Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

samvideo Uh, just a comment but you've linked this 3.9 movie to Solo: A Star Wars Story on google. You may want to change that.

zardoz-13 Actor Mario Van Peebles plays a cyborg warrior with a conscience in "Blue Tiger" director Norberto Barba's new science fiction thriller "Solo." This ballistically paced testosterone thriller recycles familiar plot elements from movies such as "Universal Soldier" (1992), "Rambo: First Blood, Part II," and the western classic "The Magnificent Seven." Although "Solo" appears initially as little more than a derivative African-American android opus, Barba has cleverly woven some traditional philosophical ideas about appropriate human behavior into this violent melodrama that go beyond its cinematic pyrotechnics."Solo" opens aboard a U.S. spy trawler off the coast of an unidentified Latin American country. Army General Clyde Haynes (Barry Corbin of "My Science Project") introduces Solo, a $2-billion bionic soldier prototype designed as the ideal military killing machine. According to Haynes, Solo has no feelings and is ultimately disposable. Furthermore, Solo comes equipped with bullet proof skin, infrared vision, and the amazing ability to intercept radio messages during transmission. Despite his formidable arsenal, Solo has been programmed with conflicting commands by its designer, Dr. Bill Stewart (Adrien Brody of "Splice") has failed to tweak before the cyborg is sent into battle.Colonel Madden (William Sadler of "Die Hard 2: Dead Harder"), a battle-seasoned adrenalin junkie, heads up a commando team dispatched to destroy an airfield that rebel guerrillas are constructing. The Americans slip in under the cover of darkness, and Solo plants the explosives to blow up the airfield. While he is setting up the explosives, Solo scans the area with his infrared vision and spots several noncombatants being used as slave labor. Because these civilians may die from the blast, Solo's command directives prevent him from following orders. When the android decides to defuse the explosives, Madden triggers the remaining charges. Explosions and machine-gun fire erupt, and the Americans scramble for their helicopters, deliberately abandoning their robotic warrior. Solo receives a messianic wound low on his left side that fires his power management chip. But that doesn't keep our super-soldier protagonist from grabbing onto one of the choppers as it lifts off.Back aboard the trawler, Stewart removes the damaged chip. He explains to Solo that the android must switch over to back-up power until the chip can be replaced. This make the super-soldier just a little less invincible. Meanwhile, a furious Haynes and a vindictive Madden demand to know why Solo refused to obey orders. Stewart explains that a glitch occurred when Solo tried to resolve a discrepancy in his command menu. Madden wants to shut Solo down, but Haynes decides to salvage their expensive prototype. Solo intercepts the outgoing transmission and learns that Haynes wants him reprogrammed. Solo consults his menu of functions and learn that his prime directive is self-preservation. Before "Solo" fades to black, our android hero learns that to act selfishly may be logical but is not appropriate human behavior.Solo steals a helicopter and flies off to the mainland. Madden chases him and watches as Solo crashes into a mountain. When Madden sifts through the wreckage, he cannot find a trace of the wily cyborg. Solo managed to survive the crash and has vanished into the bowels of the jungle.. A small boy from the village discovers Solo resting in an underground temple and nearly gets bitten when a snake attacks him. Solo goes on line on the spur of the moments and grabs the snake before its venomous fangs sink into the vulnerable child. Horrified, the lad runs back to his village, but later returns with his father and the rest of the village. When they find the considerably run-down Solo, they believe at first that he is dead. The little boy demands they give him a proper burial. At the church, he bad guy rebels storm in, interrupting the burial ritual, and shoot up the church. Solo springs into action and single-handedly wipes them out. The villagers reveal that the rebels were forcing them under threat of death to clear an airstrip. Solo agrees to teach the farmers how to fight if they will allow him to use parts from an old black and white, portable television to recharge himself. At this point, Peebles emerges as "The Magnificent Seven" stacked into one. They arrange elaborate traps around the village, and Solo shows them how to use bows and arrows to lethal effect. When the rebels return, the villagers give them a reception that throws them off-balance.Back aboard the trawler, surveillance devices warn them about a battle raging in the jungle. Haynes orders Colonel Madden to lead in an elite unit of hand-picked mercenaries to recover Solo. Madden secretly wants to destroy the prototype. If Solo performs well under fire, Madden fears that similar prototypes may eventually replace career soldiers like him. He believes that his men can kill Solo because the android is not only vulnerable but heavily damaged. Once he reaches the mainland, Madden cuts a deal with the slimy rebels to ice Solo. First, Madden fakes evidence so it appears that Solo has gone crazy and torched the village. The Colonel broadcasts deceptive images of a burning hut back to Haynes aboard the trawler and he swallows the lie. As bait to lure Solo out, Madden persuades Haynes to send in Stewart, who learns too late that Madden duped him. Solo manages to rescue his creator in a way that would make Indiana Jones envious. But Stewart is fatally wounded during the escape. "I should never have left college," Stewart laments and hands Solo a rebuilt power chip before he dies. To divulge any other details about the story would undercut the entertainment value of the movie."Solo" breaks no new ground for this specific type of character or adventure film, but Narba stages the action well. Most audiences have seen everything that Solo eventually learns, especially if they've kept track of Mr. Spock's progress over the years in the original "Star Trek" movies. If you enjoy fast-moving, well-crafted actioneers, "Solo" is worth watching once.

