Hardware

I've never really understood what some people see in 'Hardware'. I thought it was mediocre when I first watched it a couple of years after it was released, and a second viewing more recently did nothing to make me rate it higher. The movie's special effects and overall visual look are quite impressive for such a low budget movie, and that is just about the only positive thing I can say about it. The script is lousy - a seen-it-all-before rehash of second hand ideas (most notably 'Stalker', 'Mad Max 2' and 'The Terminator') that goes nowhere... slowly. Dylan McDermott is now much better known due to his TV success, but it still doesn't mean he's a very dull leading man. Stacey Travis ('Ghost World') is also pretty forgettable. John Lynch ('In The Name Of The Father') and William Hootkins ('American Gothic') are much more interesting performers, but they weren't enough to salvage this one. And the less said about the completely pointless cameo from rock legend Lemmy (Motorhead) the better. 'Hardware' is difficult to recommend. I say stick with the much more entertaining killer robot thrillers 'Saturn 3' and 'The Terminator'. However I wouldn't let this movie put you off Richard Stanley's later movie 'Dust Devil'. It isn't without some faults but it's ten times more interesting than 'Hardware', and definitely worth a look.

In a post-apocalyptic future, Earth is taken by radioactivity and the ozone depletion causes high temperatures. A nomad (Carl McCoy) wanders in the desert and finds an android head and hand. He brings the parts to sell to the seller Alvy (Mark Northover), but the soldier Moses "Mo" (Dylan McDermott) buys the head to give to his girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis), who is an artist that makes sculptures.

Mo and his friend Shades (John Lynch) go to New York to meet Jill and she uses the head in her sculpture. Meanwhile Alvy researches the origin of the head and discovers that it belongs to the dangerous project Mark 13 that was provided with artificial intelligence and programmed to rebuild itself, but deactivated by the authorities because of its vulnerability to the rain. He summons Mo to tell his discovery and Jill is left alone with the lethal machine that is rebuilding itself with the parts she uses in her sculptures.

"Hardware" is a sci-fi B-movie with a bleak view of the future of mankind. The story is very simple and the special effects and robots are great for a movie from the 90's. Unfortunately the cinematography is too dark, but the music score is magnificent. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Hardware - O Destruidor do Futuro" ("Hardware – The Destroyer of the Future")

If ever you want an example of a very 1980s movie, with soaring Pink Floyd imitation guitars, then make a note of Hardware. Hardware is actually, even at this early age, part of a robot tradition. Star Wars had been around for a while, and then there was The Black Hole (1979), Saturn 3 (1980), and Short Circuit (1986). I'm giving this movie a 7 because it entertained, but if I were a real movie critic I'd give it less. Almost all the camerawork is in a close-up range, and the robots field of vision was way too spludgey, a sort of amateur Predator vision. We needed wider shots to really see the robot, and we needed to see more of the city itself, not just the crazy lady's crazy artist's loft. Anyway, that's my take. I liked the soundtrack and the human characters, they were all really suitably post-apocalypse, and the general story made sense in a sci-fi fashion, and the ravages of the droid were suitably outrageous. I'd love to see it remade with a more modern take. This is definitely one for the archives.

Those judging Hardware using the same criteria for judging major Hollywood sci-fi films are missing the point entirely.

Hardware is much more an art film than it is science fiction; it merely happens to have a sci-fi theme.

Given, the plot is a little cheesy. Given, the situation fairly unbelievable. And given, there are a few holes in the story.

Almost no film has all of these elements, but Hardware has something even more important. The way the story is told is nothing short of genius. Perhaps not in the way the happenings actually unfold, but in how they are presented. Hardware is an astounding achievement in lighting, cinematography, and audio engineering. As a professional video editor myself, I can assure you that this movie benefits from an A+ editing job.

I completely agree that there are only 2 types of people: those who love Hardware, and those who simply do not get it.

From the first frame of video, this movie is a constant barrage on the eyes, ears, and mind. If nothing else, you must admire the bleak vision of a post-nuclear holocaust America presented in Hardware. Images ranging from billowing smoke stacks and butchers in apartment lobbies to toddlers physically tied to their dead parents, Stanley paints a haunting vision of the future that will not be forgotten after you press stop.

Hardware is not what you would expect to come out of Hollywood. It is what you would expect a pure artist to create. Perhaps it is better suited to fans of independent film than just sci-fi fans. Films like Terminator and Aliens might be regarded as much better sci-fi work, but I assure you that they can't touch the riskiness and edginess of Hardware in how they are presented. That is why you hear casual moviegoers complaining about this movie. For pure fans of the art behind film making, sci-fi just doesn't get any better than Hardware.

It should be noted that the excellent score does much to augment the visuals in this film. It's criminal that nobody has seen it necessary to print Hardware on DVD as I would love to experience it in Dolby 5.1.

As a final note, Hardware may not be a film everyone will enjoy. Even if you don't like it, you will become a more enlightened viewer if you can at least identify why this is such a courageous film and how it differs from the Hollywood fodder you are probably used to.

First off, let's get my bias out the way, I'm a die-hard fan of this movie, and this review is definitely intended to get the reader to give it a chance.

The film is riddled with industrial (music) culture references and cameos, and if you're into that scene, there's a certain sick thrill about seeing Carl McCoy as the zone trooper, and seeing footage of proto-industrial performance artist Monte Cazazza in this. The general tone and ambiance of the whole piece of wonderfully clichéd cyberpunk.

And that's really the interesting thing about this film. While there are a plethora of terrible sci-fi slasher flicks out there desperately claiming the 'cyberpunk' moniker, here is a film that claims to be nothing more than a sci-fi slasher flick, and manages to be somewhat of a pulp-cyberpunk classic instead.

The whole movie is a mood piece, designed more for its ambiance and the feel of its world, than particularly flashy action sequences or on-screen 'wow' factor. It's meant to be a genre movie, but it manages to feel like a 'serious' film under the influence of some heavy drugs. Not a bad thing really, but your tastes may disagree. Personally I've always liked that sunset-filtered-through pollution look that Bladerunner was infamous for, and hardware utilizes the same rather well.

Genre movie it may be, but it shows far less cheese coating and terrible acting than any of the current glut of genre movies being produced for the Sci-Fi channel. In fact the whole movie feels more like a good pulpy cyberpunk novella than a genre movie by far. Calling the movie 'mood music for rivetheads' isn't really an insult to it.