND BURN and ROBOT WARS, so it was fun to revisit it.
For the unfamiliar, the movie is about a time after nuclear war where instead of traditional wars for territory, the nations of the Market and the Confederation have agreed to battle it out using giant robots instead. As one does. These robots are piloted by humans, who are the titular Robot Jox. The champion of the Confederation is a Russian named Alexander (Paul Koslo), while the Market’s champion Achilles/Jim (Gary Graham), who has one his last nine fights and is looking to fight Alexander in his tenth so he can retire.
The match doesn’t quite go as planned, thanks to Alexander somehow knowing about the secret weapons that Achilles’ robot has installed. Nevertheless, Achilles manages to get his opponent on the ropes when Alexander fires his robot’s fist towards the crowd. Achilles blocks it but his robot falls over and crushes people instead.
Oops.
The match is declared a draw but Achilles is done with it. He fought his ten matches, regardless of whether he won them all. That’s ok because the Market has been creating genetic fighters called “Gen Jox” to pilot and the best of them, a female fighter known as Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson), is chosen to fight in Achilles’ place. Will she be able to handle the skilled and lethal Alexander? Will Jim decide to come back into action one last time to help her? Watch it and find out.
In today’s world, ROBOT JOX would be a three hour epic. In 1989’s world, it’s a lean and mean film that is stuffed with content that gives it just enough time to breathe before moving on. There’s the hero about to retire, there’s the rookie who wants to take his place, there’s a dubious love story, there are spies and there’s a brief look at the shitty world that they all live in. But mainly, there are giant robots kicking the shit out of each other. It moves at a fast pace and when it ends it does so with gusto. You don’t need more than two adversaries hammering it out on the battlefield and finding peace with it.
It’s no surprise that this comes from a pretty decent creative pedigree, with a script by Joe Haldeman (The Forever War) and Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator). Gordon always does a great job with making a great film on a budget, and this is no exception.
The cast is solid, and I kept wondering where I saw Achilles before when I realized he was the lead in the ALIEN NATION TV series. He’s fun as Achilles and just wants a normal life but knows his whole identity is as a Robot Jock. And Athena is of course Nadine, aka Raj’s wife in WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW! Gordon regular player Jeffrey Combs even shows up in a bit part as a man betting on the outcome of the Robot Jox fight.
What really struck me this time around is how much of the movie looks like it could have influenced Guillermo Del Toro’s PACIFIC RIM. From the way the pilots lock in and actually walk to make their robot move, to the fist in hand move Achilles has his robot do when he’s ready to go. Hell, there’s even a Russian robot with a piston-fist that hammers foes, ala Cherno Alpha. You can probably squint and say that the relationship between Mako and Raleigh is similar to the Achilles/Athena tension but that might be a stretch. It’s really cool that sort of makes PACIFIC RIM a thematic sequel, especially since Gordon is on record saying if he got to do one, his sequel would be robots vs. aliens.
The effects are pretty solid, with some of the work being stop motion and other miniatures. There are scenes that don’t work as well as they should, but they are few and far between. My main quibble would be the flight sequence, which while it looks cool, doesn’t make much sense from a combat standpoint. I enjoy the outfits using component cables as part of their design, and it’s that low-tech sort of ingenuity that I really love about these films. It’s like something you could have made in your basement with BMX gear and a box of wires.
I’m glad I got a chance to revisit it and if you haven’t seen it before, it is definitely worth checking out.
Or as Achilles would say. “Crash and Burn.”
