Universal Soldier (1992)

Dolph & Jean with no shirts on? Hello that's the film for me!!!
Don't you hate it when the person you're trying to choose a movie with, insists you watch a movie because they haven't seen it for x amount of years, and you simply must watch it? Mind you, I have that idea most of the time myself, only to realise the film wasn't as good as I remembered it.

Universal Soldier was chosen mainly because I've only seen two Jean-Claude Van Damme movies - Sudden Death, and Streetfighter when I was going through my Kylie Minogue phase. (I was very young, give me a break, and I remember nothing about it.)

Two soldiers are serving in Vietnam. Van Damme plays Luc Deveraux, under the command of Sergeant Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren). When Scott completely loses it, and starts chopping off ears and wearing them as necklaces (bleurgh), Deveraux has an attack of conscience, and the two soldiers kill each other. After being listed as MIA, the soldiers are complicatedly regenerated, into lean, mean, killing machines, who's memories have been wiped. Now known as GR-44 (Van Damme) and GR-13 (Lundgren), everything is kept top secret.

That is until reporter Veronica Roberts (Ally Walker), with a nose for trouble, stumbles upon the top secretness, when her cameraman (?) is killed. Deveraux has flashbacks, and rescues her before she's killed.

Enter the cross country chase, with both soldiers stripping off, and lying in baths of ice (cold!), but gives the female viewers some nice shots of some very fit men. Did I just drool? It did feel a bit Terminator-esque at points, but thankfully, it managed to get past that, and turn into an actually alright movie. (I say alright, and I've given it four stars. Duh.)

For me, the great thing about this movie was Ally Walker, she was absolutely amazing, and she had lots of great lines. I was bugged continuously throughout the movie that I knew her from somewhere, but the only thing I recognised was a very small role in While You Were Sleeping. There was a great rapport between her and Deveraux, and although the plot is a bit iffy at points (not all the way through), it was made all the better by some great leading characters.

Universal Soldier is completely entertaining, a little gem of a movie, and yes, it does have an iffy plot, but what the hell? It's brilliant.

HILARIOUSLY STUPID 7 OUT OF 10
When I got Universal Soldier it came as a two movies for the price of one deal. It was packaged with Resident Evil: Extinction, so I assumed since Extinction was quite successful in theaters and in DVD sales that Universal Soldier never paid off costs and now Sony Pictures is still trying to pay it off. The story is about a dude who is in the military and goes through day to day life until the artificial intelligence Seth goes apes*** and starts making the other soldiers kill everyone. So he must save the day and his kidnapped daughter... yawn. Now to talk about the bad. To start off the actors are terrible and sound really cheesy. The action is incredibly dumb as well, and you will laugh at it for how bad it is. The story is bland for a science-fiction film, and well, just about everything is stupid. So why a 7 rating? It reminds me of cheesy old films that I still enjoy watching that were made decades ago. I got a kick out of this movie because of how hilariously stupid it is.

The war is not over for the unisols and you
Two soldiers kill each other in the Vietnam war. Their bodies are packed in ice and later regenerated to become cyborg-like soldiers for special missions. Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren play the roles of soldiers very convincingly. Van Damme is the good guy and Lundgren is the bad guy. There is also a beautiful journalist lady, which hangs out with Van Damme.

There is a lot of military action and shooting in this movie. The universal soldiers take part in resolving hostage situations. The first site is a spectacular-looking water dam at a hydro power station. There is also a futuristic-looking huge armoured truck in which the universal soldiers (unisols) live. Their bodies are kept at low temperature and they have to get medical injections in order to stay alive.

There is a large element of fiction in this movie, because dead people cannot be brought back to life in the way that the movie suggests. However, if you suspend disbelief, I'm sure that you will enjoy this high-gear non-stop action flick. I don't give it a full 5 star rating, because there are too many shootings, gruesome bloody scenes and the restaurants, hotels and gas station in the movie look very run-down. But it made me think that we are all universal soldiers who have a special mission in our own lives. Do you agree?