Circuitry Man

This low-budget sci-fi film takes its inspiration from the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson, and the films Blade Runner and The Road Warrior, to create a not very convincing future post-nuclear Los Angeles, where everyone lives underground, and oxygen (necessary to go "topside") is held dear. When Lori (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson), a bodyguard/fashion designer ends up with a suitcase full of mind-bending software chips, when a proposed deal is raided by the local police, she and a "pleasure droid" named Danner (Jim Metzler) take to the underground sewers and then the topside desert roads, headed for New York. They are pursued by a bald villain named Plughead (Vernon Wells), who has more sockets in his bean than your average condo kitchen. While there are some nice moments of droll humor interspersed throughout the film, the overall feeling one has is that with more money and more imagination it could have been much better (the early scenes in the "underground sewers," for instance, are just shots of the same underground garage, over and over). Not a necessary purchase. (R. Pitman)