Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms (1998)

Plot Outline: Due to the problems associated with the original Universal Soldiers, the budget has been slashed and the program is in dire straights. So by orders of a shifty CIA director, a renegade mercenary takes control of some new Universal Soldiers and tries to make a quick buck by swindling some foreign crooks interested in buying them. But Luc Deveroux, survivor from the original, is still causing problems, along with his news reporter friend and his newly found brother.

The Review: To make a decent action film, you need a budget. And to make a sequel, it helps to bring back stars of the original. Well I doubt the makers of this film had the budget to even bring back the guy who got beat up by Van Damme in the cafe in the original, let alone the Muscles from Brussels! The budget looks to have been blown on hiring named actors like Gary Busey and Burt Reynolds, which left little for the remaining actors and the action, or lack of. The only decent moment was the very ending fight between Deveroux and some unnamed soldier and even that wasn't great. For the rest of the film, there was virtually nothing to get excited about. The actor who replaced Van Damme was awful and the female lead had poor lines too. Reynolds had to contend with a terrible Irish accent, and you only actually saw him at the end scene. For the rest of the film his face was in darkness and you could only here his voice. And as for Busey, he's done some decent work in the past (Lethal Weapon and Predator 2 spring to mind) but this was film suicide. There were also some attempts to liven up the film with some innovative camera work and some heavy music, but this didn't work at all. Maybe if there was actually something happening on-screen at the time then it would have done.

Final Verdict: It's films like this that gives sequels a bad name. However it might be worth a watch to watch Gary Busey kill off his career.

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