A new school year, a new school, a new teacher, a new mission.
This movie is apparently set in the distant future of 2001, two years after the events of the previous movie. Apparently, in France, this movie is called 'Class of 2001', but presumably, for franchise recognition in the West, we got this title. Still, the French title makes more sense and fits in with the title pattern of this trilogy of movies, 'Class of 1984, 99, 01'. So, missed a trick there, oddly.
As for the plot, well I bet you're expecting yet another round of killer android teachers exterminating young thugs in their local school, right? Well you're absolutely right! No, no, sorry, sorry to disappoint you, but that's actually not the case. This time around, substitute teacher John Bolen leaves his current school after terminating some ruffians...and the Principal! No police follow-up or anything, he just gets away with that scot-free. He turns up at another school (and gets hired, no questions asked apparently) and immediately starts picking off the students.
Sounds okay but the plot rapidly declines and makes no real sense. You see, at first, Bolen appears to be protecting a female teacher who is getting targeted by a violent gang of students after witnessing one pull a gun. Which is really weird cos in this universe I thought that was normal for high school teens. So we get the usual thing with the female teacher constantly getting harassed, her boyfriend trying to help her, local police being useless, and Bolen quietly offing students one by one, and no one knows what's going on. But, towards the finale, Bolen starts to randomly attack and kill anyone and everyone he comes into contact with, including the female teacher he has been protecting.
So I really don't have any clue why Bolen does this towards the end of the movie. Apparently 'death is his mission'? Anyway, it turns out that Bolen actually isn't a killer android, but actually the son of Dr. Bob Forrest from the previous movie (the guy who created the killer androids), and an ex-special forces veteran with PTSD. All this time he's been wearing a special body armour which is bullet and stab-proof. So this entire movie is a bit of a con really.
Besides the rather naff bait-and-switch plot, the movie looks pretty drab too. Clearly filmed in and around small patches of dry yellowly-green spaces in California, the movie has no real presence or atmosphere despite attempts to make it look eerie. All the high school kids look like adults (cos they're played by adults). They all wear jumpsuits at school, which isn't explained, but I'm guessing the schools are treated like prisons. And the town where all this occurs only seems to be policed by one elderly cop? Where is everyone??
The action is fair but nothing special. Sasha Mitchell has a decent, Keanu Reeves-like, Johnny Mnemonic look about him (which he kept throughout his early movie career), and he can do martial arts, which helps. Mitchell has a solid form and makes the sparse fighting moments better than they should be. There is blood, but not much. There is violence, but not much. The most violent moment being a student getting torched alive. Other than that, there isn't much to shout about and absolutely no wicked killer robot stop-motion effects.
But yeah, the movie makes no real sense. Bolen has PTSD, but would that turn someone into an unstoppable killing machine? Why did he turn on all the good characters at the end? He is not bothered about what happened to his dad in the previous movie? Did that add to his PTSD? Clearly you're supposed to root for Bolen as he kills the unruly teens and gang members, but he essentially behaves like a Terminator without any Arnie quirks, and as the movie carries on, it becomes more and more unclear if he's good or not. That might sound like a good twist, but it isn't really because when he does turn against the good guys, we don't know why.
The very end sees our female heroine donning the body armour and hinting at the fact that she's gonna kick (or kill?) some high school student ass. Almost as if she's carrying on where Bolen left off, or she's simply learnt how to protect herself better, or she's decided to not be scared of anything anymore. I dunno, could be anything really. The bottom line is, despite this movie being a sequel to the last killer android sci-fi flick, it bears no real resemblance to that movie. This is all about an ex-military man going off the rails, no real sci-fi involved. Sure, it's not a copy and paste job, but strange choice.
4/10
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