Review of Universal Soldier

Introduction

It`s almost an unwritten law that the worst films get the best DVD releases. (But now that I`ve written it, I`m not sure where that statement stands.) The point being, that Universal Soldier was never the most cerebral of releases, or anything more than a meaningless diversion. Despite the movie`s limited charm, the film gets stellar treatment on the shiny disc we call DVD.

The film tells the tale of the Anusols, sorry Unisols who are a group of super soldiers, resurrected from the corpses of Vietnam casualties. The film starts in Vietnam, 1969 when in the heat of combat things go tragically wrong for Luc Devereaux`s platoon. His sergeant, Andrew Scott goes postal, killing most of the platoon and massacring a friendly Vietnamese village. Luc tries to stop Scott from completing this outrage and killing two more innocents. He fails and in a final battle the two soldiers kill each other in a hail of gunfire. A few hours later, a rescue team happen upon the carnage and answering to mysterious orders, bag the corpses and preserve them in ice and cover up all evidence of the massacre. Jump forward 25 years and a terrorist incident occurs at a US dam. Hostages are taken and demands are made. To combat this homegrown enemy, a crack military unit appears. The Unisols are superhuman soldiers, with amazing capabilities who operate with a machinelike ruthlessness and efficiency. They miraculously resolve the incident with little loss of life and return to base, seemingly unharmed. Two of their number look suspiciously like Scott and Luc, peculiarly un-aged. Suspicious of the unit, and desperate for a story after being sacked by her previous employer, intrepid reporter, Veronica Roberts pursues the Unisols back to their base and attempts to spy on them. However things go wrong and she is captured. GR44, Scott in another life, is ordered to retrieve evidence of the press intrusion, he instead shoots Veronica`s cameraman. This triggers a flashback in GR13 (Luc) and in an echo of the events of Vietnam, he disarms Scott and escapes with Veronica in order to protect her. Thus begins a chase as Luc and Veronica attempt to elude pursuit long enough to recover his memories and return home, while exonerating Veronica, who has been implicated in the murder of her cameraman. Things go from bad to worse, as Scott also begins to regain his memories, and the psychosis that possessed him in Vietnam reappears.

Video

As for the disc itself, what can I say? The picture is anamorphic, with a 2.35:1 transfer. The image is pin sharp and the colours vibrant. An almost immaculate image is marred only by the age of the movie, with little specks of dust and print damage evident in a few scenes. This is Roland Emmerich`s first Hollywood movie and you can see the start of a trend here. All noise and flash, in the event movie of 1992. There are some good shots of landscape and the canyon scenes are particularly impressive.

Audio

The sound is presented in a choice of English DTS, DD 5.1 or German Surround. The action is well represented with bullets and shrapnel flying all over the place. The music to put it mildly is terrible. It`s completely forgettable and keeps the action going, but that`s it. Near the end of the film, during the climactic confrontation, it gets out of hand. At one point, Luc rises in slow motion, his face rigid with emotion, framed by a sheet of flame. A fanfare of tuneless orchestration blares out, signalling that he`s about to kick the bad guy`s ass. I wet myself laughing every time.

Features

There is a fair amount of extras to keep you satisfied. The Teaser Trailer and Theatrical Trailer are on the disc, punctuated by music from T2. There is a 7- minute making of, which is just an extended trailer. Far more interesting is the 15 minutes of B-roll footage which is more informative than the making of. Finally there is a Director and Screenwriter`s commentary provided by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. You should watch this, mainly because I didn`t and don`t know what it`s like. I`m sorry, Universal Soldier is trashy, disposable Sci-Fi action at best and doesn`t deserve the effort of a commentary. I want to watch this film with beer and pizza. It`s chewing gum for the brain. I don`t want to know how it was made or the intricacies of each shot. There are far better films, which deserve commentaries out there and don`t have them.

Conclusion

Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as the hero, Luc. The part calls for a robotic performance, and he is eminently qualified for that. That said, he handles the comedy as well as the action. Ally Walker does her best Lois Lane as the reporter, Veronica. She plays well off Van Damme, providing much of the dialogue as the exasperated and outspoken reporter against Van Damme`s strong, silent type. The star of this movie has to be Dolph Lundgren, though. He hams it up magnificently as the psychotic Scott; the necklace of ears is simply a garnish on top of this brilliant cartoon villain he creates.

So there we have it, a naff movie with brilliant presentation. O.K I`m not being fair. Universal Soldier appeals to the teenager in all of us, mindless action that can divert us for 90 minutes. Given that job-description it performs it task admirably and a whole lot better than other similar movies found in Bargain Bins the world over. It`s often funny, sometimes unintentionally and wholly implausible. There`s a supertruck straight out of Knight Rider, Van Damme pushes a car at 30 mph. Dead soldiers are resurrected with a magic serum and Ice T provides for the soundtrack. Enjoyable action nonsense.