Universal Soldier: The Return (1999)
Prepare to become obsolete
Here’s a movie I haven’t done yet - as a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve done any of them yet. Meh - who needs to start at the beginning for a movie anyways? Well I mean, to be honest I have seen a lot, if not all of them, I just never did a review of any of them. Tonight that’s going to change, because I’ve been playing a lot of that Aliens game that just came out so I’m in the mood for some action movies - and since I’ve already done the movie that would best fit that one, I thought why not go on a side-line and go with the concept of state-of-the-art soldiers? Tonight, we come back to something we haven’t gone to in the first place. Tonight, we roll into Universal Soldier: The Return.
So, having forgotten most things about this movie franchise outside of the fact that Van Damme is in it and the premise put forth in the first movie (which is oddly the one that it has most likley been the longest since I’ve seen it), let me throw a basic level explanation at you. The Universal Soldier program (UniSol) was designed to give soldiers a bit of a second life at serving their country. Through the magic of science, they created a way to bring back dead soldiers, effectively taking all that combat training and paying it forward without the need to throw more young men into the grinder of war. To give the spark notes version of the ending - it didn’t go well. So fast forward some time - how much I don’t know, either they didn’t mention it or I just didn’t pay attention to it - and now you’ve got this movie where somehow, some reason, the government decided to strike the program up again. Well, for a little while anyways. The new UniSols are controlled by a fancy schmancy AI, and the surviving original non-crazy UniSol is there to keep training and the likes on track. Problem is, the government doesn’t like throwing all that money at it and does what it does best - shuts the program down after already throwing absolutely tons of money at it and seeing promising results at that. The AI happens to overhear the situation, catches the head guy lying about everything being fine, and decides to go Skynet and take control of the program and in the long run the human race, because he’s better than humans in every way. Strike off that checklist item, and then chalk up the lone hero seemingly out of his league trying to save the world from the now power hungry AI and combine it with some wrestlers for action scenes - guns, gals, and all that late 90’s flair.
The story is pretty routine at this point. I don’t think it was necessarily new even for the time honestly. That being said, it facilitates it’s story in whatever basic way it needs to happen. Is there really ridiculous moments? Of course - but not all of them are meant to be funny. You’ll find moments that seem perhaps out of place - like “oh look, we know one shot won’t finish them off, maybe we should use the rest of the gun’s ammo on it? Nah, lets just leave it over there and keep running.” It’s got tropes and foreseeable events around almost every bend - even if you have zero familiarity to the Universal Soldier franchise - so I really wouldn’t go into this one for the sole purpose of the plot and story or you’ll be a bit disappointed.
The actors do a decent job. You might find Van Damme to be hit or miss - depends on how you feel about his acting job or accent. He has a way about him, and not everyone is going to be as happy about it. The same could be said of some of the supporting bad guys - although most of them get the lovely excuse of being reanimated dead soldiers being controlled by an AI. That said, most of the best jokes come at the expense of the side character played by Goldberg (who people may know from wrestling and at this point quite a few different movies). Between that and Michael Jai White (who I feel everyone should know at this point, as he’s one of the actors that even I recognize by name, and I’m horrible at that) you have some really great action sequences when it comes to fists flying. Now, perhaps all the acting isn’t at the same tier as some huge blockbuster drama - but it’s perfectly passable for the movie by any means.
Get a load of this guy.
As I mentioned, the action scenes are pretty good. You get plenty of gun play, explosions, and some of those close in brawls. Now, it’s not really fancy gun play in the sense of the enhance modern day standards of things like the John Wick franchise - it’s more old school than that. The nice part about this is that it provides a good deal of time for a lot of practical effects - namely a lot of squibs, one way or the other. Yes, there’s a bit of cheese to the “I’m getting shot and look like I’m dancing as I’m getting shot” that goes along with safety and squibs that are shooting big old sparks out of people. Still, you’ll be real happy with what you get if you are a fan of those older action flicks along the lines of Commando and the likes. Yes, there’s a few moments here and there where you might wonder why this or that is happening - not because it’s hard to follow, but mostly just because sometimes it seems dumb. Let me drop a exchange for you - it’ll make sense when you watch it - and see if I can get that line across. “Hey.” “But your dead!” “I’m not anymore, I’m one of them.” “I need to kill the bad guy.” “I can’t let you do that.” Good guy quick-draws, and we move on.
Like, I laughed a lot at this movie. I don’t think it’s all intentional - like that bit I just mentioned - but some of it totally is. Goldberg’s character has so many moments of just laughable timing or fights (like when it literally turns into a wrestling match with people I’m pretty sure I recognized as other wrestlers). You might feel a little sad about finding his character so funny, since his character is kind of crappy, but I’ll take my laughs with my over-the-top explosions and simplistic plot anyways. Some stuff - like the brightly haired hacker and his cola cereal - might have been funnier when it was released, but come off as a bit annoying now. Other things to chalk up to the “people could get annoyed” is the pretty lame romance arc between our lead and the reporter. Could have pretty easily been fixed too, but there used to be this thing where it was hard to find a movie where there wasn’t a lady lead falling for the male lead - as a person who never liked romance movies, this was always pretty dumb to me, but here it just plain feels dumb.
The soundtrack is a mix. I mean, the audio balance is good - you’ll hear what you want or need to just fine. Where it becomes a mix is that it’s a thing of it’s time - a ton of this soundtrack is just grabbing the loudest rock or metal song and blaring it during every action scene. Later on you do get some nice original music for the final battle, and it’s a nice change of pace there - not that you’ll hear me complain about Static X, I love me some Static X. Actor deliveries are fine - the kid does quite a good job, and honestly the sometimes dead-pan delivery of Goldberg is flawless for getting the joke across. When he gets on there, White blows it away, even if what he has to say is just the most generic robot overlord stuff ever written. Again, the strong point here isn’t the writing and story - it’s the people and action on screen.
It’s like power rangers!
For a quick watch, it’s not bad. Is there way better action stuff out there? Certainly, even for it’s time period. You know what though? It was fun hopping back into an older action flick again, with it’s cheese and it’s random strip club (probably should have mentioned that, there’s some bare chests flaunting about and they ain’t all men’s) and big boxy guns and explosions everywhere. I enjoy it, it’s entertaining enough that I’m having a good time, even with it’s flaws. Maybe someday I’ll even get to the other ones - who the heck knows right?