Heatseeker

MOVIE #2,448 • SCORE 8.1/10 • 03.27.25
SERIES: ALBERT & AKERMAN

In the distant future (2019 lol), one of the last 100% human fighters is still competing (and kicking ass) in the world of martial arts: Chance O’Brien (played by generic handsome man Keith Cooke) enters an international tournament put together by one of the big cyborg tech companies after they kidnap his trainer/fiancée (soon-to-be Pyun stable Tina Coté). Rounding out the cast are regulars Tim Thomerson (sporting excellent red hair and a southern accent in a brief bad guy role), Thom Mathews (good guy turned bad guy turned good guy again) and most importantly, the main villain, Norbert Weisser who steals the show as Tsui Tung, the architect of the would-be human-cyborg revolution…


As usual, the fighting scenes (mostly) still suck (it’s cool when we see the smashed up cyborg parts revealed, however) but the setup and general selling point for this seems to be Kickboxer but also robot? I can’t argue with the fact that “Kickboxer but robot” is a vast improvement on the tournament fighting genre flick in general, but that it certainly seems like a framing device for Pyun to go off is the most important aspect of Heatseeker (his second compound word title in a row). Weisser sees the tournament itself as nothing more than a big commercial for his company, which we glean from this ACTUAL commercial…


The trend of darker subject matter continues as we see Weisser take advantage of trainer/fiancée sexually by activating a brain chip that renders her a comatose zombie (he also tortures her by punching keys on an old computer keyboard). It’s as exploitative as Pyun has ever gotten but it still works because Weisser — who worked on more of his films than anyone else — is so good.

He also uses trainer/fiancée as motivation for his illegally-too-much cyborg combatant (Gary Daniels, previously seen in Pyun's Knights). You can create the ultimate fighter in a lab but he’s nothing without the love of a hot trainer/fiancée. That’s the theme, or something.

It’s impossible for these films not to get bogged down by the requisite number of martial arts bouts — Justin Deloux in his book Radioactive Dreams once again breaks it down perfectly once again:

A distancing effect comes into play during the action scenes because Pyun is starting to use his “Shoot it all on long lens!” time saving style. All the fights take place in a large arena, so Pyun pre-lit the set, put multiple cameras around the ring and had the fighters perform the choreography in one straight go. The final edit makes the action play out like a sports game which robs it of any impact.

— but I will say that the inclusion of a ring announcer greatly peppers these sequences. His extraneous narration is the only thing that makes these scenes worth watching…


Despite how this recap might seem, this is actually one of Pyun’s tighter scripts and stories. He doesn't quite know how to slap the ending together, but I still had quite a lot of fun watching this one. Oh, and does he include a scene featuring multiple televisions broadcasting strange lo-fi footage? Of course he does...

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A kickboxing champion is forced to fight cyborgs in a tournament when the company kidnaps his fiancee. It was released on May 15, 1995.