UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING - film review

There is not a lot of love on the internet for this movie so it’s time to redress the balance somewhat.

The original Universal Soldier (UniSol) movie was released back in ‘92 and was a big bit of B movie fun. The sequel, Universal Soldier: The Return came out in 1999. No Lundgren this time but JCVD was still in there and joined by Michael Jai White and pro-wrestler Bill Goldberg. The film is a 78 minute waste of time and appeared to be the death of the UniSol franchise.

Fast forward to 2010, John Hyams (son of Peter Hyams, who made 2010 and Timecop) was hired to make a low budget straight to video sequel which was going to have the original stars appear (Lundgren sadly is only onscreen for about 15 minutes as he was filming some movie with Stallone and The Stath at the time) but the main lead would be MMA fight Andrei ‘The Pitbull’ Arlovski as a new generation of UniSol known as the NGU. This film, which became Universal Soldier: Regeneration, which ignores the events of The Return, should have passed by without any notice, but because it’s actually really rather good it developed a bit of a following. ITV4 seem to show it loads and it is well worth catching

It breathed new life into a long thought dead franchise so when talk got around to a UniSol 4 with Hyams back in the saddle again, there was understandably a lot of eager anticipation. Especially by me.

When Scott Adkins was announced as the new lead actor for UniSol 4 it became obvious that JCVD and Lundgren were not going to be either the focus of this movie or have that long on screen. Again this was in part because they were both off shooting some movie with Stallone and the Stath and some Austrian ex-politician. Still I was happy, I’m a fan of Adkins. He’s a very good English martial artist who’s made some pretty good movies (Undisputed II & III, Ninja). It was being filmed in 3D so that got people excited about a possible cinema release (sadly that didn’t really happen). On set pictures turn up, some rough plot synopsis arrive and this time it looks like JCVD’s character is no the baddie. Hhhhmmmm interesting.

Finally the film starts getting a release in the US. Reviews are awful. Fans even suggest that Universal Soldier: The Return is better than what they’ve been served up. Reasons for the hate seem to be that JCVD and Lundgren barely appear, there’s no or little action, takes a long time for anything to happen etc. All the excitement about seeing the movie dissipates away.

But

The trailer still looks pretty good (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPcMKd_73Ys). And surely it can’t be THAT bad. The odd decent review starts creeping in. Vern (a brilliant movie reviewer btw) on his website outlawvern.com thinks the film is pretty awesome. A few others like the fact it’s a bit different. My expectations of the movie are reduced somewhat, which works in my favour because when I finally see it, the film is pretty bloody good. Okay there are some problems with it. There isn’t really that much action in it but then that is because this isn’t really an action movie. Hyams this time around has made a thriller/psychological horror movie all about cloning and implanted memories that has a couple of action scenes in it. Some of the acting isn’t Oscar worthy but then this is a low budget movie. There are also two scenes with really strong strobing effects and white noise. They serve a purpose but for me went on to long and can definitely bring on a migraine or even a fit if you were that sensitive to flickering lights. On the plus side though the story is really quite engaging. The quite disturbing opening scene is brilliant and really screws with your perceptions of what the film is going to be like and as things unfold I found you really get into the plot. There’s some nice ‘Oh sh*t’ moments as Scott Adkins’s character uncovers more and more about himself and his past as he journeys into his own heart of darkness to find JCVD’s character who appears to have gone a little Colonel Kurtz and has an army of UniSols with him. The film is just under two hours and for me is perfectly paced. There’s plenty of character development and all the action/violence spins out of that. Which just really makes it better. Because let me tell you once the action kicks in it’s really good. There’s a great car chase that leads into an awesome fight between Adkins and Arlovski where they are battering each other with metal baseball bats and again the film climaxs with a long sustained kill-a-thon action scene (glimpsed in the trailer) where Adkins goes all John Matrix and kills everything is fantastic. His fights with Lundgren and JCVD are also pretty darn good too. Looking back on it you realise that okay it’s not as immediately impressive as Regeneration but then some of that is because it is so different to what you were expecting from a straight to video movie. This has by far the most interesting and engaging script of any of the UniSol movies. Yeah okay it’s a bit action-lite compared to the other movies but the action that is in it is pretty f**king awesome and surely it means a lot more because there has been a dramatic build up to the violence rather than just fight scene, bit of chat, fight scene, bit of chat etc. Not that I want to sound like I don’t like movies like that, I do but I’m glad they tried to make a movie that was more than that. It’s a shame to me that so many people seem to have hated this film. Because of that it does look like a potential fifth movie will probably not happen, which is a huge shame as this film has opened up all sorts of potential future plots.

This isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s very different to the other films in the franchise which for some will be a big red warning sign whereas for others it will be a welcome relief. You are definitely not watching a tired retread of the previous movie that I can guarantee you. I really enjoyed this and hope more of you out there do too.