It’s more talky than a movie about giant fighting robots should be, but it’s got just enough ridiculous moments to make it watchable. In 1987, when this was made (it took three years to get released), bulky robots that were loaded with firepower and looked like mutated IBM computers were all over daytime cartoons and anime, but not so much in live-action movies. Enter Robot Jox to take a crack at it. Director Stuart Gordon and writer Joe Haldeman (a novelist having a bitter movie business experience here) clashed over whether or not it should be a trashy action film, which was Gordon’s view, or a serious piece of Cold War commentary, which was Haldeman’s take. The result is a messy hybrid of both, with the film’s real visionary perhaps being producer Charles Band. Many of the hallmarks of a Band production are here, such as the characters who look like toys and the impressive effects that achieve high-tech on a low budget. The setting is the post-apocalyptic age where “war is outlawed” and all disputes between nations are decided via one-on-one fights between huge robots operated by skilled pilots whom the public treat like athletes. They’re futuristic gladiators (the main characters are even named Achilles, Athena and Alexander), symbols of humanity’s never-ending cycle of conflict, as well as a good excuse to blow up stuff when the film isn’t stuck on its hard-boiled hero’s tedious struggle to quit the robot-fighting game.