The Great American Movie

The year is 2076. The world is an abysmal place to live in. Poverty, street fights, crime and filth reign supreme. It is raining. A white male, well into his 50’s, marches in to the scene. He literally marches. He’s dressed in a Harley Davidson –style biker’s outfit. Only, the glasses, the ear studs and the long hair is missing. And so is the beer belly. Our man has closely cropped white hair, no earrings, and is tall and well built..With every step he takes, we can hear the voices of a chorus of men going “Ho! Ho!, Ho! Ho!” not the way Santa goes, but rather the way the background score in our Hindi movies go when they introduce the villain. This is no ordinary villain though..this old man is a cyborg. Yes..he is not your next door villain, oh no he isn’t. He is a lean, mean killing machine- quite literally.

The old cyborg goes marching to a wall panel..Does the mandatory retinal scan and voice recognition routine. And then he shows you the finger (since this is not an A rated movie, it isn’t the middle finger). He’s extending his index finger. Out the tip of his index finger comes a thin metal rod. He inserts this rod into the panel, gets some info, and is on his way…

Cut to a basement laboratory. A team of scientists in (what else) white uniforms are busy loading a foetus into a knapsack. Yes..these are troubled times. What we are witnessing is a valiant effort by mankind to preserve the last human foetus. America has become infertile and it is upto our heroine to transport this foetus, her foetus, to the safer and healthier shores of Europe. And the cyborg is all out to stop her from doing that. To cut an interesting story a little short, the cyborg kills all of our heroine’s team members, except the heroine herself. She manages to escape only to land in between some low lying scum of the earth who want to do bad things to her. “What’s in that bag, sweetheart?” goes one of the meanies who is dressed in spandex drag. We are desperately worried about the chastity of our heroine and , worse still, the future of that helpless foetus in a bottle. Just as they snatch the bag from her and are about to lay their dirty hands on her, we hear a booming, manly voice, “Leave her alone!”. Long hair, blue eyes, well built and young –yep..he is the hero we’ve been waiting for. A few karate kicks and American punches later, he drives the bad guys away. Our heroine is impressed and asks him to guide her to the seafront where she has to meet her European friends. He disagrees at first, but after she bribes him with some tablets(!), he agrees. So of the two take off, and, accompanied by the Ho Ho’s, our old cyborg takes off after them.

There are numerous confrontations between our hero and the old cyborg. Guns are of no use against the villain. So our hero uses his wooden staff. He impales him , he drops a huge ton of something on him, but every time our pair makes their escape, this guy gets up, dusts himself, and follows them. In one of the fight scenes, our hero has almost vanquished the villain. The cyborg is dangling from the edge of a pit and has a vice like grip on the hero’s arm. He refuses to let go. And we see the hero’s arm extending! Yes! It’s extending. His arm comes off and along with that, the cyborg goes hurtling down that pit to his doom! The hero is in excruciating pain. He looks at his arm, or rather, at the stump that was his arm, and what does he see? He sees wires and dying sparks! In a moment of epiphany, he realizes that he too, is a cyborg! Our heroine is horrified. “You betrayed my trust! You are one of THEM!” she screams and runs away from the scene. Our hero, who was in love with her, tries to tell her that he never knew that he was a cyborg. But before he can say “STOP!”, she is gone. He looks around and he finds the villain’s amputated arm( he managed to cut that off somehow). He looks around again, and he also finds some needle and thread. He sews on that arm to his shoulder. He is ready to move again..with his new-improved arm.

We are almost at the end. Our beautiful ( I’d forgotten to mention that) heroine has made it to the beach. Suddenly she hears the Ho! Ho! And she turns around. Our villain was still alive. And he has got two arms too! Looks like two can play that game Mr. Hero! Ha! He runs after the heroine, snatches her bag from her, and throws the foetus in the bottle into the sea! “My BABY!!!!” our heroine wails. He is just about to kill her, when our hero jumps on top of him and engages him in a fight to the finish. Our hero cyborg is now wiser. So this time, he finishes him off with explosives. The villain is obviously no T 2000. He can’t regroup. The boat arrives, and the heroine, who has managed to retrieve the foetus from troubled waters, has safely placed the foetus in the incubator. Mankind is now safe!

“Join me in Europe, Jason! We can start a new life there ( you bet you can do that with a cyborg!) She says..
“No, you’ve got your work cut out for you, I’ve got mine. I know the “system”. I can help the people here to fight” he replies..

They kiss. Our cyborg knows how to do the perfect French version..And our heroine has not been electrocuted by any stray wires in his mouth. She gets into the boat, the boat takes off into the sunset and our man (cyborg, really) stands stoically watching them before he walks off in the opposite direction-back into the hell that he came from…

This amazing movie, people, is American Cyborg Steel Warrior. I had the good fortune of watching it thanks to my very close buddy Jimmy. I thought such great entertainers were made only in India. But looks like I was wrong in my assumptions.Hollywood is close behind..very close.