Soldier (1998)

Plot Outline: A human being was born and bred to be become a soldier. He has been raised to kill without emotion and is a pure war machine. But he is soon replaced by a group of genetically enhanced soldiers and then dumped onto a garbage planet. Here he encounters a group of people who were stranded when their ship crashed and starts to become more human with time. Things turned sour when the genetically enhanced soldiers arrive on the planet to eradicate any "hostiles" and he has to defend his new home.

The Review: This is a terrible Universal Soldier clone and is on a par with the Universal Soldier sequels as far as crap goes. If there's one thing that an action film doesn't need, it's to be completely devoid of any original action moments whatsoever. The action scenes here tried hard but we've seen it before. Explosions and machine gun fire can only be effective every now and then - if used in overabundance or without meaning they lose impact. We have Kurt Russell's Rambo-like soldier wasting an entire battalion of these genetically engineered soldiers without even getting a small scratch on his person. Then the final fight between Russell and Jason Scott Lee just stinks of plagiarism from the end fight between Van Damme and Lundgren in Universal Soldier. The rest of the movie is boring and cuts between people talking about life on the planet and the snivelling bad guys talking about what target they will hit. See a common theme? Talking? The middle part of the movie is full of it and kills the pace. Russell is a good actor but the scenes with him becoming more human and growing attached to the people there are just puke-inducing at times. And the bad guys laughing at their diabolical plots constantly seem to belong in a cartoon. It looks they tried to cram as much in the end fights as possible to cover over the cracks of the rest of the movie. Kurt Russell is his usual dependable self, despite the fact that he only speaks about 10 words in the entire film. Compare this bland action hero to his wise-cracking Snake Plissken character from Escape from New York and you see the need to give Russell some more lines and a worthwhile character he can get his teeth into. Poor Gary Busey......what is he even doing in the movies anymore? If Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms didn't kill his career, then this should have. He overacts and under acts within minutes of each other, spouting off some terrible lines like "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." WTF? Hollywood's fetish for English bad guys also continues with Jason Isaacs trying to act slimy as the head of the genetic regiment. And Jason Scott Lee somehow gets the second top credit, despite the fact he says less than Russell and only has a handful of scenes.

Final Verdict: To put it bluntly, Soldier is a big waste of time and money. It is just something we've seen time and time again in the past....and something we've seen done better too.

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