The Vindicator (1986)

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

"The Vindicator" is a weird little Canadian B-Movie. At first glance it would appear to be just another cheap (extremely cheap!) "Terminator" knockoff, but strangely enough it also shares some qualities with the original "RoboCop," which hadn't even been released yet when "Vindicator" appeared (1986). Coincidence? Who knows? Anyway, the story is thus: scientist Carl Lehman seems to be a pretty nice guy who works for a super duper secret government high-tech research lab, reporting to a sleazy boss named Whyte, whom he butts heads with about project funding early in the movie. Carl's got a loving wife at home and a baby on the way, which makes it all the more tragic when he is suddenly killed in a "lab accident." But wait! Carl's not really dead after all! Whyte has extracted Carl's brain and inserted it into his pet project, some sort of experimental bio-mechanical space suit. When Carl wakes up inside his new body, he understandably goes a little nuts, trashes the lab, and escapes. This is a problem because Whyte (for reasons known only to himself) has programmed the mechanical suit with a "Rage Reaction" program, which will cause Carl to kill anybody who touches him for any reason. In hindsight, that little addition to Carl's psyche was probably not the best idea.So Robo-Carl wanders aimlessly through the movie for a while, killing a couple of random muggers and other assorted background characters, till he returns to his home and contacts his wife (this scene is supposed to be heartbreakingly touching, I guess, but turns out comical because Carl's robot voice is so heavily synthesized that you can barely understand a word he says). He of course tells her to leave the city and never come back because she's in danger, but she wants to stay and help him, yadda yadda yadda. Eventually Whyte hires a gang of commando thugs led by "Hunter," an apparent ninja assassin played by Pam Grier (!)to hunt down and destroy his runaway creation, using Carl's wife as bait, and predictable (but laughably cheap looking) mayhem ensues.I'm a B-Movie kind of guy but "The Vindicator" was so half-assed that it turned into high comedy pretty quickly. I'm assuming that a good hunk of the budget went into Stan Winston's robo-Carl suit design, because that actually looks pretty cool, but the rest of the movie suffers from a cheap, made-for-TV kind of look. The script could've used a LOT more work, but then maybe the filmmakers had gotten wind of "RoboCop" going into production and rushed to get "Vindicator" out so they couldn't be accused of ripping them off. Either way, judging by the other comments here on IMDb, I'm not the only one who's noticed the parallels between "Vindicator" and "RoboCop," and obviously "Robo" is the superior film, so there's no need to waste your time sitting through this piece of nonsense unless you want to see a film that can best be described, at best, as a rough draft of "RoboCop" if it were made by an 8th grader.

Maybe I was expecting a little too much from it, but 'The Vindicator' was a so-so Canadian low-budget get-up of a half-human / robot on the rampage for revenge against those who did him wrong. While being tacky, junky and trashy all rolled into one, it just didn't rally up the thrills like it could have done. The story is pure comic-book stuff with some outrageous inclusions and can be loosely tied to the 'Frankenstein' story. But the main cause of interest, and it's been thrown around was how it could be seen as a minor blueprint for Paul Verhoeven's superior 'Robocop (1987)'.Comparisons aside (which on the other hand James Cameron's 'Terminator (1984)' could've been an influencer to it), it's standard b-grade ho-huh that I didn't find it all that exciting or gripping in it's bland story-telling (which had too many daft moments in a wonky script) and uniformed visuals. Director Jean-Claude Lord's (who was also behind the 1982 slasher 'Visiting Hours') handling is crudely makeshift and the pacing can get blotchy, but the grimy atmosphere and cold-blooded violence (at least the deaths are creative) seems to fit. However the premise had something original to work with, but the way Lord went about it wasn't. At times it seemed to get too mushy with some unwanted details, where I wished it kept to a more straight-forward, but harrowing revenge exploitation path.Iconic cult actress Pam Grier appears as a hired gun to destroy the cyborg, but even her firebrand presence isn't all that flammable. David McIlwraith cruises through his part as the scientist turned machine. Richard Cox is perfectly snake-like in his performance, but the pick of the bunch is Teri Austin's gallant turn. The always dependable Stan Winston vividly crafts out the space-suit wearing cyborg and make-up FX with great care, and is one of the film's major highlights. Paul Zaza's music score starts off effective, to only go on to be mainly forgettable.

This movie is an evolutionary piece - from Terminator to Robocop .Stan Winston did the SPFX !In this film, a scientist working in a sinister robotics company with a really creepy boss(they always are) gets is killed by them in a horrible lab explosion and has his brain placed inside an indestructible robot body .The rest of this movie goes on with a romance angle as this Cyborg/Man regains consciousness and wreaks havoc while trying to communicate with his wife, played by the gorgeous(back then in 1986) Terri Austin . (He tries to reconnect with his old life, like in that scene in RoboCop)The rest of this movie is about breaking things, while trying to defeat the evil his evil boss from recapturing him for some ill-defined 'turn humans into cyborgs' project .This film pays homage to previous movies like THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL - - as the cyborg breaks free like the giant robot Gort does .Except for the 'Frankenstein Suite' designed by Stan Winston, this movie's production values are typically Canadian: SLEAZY ! ! Pam Grier stars in this film as an hired killer-commando, a cheap role of the likes she was doing so much of during the 80's .As for a Sci-Fi Horror B movie, out of 4 Stars, this film ranks about a <3

The combination of amazing special effects and oscar worthy acting makes the Vindicator one of the most important sci-fi films of recent years. For some reason still unknown to me this gem was found in a bargain bin, why some worthless human thought it right to dirty a modern classic by relagating to a bargain bin is beyond me. I have never been so terrified by a man in tin foil and random bursts of fire. Forget Terminator, Robocop, Aliens, and other films that blaintly ripped off this masterpiece, the vindicator is an unstoppable force.