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Sonny (Johnson Yap) is the 10 year old every other 10 year old would
love to be - he's a martial arts champ, a TV personality ... and then in
an ambush, his parents are murdered because his dad's an interpol agent,
and he's left behind fatally injured. His life is saved in an emergency
surgery, but bionic parts had to be implanted into his body to not lose
him - bionic parts that make him superstrong and give him supernatural
vision and hearing. So when an attack is launched on the home of Sonny's
mentor and foster father Ramirez, Sonny is able to not only save
everybody's life launching a spontaneous counter-attack, but also to kill
quite a few of the assailants. But why all these attacks? You see,
Sonny's dad was on the trail of a mafia boss named Frank who aims to kill
a few Filippino businessmen who are not cooperating with his organisation
- including Ramirez. When Frank learns that not only Ramirez has survived
and a few of his men were killed instead, but also that the son of the
Interpol agent on his trail is still alive, he has Sonny kidnapped and
taken to his own secret and highly fortified private island, where he
wants his men to teach Sonny a lesson - but Sonny beats them up one after
the other, until one grabs him from behind and throws him off a cliff.
Sonny survives that, too and ultimately he's chained up at gunpoint,
contained in a barrel of cement, then thrown into the sea. He even
survives that unscathed, and now knows about the underwater fortifications
around the island. So he sneaks into Frank's camp again, finds a radio to
call Interpol, and the next day, the police attacks via helicopter. It's
still Sonny though who takes out at least half of Frank's men on his own.
Frank can make a clean getaway though ... A weird action movie
as because of its 10 year old star (a real life karate champ from
Singapore), you'd consider it kiddie stuff - but it's very much on the
violent side, there's plenty of gunplay, people get graphically riddled by
bullets, the way Frank plans to get rid of Sonny rings particularly
gruesome, and the 10 year old himself doesn't shy away from killing quite
a few people. Also, the whole thing is made in a pretty no-nonsense way,
with little in terms of irony (which for example rated high in the Weng
Weng-movies), instead concentrating on the action for its own sake. This
makes Bionic Boy certainly not a good movie in the
traditional sense of the word, it's rather a trashy piece of action cinema
that honestly speaking could have done with a higher budget and a little
more care, but it's still good fun for people with lowered expectation on
the quality side of things but an openness for somewhat silly pulp
entertainment.
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