“Bionic” is a newly released Brazilian sci-fi movie, directed by Afonso Poyart. Jessica Córes and Gabrielly Nunez are featured in the film as Maria and Gabi, respectively. Both are gifted siblings who want to excel in sports. However, their dreams also change dramatically due to the arrival of athletes with bionic implants. The movie takes place in a future where paralympians use cybernetic enhancements to outperform others. The movie shows how progress can have consequences for people and how family and goals can be complicated. It is available to stream on Netflix!
Cast with Characters
- Maria Santos (Jessica Cores): The protagonist is a talented athlete who becomes entangled in criminal activities.
- Heitor (Bruno Gagliasso): A former boxing gym owner turned criminal mastermind who manipulates Maria for his own gains.
- Gustavo Santos, or Gus (Christian Malheiros): Maria and Gabi’s brother, skilled in technology, who joins Heitor’s group.
- Gabi Santos (Gabrielly Nunez): Maria’s sister and a world champion in long jumping, a prominent figure in the bionic sports world.
- Roberto Santos: Maria and Gabi’s father, who trains and manages them, sometimes exploiting their talents for financial gain.
- Dario (Paulo Vilhena): An expert in bionic technology who assists the sisters in adapting to their enhancements.
- Antis (Squirt) (Klebber Toledo): Heitor’s brother involved in criminal activities.
- Detective Guerra (Danton Mello): A sharp-witted cop who investigates Heitor’s schemes and Maria’s accident.
Plot Summary
It is the year 2035, and Maria watches her sister Gabi become a famous mechanical athlete. Their mom, who was a former Olympic long jumper, trained them both. Gabi’s leg was cut off in an accident and replaced with an expensive artificial prosthetic limb. Maria feels like a regular athlete left out in the cold. Her problem begins when Gus introduces her to Heitor, a petty criminal. Heitor wants to challenge the monopoly of prosthetics by a big corporation. Jealousy also plays a part as Maria receives her own powerful prosthetic leg, thanks to Heitor. However, she also gets involved with his criminal activities. The high-tech prosthetic is an extremely powerful leg that is connected directly to her brain. Police start tracing their movements as they flee from police for various reasons. The film shows how technology affects people and asks questions about what it means to be human, even with technological enhancements. Even though technology surrounds them, Maria and Gabi should make decisions based on who they are at heart.
How Does It All Start?
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The year is 2035 when a young man enters a bank in Brazil. As he passes through the gate, it beeps because of his titanium shoulders and prosthetic arm. He requests to pass after explaining to the authorities, who check him thoroughly. Inside the safe, he opens his safety deposit boxes to find an extremely powerful bionic prosthetic arm. He replaces his old prosthetic arm with this new bionic one. He then causes chaos in the bank as he tries to steal another safe containing a batch of diamonds using his new hand. Despite sustaining injuries from guard bullets, he escapes from them. His brother comes to save him, however, he kills himself in front of him instead of escaping.
The police investigate and find out the thief was a man named Squirt, a former boxer. In the future, bionic prosthetics and body modifications will be very advanced, giving those with enhancements a big advantage. Biona, a company that makes bionic prosthetics, originally helped war veterans who lost limbs. However, these modifications were imitated around the world, becoming very popular, especially in sports. Athletes with artificial limbs had a distinct advantage, making those with natural limbs disadvantaged. Squirt, among others, decided to have their own limbs cut off for the sake of getting bionic replacements.
Who Are Maria and Gabi Santos?
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As the investigation continues, the film focuses on Maria Santos, the daughter of famous long-jump athlete Helena Santos. Maria was groomed by her mom into becoming her successor since she was small. However, she is at a disadvantage against opponents who have bionic parts, like her younger sister Gabi, whose leg was amputated when she was young and then replaced with a bionic one. She currently holds the world record in this sporting discipline. As such, feelings of frustration and competition develop within Maria who feels overshadowed by her sister’s success.
Who’s Heitor And What does He Want From Maria?
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Heitor was Squirt’s brother, who robbed the bank at the beginning of the movie. After stealing a diamond, which he later handed over to his brother in order to avoid arrest by taking his own life, Squirt gave it to Heitor. Heitor used to be Squirt’s manager when Squirt was trying to become a professional boxer.
The bionic world had seen an increasing obsession with bionics that gave athletes endowed with these modifications supernatural capabilities. Heitor and Squirt were not fans of this idea because they thought it would be unfair for athletes whose bodies were natural. Hatred for bionics drove them into establishing their own non-bionic athlete’s support group, distinguishable by their symbol: the human skull.
The organization was formed in response to a lack of employment opportunities and fierce competition among those sportsmen who did not have bionic additions. For instance, there were athletes whose jumps covered twice as much distance as any real person on this planet has ever jumped. This made other non-augmented sportspeople feel cheated and very mad.
Heitor and Squirt’s intentions were to steal diamonds that would be used to ransom the location of NIM chips. These chips are vital for bionic limbs, but Biona, the chip-making company, does not allow any of its products to be used by those who harm themselves. This resulted in a situation where Squirt could not have the advanced bionics he had sought, thus ending his boxing career and pushing him and Heitor still deeper into their cause.
