Sunday, August 3, 2014

Universal Soldier (1992)

Director: Roland Emmerich

Writers: Richard Rothstein, Christopher Leitch, Dean Devlin

Composer: Christopher Franke

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Ally Walker, Ed O'Ross, Jerry Orbach, Leon Rippy, Tico Wells, ralf Moeller, Robert Trebor, Gene Davis, Drew Snyder, Tommy 'Tiny' Lister, Rance Howard, Michael Jai White

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The ultimate weapons of the future have just declared war... on each other.

Plot: An elite team of soldiers has been used against terrorists where they use astounding physical capabilities to overcome them. Victoria, a reporter, follows them and discovers a part of their secret. When one of the team kills her cameraman she tries to escape. Luc, one of the soldiers begins to have flashbacks and turns sides and helps her as the remainder of the team follows to protect their secrets.



My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I remember a little from when I saw this in the theater twenty-two years ago, the big final fight in the rain...and the fucking mountains in the background that's supposed to be Louisiana.  Come on, really guys?  Couldn't they have pointed the camera somewhere else?  You can't take this flick too seriously, though, since some of the gags require you not to think (like Luc (Van Damme) standing naked asking Veronica (Walker) to search his body for a tracking device...which is hard).  The fight scenes are OK but there is more action than the usual fare like this back then.  Lundgren is fun.  Van Damme is charisma-less which you could justify by saying he's part machine but then so is Lundgren. But then I guess you could say that Lundgren was losing his shit which made it possible for him to have some fun with the role...but that would require a screenplay with more than a couple of layers more than a film like this can handle.  Outside of the action there's not much to it besides Veronica doing some reporter detective work to solve Luc's problem.  It spawned a bunch of sequels that I don't need to see.

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