TRAILERhttp://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=5u044sxDlAk
Playing the ‘wink filled’, campy comedy routine instead of attemping actual sci-fi thrills, Space Trucker is a visually interesting diversion and nothing more. It’s a victim of the age old “Trying too hard to please ” that can only result in a high, high pitch that sounds like nails on a chalkboard, instead of the desired bell.
After a bloody little opening, we’re introduced to Denis Hopper as one of the titular ‘Truckers’, a man who gets sent on a cargo to mission to earth with a fiancée half his age (Dabi Mazar), a wet behind the ears sidekick (A useless Stephen Dorf) and a cargo full of deadly sentient weapons. Can someone say ‘Evil Hijacking Space Pirates led by a Bionic Man’?
Truckers is packaged in low budget b-movie trappings yet it is trying desperately to look like an A-movie production. Mostly, it suceeds in a goofy, 'Aw-Shucks' manner. The special effects are surprisingly eye-catching because they elude the full CGI route and decide to rely mostly on solidly crafted miniatures work. The set-design is clever and the day-glow costume designs make every character pop off screen. It’s a shame that everything else falls so very flat. The acting from everyone-on board is a perfect advertisement of the “Someone holds a paycheck off-screen” school of acting. The jokes drop like dead-weights and the tone wishes dearly that it could go out and play with its “R” rated friends but is stuck in its PG-13 prison (People turn into particles when their shot by the super dangerous robot bastard? Zzzzzzzz). Director Stuart Gordon (of famed splatter classics “Re-Animator” and “From Beyond”) should have known better. I would happily have chowed down on Space Truckers if it had gone balls-out to entertain, but instead I got stuck with lukewarm leftovers. It does have a fun little 10 minute bit when the creature first gets loose, but most people have probably A) Fallen asleep by that time or B) Changed the Channel. All of those “invincible” mechanical assassins sure end up being easy to kill by three people in slow moving space-suits.
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