(aka Booby Trap)
Some movies just can’t make up their minds what they are.
Take Wired to Kill for example: parts of it look very post-Apocalyptic, with ruins, gangs and survivors living in the midst of the wreckage of civilization.
But, on the other hand we have people living in suburban homes, hospitals and police. It does seem a rather dystopian world, with odd PSAs on the Hospital’s PA system, about patients rights to sue and their latest specials, and pre-recorded security system warnings warning passersby about the homeowner’s rights to spray trespassers with caustic fluids.
Yeah, we get some sort of lengthy text explanation at the beginning about a lethal virus and quarantine zones, whose residents occasionally raid the areas outside their walls.
But it doesn’t seem to have too much to do with the rest of the film. Certainly one doesn’t get the impression that there’s a wall between the gang and the suburbs.
After all, they drive back and forth from their lair in their motorcycles and giant dump truck.
Go figure.
At any rate, the gang and their Shakespeare-quoting leader attack Steve and his family, leaving his legs broken, his grandmother dead, and his mother crippled.
So he takes them on with a collection of goofy homemade weapons and what has to be the worst ever movie robot — I suspect that it was probably a remote-controlled toy, and not a very expressive one at that.
But, hey, it has a claw.
We are deep in Nineties direct-to-video territory here. That might help explain the wildly inaccurate plot descriptions I’ve seen (no, Steve does not, I repeat, not, take on the gang with an armed and armored post-Apocalyptic wheelchair).
However, the film looks quite good, and builds up a bit of suspense along the way. Some of the action sequences, including a large scale car chase between a compact car and the gang’s dump truck, are reasonably well done.
Although I kept thinking that all she had to do to take care of the motorcycles was to sideswipe them.
The acting is passable, the story mostly works, although I do have to note one major hole: even though this huge gang is supposedly watching Steve and his girlfriend all the time, they drive around completely unnoticed in his old pickup truck — and they even venture into the gang’s home turf in the wastelands.
Right.
Oh, well. There are worse dystopian films out there. In fact, Wired to Kill is reasonably competent, reasonably entertaining — and only mildly stupid.
On the whole I found it amusing and entertaining, if minor. Mind you, it might have helped that I found it for free on Youtube.
After all, it isn’t a movie you’d want to pay for…
rivets on the poster 