Watched: 08/16/2020
Format: DVD
Viewing: First
Decade: 1990's
Director:
Richard Franklin
So, I was scanning the sale items on the Kino Lorber page and was like "Kim Cattrall in a spy movie?" so I read the description and was like "Kim Cattrall as a CYBORG in a spy movie?" And promptly hit "buy".*
I think this was intended to be a pilot for a very 1990's TV show, probably in syndication. What's weird about it is that all the pieces are there for what could have been a serviceable stand-alone movie. In 1993, stars Kim Cattrall and Billy Zane weren't huge stars, but I knew who they were. The director, Richard Franklin, had handled a couple of mid to low-cost films I'd similarly seen -
FX/2 and
Cloak and Dagger. This came out in the wake of
La Femme Nikita and low-budget sci-fi films. Instead, it's a reminder of what telefilm and a lot of television looked at during a certain window, and that sci-fi was not always well-served by this sort of production.
Cattrall plays Delilah, an undercover agent for a US law-enforcement agency (I never caught who), , collecting evidence against a Greek arms dealer (who seems to really want to see her eat Greek food for some reason). Her handler, who is "running" her, is played by Billy Zane. And the two spend about 7x more time talking about the fact they aren't going to bonetown than they do the case at hand.
Delilah is found out and the baddies take a flying attempt at killing her with lots of bullets. Zane retrieves the almost-dead agent, and because he loves her (but phrases it as wanting to go to bonetown, because 90's), does as you do and brings her to a French cybernetics guy who happens to work in his building.
There's a bit where she, of course, believes she's a monster. Remarkably, she gets over it really fast when she finds out she's now the Bionic Woman and can do all kinds of things within budget. This is one chipper cyborg!
