You can do worse than Android Cop, but you can do with much, much better as well. It is saved from total disaster by a couple of passable(but nothing more than that) effects and the performances of Michael Jai White and Charles S. Dutton. White has a lot of charisma and manages to put some meaning into his monologues while Dutton performs with terrific gusto, funny and a touch menacing. Unfortunately the rest of the acting is not good, the worst is Larissa Vereza who is both annoying and bland, you often don't have a clue what she's saying. Randy Wayne is bad too, he is robotic emotionally even for a robot, plays it far too straight-faced and is nowhere near aggressive or charismatic enough(he doesn't even command or intimidate physically because he's too short and scrawny). Kadeem Hardison doesn't get much to shine with, he has talent but has such an insignificant character that it's a waste really. The characters are very poorly developed and are not interesting or likable at all, the "villains"- difficult to call them that when there isn't really a main one, just a handful of insignificant ones- are written stereotypically, don't seem much of a threat and just seem to be there to be a source of conflict(that doesn't work, seeing as how poorly they are written). The worst case however was for the titular character, absolutely no effort to make to explain where he came from, the reason for his creation and existence and how he came to be the way he was, it is very difficult to engage with a character that we know nothing about and is this poorly acted. Most of the special effects are static and cheap, and the practical ones are little better. The android suit can't even be classed as one, it read too much of a man in a nylon tight-suit.
The editing is very choppy and whatever good locations there are are not used very well with no time to enjoy them, in fact most of the settings are dreary and yes that is even for the type of movie Android Cop is. The worst aspect though of Android Cop is the writing(both in script and story). There is barely even a script, when there are bare bones of it has a lot of stilted lines especially anything that comes out of Vereza's mouth(her English is not easy to understand and she stumbles on a lot of her lines) and sketchily drawn characters. The story is little more than a convoluted jumble, too much is thrown in within such a short running time and nothing makes sense as a result. The action sequences are generic and has nothing new to what's we've seen before in action movies we've seen previously, it doesn't help also that some of the worst of the production values are in the action sequences, while there is no sense of suspense or conflict which adds to the pointlessness of the "villains" and even the titular character. If Android Cop was longer and the pace slowed down it would have felt much less hectic and may have been a tad more coherent. Atkins' direction is sloppy, the material completely goes out of control, the actors should have had much more to do than what they had, he rushes through things and slaps it all together and he should have realised that the movie needed a serious re-write and that the scenes between White and Vereza needed re-takes because of how badly Vereza(White occasionally too) fluffs her lines. To sum things up, not absolute garbage- you can certainly do worse than Android Cop- but on most counts it is a mess. 3/10 Bethany Cox
