Buy this DVD on Amazon.co.uk

There is a hint, albeit a very brief one, of James Whale's classic 1931 Frankenstein in this low-budget movie about a robot soldier, Solo (Mario Van Peebles), created by the Pentagon to be the perfect, unfeeling fighting machine. When Solo is sent into Central American jungles to battle guerrillas, a flaw in his program emerges when it is discovered that he has compassion and a conscience. Fleeing his keepers, the robot becomes part of a jungle village after its inhabitants get over the need to run from him (this is where the Frankenstein parallel comes in). The film isn't particularly clever, just noisy and ugly, and one can't help but think of it as a knock-off of The Terminator. Van Peebles doesn't seem the ideal choice for an action hero along the lines of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Kurt Russell--who do this kind of thing well--but then again this is straight-to-video fodder. --Tom Keogh

Release Date: Apr 12, 2004