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M.D. Geist 2 : Death Force

       
                 
                 
 

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Title Info

  • type: movie
  • Other elements of this title:
    • This title has been commercially released in Australia.
    • This title may offend the sensitive.
  • grade: burnable
  • form: dub
  • made: unknown
  • Review created: Sun Feb 4 12:49:37 EST 2001
  • mod: none

Let's get something out of the way first. This movie is a sequel to a movie almost universally regarded as dire. A movie so bad that only an injection of money by an American anime company desperate to flaunt its complete lack of taste and discrimination led to a second one being produced. And, I hate to say it, this one is even worse.

The plot of these movies is basically a world sized arena for the title character. It turns out that, on an alien world, they'd been experimenting with artificially created super-soldiers. They look like big, beefy psychopath's (no super-human powers) but never-the-less they're the M.D. (Most Dangerous) units that will cause an entire armored division to flee with an angry look and a muscle flex. And while this is set in the future not even high tech weaponry is a match for their power. The problem comes in the fact that they're also, to some degree, completely insane. M.D. Geist himself is an almost completely mindless, brutal murderer who lives only to kill without reason or direction.

In the first tape he ended up, somehow, being in a raid on an enemy stronghold. It seems that the civil war was almost over with one side exhausted and their weaponry depleted. Thus it came as a suprise to learn they'd put astounding amounts of resources into building a huge fleet of killer robots that would decimate all life on the planet. The raid was to stop the activation of this terrible doomsday weapons. But, oops, they'd brought M.D. Geist along. So he, for reasons unknown, walks up to the big red button and pushes it.

And now we have the second tape. The robots have largely been successful and we see them chewing up (literally) a handful of the few remaining survivors. In fact it seems that only one stronghold of humanity remains on this now barren planet. And that fortress lives under the protection of another M.D. Unit, who's an insane empire builder. He's also managed to scrounge up the resources that might enable mankind to defeat the death machines. Sure he's a supreme egotist, and his motives are doubtful, but a chance for mankind to survive and perhaps even thrive seems possible. Unfortunately M.D. Geist still exists, and theres still people he hasn't killed yet.

Warning... Total Spoiler offered on the assumption that no one will watch this movie. Please skip to the next paragraph if you want to experience the pain yourself. Okay, I warned you. M.D. Geist appears and disrupts the plan, kills the other M.D. and leads the killer robots to the humans. He's got a handful of lines none of which give any idea of what he's thinking.

This is just real trash. It's macho posturing and cheap theatrics wrapped into the most basic package. M.D. geist is completely non-existent as a character, which is a problem when he's in theory the lead. The other M.D. unit has a certain power but you've seen it done better elsewhere. The remainder of the cast, which is not that large, have little feeling of character or logic behind their words or actions. They've got some ability to craft scenes but none for story or dialogue. And it's all so shallow, derivative and nasty. There's moments of horror, a bit of action, and some potentially potent moments but none of them are worth the time to experience. The worst part of it is that they seem to believe they're doing something stylish and neat, when at it's best it has all the depth and meaning of American wrestling. I'd pick holes in the story, or logic, but it doesn't deserve that much respect.

And then you get onto the production. Wow, either the company didn't put down enough money or the Japanese studio pulled a fast one. This is uniquely bad production. It's unique because it looks like a bunch of stills and story boards have been used instead of animation. There's lots of stills, sliding cells, repeated action and pose shots that make it clear that the budget was limited. What's clever about it is that it probably looks pretty good on the back of the box, with some quite detailed and nicely colored still shots. But it falls apart once it starts. Add in some pretty bad voice acting, way over the top, and some cheap anonymous rock-guitar BGM and you've got something that looks flashy but has no substance or style to speak of.

       
                 
                 
       

Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:21 WST 2009