Bezenby First off- a quote from the film:Solo: My brain isn't in my head. It's in here Girl: If your brain is in your chest, where is your heart? Solo: I don't have one.I'm beginning to become like a dowsing rod for a bad film. Either that or I'm just watching films that come on Channel 5 more often. I kept seeing ads for Solo and just got that feeling that it would be worth watching, as 1) Mario Van Peebles is crap and 2) It was on Channel 5. Van Peebles is a cyborg built by the military to waste folk. Trouble is he's got a design fault that makes him NOT kill people. Doh. So they decide to get rid of him but he picks up the message to suspend the project (how I'm not sure - he just sort of looks up at a wall), so he jumps ship and heads for a South American village, which is naturally being bullied by rebels or drug dealers or something. I'm not to sure what they are, but be assured the village is full of stereotypes for Solo to interact with. The military sends out Sadler to kick Solo's ass, but Sadler is nuts and seems to shoot people just for the sake of it. Meanwhile Solo is teaching the locals how to fight, as being a computer type allows him to translate Spanish, but then the film forgets and everyone just talks English or something. This film is a mish-mash of Robocop, Universal Soldier and Terminator. It's also very very stupid and unintentionally funny. I loved the love interest, even though he's a robot. Or many of the inexplicable moments that are never explained, like how Solo just appears in a pool of water, how he jumps up onto a helicopter, or how connecting himself up to a generator charges him up. There's very little violence until the end, when everyone gets wasted. Sadler gets his back broke and then reappears as a cyborg! The word 'illogical' is overused by Solo in his attempts to be more human, and the scene where he's being taught what a joke his had me cringing. Are Van Damme films as bad as this? If they are, I might give them a go.

Paul Andrews Solo starts as a team of US soldiers go into Soth America to blow up a rebel airstrip, joining them is a robot named Solo (Mario Van Peebles) who can use any weapon ever made, is fifteen times stronger & ten times faster than any human being. Something goes wrong though & Solo refuses to kill innocent civilians which Colonel Frank Madden (William Sadler) isn't happy about, back at base & General Haynes (Barry Corbin) orders Solo to be shut down & reprogrammed. One of Solo's main directives is self preservation so decides to escape back into the South American jungles where Colonel Madden & his men are sent in to recapture it...This Mexican American co-production was directed by Norberto Barba & one has to say Solo is awful. The script by David Corley was based on the novel 'Weapon' by Robert Mason & is one cliché after another, robots were popular at the time Solo was made in Hollywood & at the box-office so Solo rip-offs the likes of Robocop (1987), Universal Soldier (1992) & the two Terminator flicks as well as having the same setting & basic story as Predator (1987). This is the usual rubbish about an emotionless robot who grows a sense of humanity while being around people, at first he doesn't know what a joke is or why one person would care for another but by the end he develops emotions & starts to befriend people, sounds like Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) to me. The character's are poor & Colonel Madden in particular is given absolutely no motivation for hating Solo at all & why he would kill other US soldiers & disobey orders to destroy it. You know I saw this on cable telly last night for free (thank god I didn't spend any money on it) & I looked it up in the TV guide & do you know what it said? My TV guide described Solo as a 'dire sci-fi action starring Mario Van Peebels' which when I think about it is a perfect description of Solo. In less than ten words my TV guide has hit the nail on the head, I mean it's a sci-fi action film, it certainly stars Mario Van Peebles & it's definitely dire. Enough said really.Director Barba doesn't do anything particularly special here & the action scenes lack any real excitement & the sci-fi elements are virtually none existent apart from the fact Solo is a robot. So the military lose Solo & Colonel Madden is sent in to recapture it right? I'm not being funny but wouldn't the military have put a 'self destruct' mechanism inside Solo in case something like that happened? Surely at the very least Solo would have had a tracking device inside it so the military would at least know where it was at any given time? I'm not being funny but these people can come up with a walking talking robotic soldier but they are not clever enough to realise that a tracking or self destruct device might be useful if anything went wrong? The violence is mild, there are a few OK fight scenes but this is pretty weak stuff really.Technically the film looks alright & is competently made, it was actually shot in Mexico. The makers of the Dolph Lundgren action flick Agent Red (2000) edited footage from Solo into that film. The acting is poor, Van Peebles was the perfect choice to play an emotionless robot... William Sadler deserves better than this, it was only a few years prior he was staring in the fantastic Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990).Solo is a really bad sci-fi action flick which is basically a huge rip-off of big budget Hollywood sci-fi action films like Robocop, Universal Soldier & the Terminator films. Not recommend & I'm going to start & pay more attention to my TV guide when it comes to choosing films to watch...