The robbery revealed that the diamonds were of a low grade. They needed another person with bionic arms if they wanted to continue with their plan, in which they were supposed to rob cash from bank trucks. Enter Gus Santos, the third of the Santos siblings. Gus feels like an outsider in his family, as he is not athletic like all of them are. Additionally, he does not approve of a world that is obsessed with bionic enhancements. So, wanting to help non-bionic people, Gus proposes to his sister Maria to go on this mission.
Maria has been struggling with her own problems lately. Having been trained by her mother, who happened to be a renowned long-jump athlete, Maria finds herself at a disadvantage when competing against opponents who have received such artificial limbs as Gabi does. Soon after losing her leg due to an infection, Gabi grew up as she became the world record holder in long jump since her leg was replaced with a bionic one. Maria felt overshadowed all along.
Gus believes that Maria will give her support to Heitor’s group, given her hatred of bionic athletes. She, however, joins the group in an attempt to help non bionic people, hoping they could create an impact. Her life takes a different turn after she gets involved in a serious accident.
What Happened to Maria?
Maria got into an accident after she left a party at the Biona office, where she had quarrelled with her sister Gabi over her selfishness. A van hit Maria’s motorbike on her way home, leading to severe injuries that eventually resulted in the amputation of her right leg. In order to continue with life and work, Maria had to have an advanced bionic leg, which she had been against all along.
What is strange about Maria’s accident is that police were already carrying out investigations into a bank theft. An anonymous caller reported the accident right after it happened, which is common. But the timing was odd—the call was made a few minutes before the accident occurred, suggesting the caller knew the crash was going to happen.
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After some intense training and little friction from her sister Gabi, the new foot enabled Maria to break the world-long jump record defeating her sister. An emotional Gabi then tries to break Maria’s record but the bionics fail her. She falls and wounds herself, likely ruining her chances to ever take part in the sport again.
At first glance, it may appear that the powerful Biona Corporation has some role in the plights of Maria and her sister Gabi. That is not the case, however, as their father, Roberto, shoulders most of the responsibility. Apart from being Gabi’s trainer and manager, Roberto is a central figure in their situation. He helps bring sponsors to Biona and uses his influence to benefit from his daughters’ careers. When Maria has her accident, Roberto quickly turns her into a bionic athlete, just like Gabi, and strikes a deal with Biona and a wealthy sponsor. He promises that one of his daughters will break a world record in an upcoming competition. This promise is fulfilled, but only because Roberto pits Maria and Gabi against each other, leading to Gabi getting injured.
In the hospital, Gabi reveals to Maria that she heard a familiar tune playing in the background while listening repeatedly to the recording of the anonymous call. This tune was a piece of music Maria had recently shared with Heitor, timing their calls with it. Thus, it became clear what really caused her crash.
Heitor had intentionally crashed his van into Maria’s bike. He wanted her to get a bionic leg so that he could tap into her new abilities for his scheming. The next phase involved Heitor using Maria in the robbery of ATM vans, which was less difficult due to her augmented capabilities.
Heitor had done something similar with his brother Squirt. Despite claiming to advocate for non-bionic athletes, deep down, he wanted to cash in on them. He forced Squirt into desperate acts to earn money. With the stolen money, he hired hackers who would help him find information about NIM chips, which are used for controlling bionic limbs. Thus, Heitor intended to sell these illegally at high prices.
As things unfold, it turns out that Biona is not entirely to blame for this. Dario, a friend of Maria and Gabi, who heads Biona’s bionic unit, secretly supports them with supplies but does not let anyone else know about it in company management.
Heitor’s manipulation of Maria becomes evident in Bionic’s ending, so she plays her part and stops his deal with a client who is interested in NIM chips. The police come to take Heitor and Maria into custody for engaging themselves in criminal activities, but with Gabi’s assistance, Maria manages to escape, leaving behind her bionic leg. Heitor is then captured, and this leads to him being stopped from carrying on with his illegal activities. Furthermore, their younger brother Gus gets injured when he is mistakenly hit by the car, as she mistakes him for Heitor.
Six months after this all happened, none of the three Santos children have been found, and the authorities are still searching. Roberto, their father, realizes how wrong he has been and desperately wants to be back together with them again. However, unbeknownst to him, they all survive well, having decided on living a semi-rural life within Brazil. Maria and Gabi run a training facility for children, aiming to help them become athletes.
Dario supports this venture by providing bionic parts secretly obtained from Biona. While Maria and Gabi only require bionic legs, Gus’s extensive injuries necessitate full-body bionic modifications, rendering him a powerful combatant. Together, the sisters decide to take a course of action that involves making contact with an individual who is interested in armies of bionic people, mainly for harmful intentions. In exchange for money to support themselves and the children they train, they agree to work as mercenaries. They became the first bionic-enhanced fighters in Brazil.
