Wow... I am utterly shocked to have two negative looks at UNIVERSAL SOLDIER 2. I reeeeaaaallllly felt like it was a gooooooood iiiiiiiidea. I mean... suuuuure.... After the stunning BRILLLLIANCE of the first one... We fans were just dyiiiiiinnnnngg to see what happened next. I mean... To further examine and develop Van Damme's nuanced and textured character. What a chance! Now remember... this was a test screening, and the film isn't a finished product yet... so hold on to those deeeeeep hopes you have that this film can achieve the brilliant stature that it's predecessor achieved. Here are the Darths...
Hi Harry. Darth Siskel & Darth Ebert switching to your frequency for a scoop on a screening of Universal Soldier: The Return, which we saw at a wretched theatre of scum and villiany in the seedy part of Curuscant.
Here's what I, Darth Siskel thought of the movie, followed by Darth Ebert's review. We pretty much saw eye to eye on this one. The only thing we argued about was what sucked more.
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Darth Siskel transmitting with....would you believe it, the sequel to Universal Soldier! Yes, they actually had the balls to make a sequel to that Devlin/Emmerich dreck (redundant), and they've come up with an incredible title!
UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: THE RETURN
Wow, as mindblowingly creative as that title is, I would have prefered Universal Soldier 2.
At least the first movie had a hook. A team-up of Van Damme & another action star, Dolph Lundgren. Don't look for Dolph Lundgren this time though. His character is still dead, much like his career. What a shame since he is more talented than Jean Claude who often resembles a retarded french Buster Keaton, with no rythm.
Now let's get something straight. Van Damme only made one good movie in his entire career. BloodSport. Every other movie ranged from just "okay" to downright comma enducing! Van Damme has a career that continues on and on for reasons beyond comprehension. Satan himself gets pissed when a new Van Damme movie opens.
Anyway, not to be preachy, just wanted you to know that going into this movie, I was expecting it to be bad. My expectations were low but I was pleasantly surprised! This movie rocked! It was better than The Matrix. Actually, I'm kidding. The movie was worse than I thought it would be.
Instead of Dolph, this time we get Spawn as the villian. Michael Jae White plays a newer/better Universal Soldier who becomes a shell for a TOTAL RIPOFF OF HAL computer terminal that controls all the soldiers. Yes a black Hal runs all the soldiers from a generic lab. Any semblance of futuristic technology or vehicles is gone. (Lack of budget or style?) When the government threatens to shut down the soldier program, Black Hal's fucked up artificial intelligence decides to take over. Yes this movie was more predictable than a Three's Comany episode. Black Hal's name in the movie was Seth, and White played him like a cross between Darth Vader and the T-1000. In a better movie, Seth could've been cool. The B-1000. But in this, he just makes you laugh at every one of his 'over the top' gaze or line reads.
This movie is mostly mindless action, but it's not even good mindless action. The fight scenes are lame, on par with Mortal Kombat2 or worse. No groovy Matrix shots, no John Woo shootouts, and not even one good fist fight. Instead we get an endless string of shody action scenes that you can see weekly on any UPN show. What little dialouge there is in the movie is just as bad as anything Van Damme has been in, but hearing him say the lines only makes them worse. Fine it's an action movie, but if you're going to purposely make a no substance action movie, at least throw in some funny one liners. This had NO ONELINERS! In fact, Van Dumm didn't even do his famous split manuever. You know, the move where he's training and he spreads his legs apart as if it's supposed to impress the audience. This time his insurance probably wouldn't cover it because he'd break his hip, 'cause god knows, Van Damme ain't gettin' any younger! If ever he made a buddy cop flick, Charles Bronson might be a good partner. They could share Viagra shots. (This team up will be in development next week)
As far as supporting cast, they will probably advertise this movie as if it stars this asain workout chick, Kia from an ESPN workout show, but really she's only in it about as much as Usher was in The Faculty. At least Usher is natural! I figure they got her on a discount along with some "Extreme Sports" stock footage, because the opening scene in this movie, a confusing boat chase shootout looked like it was edited together to a temp track of skipping indian music.
As with any lame ass action flick, the brains behind this gem insisted on the standard 'tag along' girl character. Another news reporter that is programmed to kiss the hero in the end like it was her fucking destiny since birth. And of course to give something for Van Damme to care about, something the bad guy could get his hands on and use as bait(certainly he could care less about his own worthless life), they pumped out a standard "child of hero" daughter character. Yes the reporter wasn't enough, they needed to give us the little girl that might as well have worn a T-shirt that said "Plot Device" on it. A character who was only Van Damme's daughter because they told us she was. God forbid if Van Damme would even acknoledge the kid's existence other than in scenes where he grunted "Get her out of here!" .
Okay maybe I'm being a bit critical of a Van Damme movie. Sure this is an "early cut" of the movie, but let's be honest....there's only so much they can do. They already wrote, choreographed and shot this heap. Not even Lucas could re-edit this into a good movie. Although some ILM would definately help.
WAS ANYTHING GOOD IN THIS MOVIE?
This movie was entertaining only because it was lame. Definately not on any level of being acceptable like the first movie, which although I hated, at least had some sort of soul. This movie has some silly action scenes with a big wrestler from WCW named Goldberg. I had to ask Darth Ebert who the hell he was since the audience seemed to know him. So Goldberg plays this big ol' Universal Soldier that is totally unstopable. All throughout the movie, in many Terminatoresque confrontations, Goldberg is temporarily stopped by bullets, fire, trucks, you name it, and he just keeps on going after Van Damme, always popping his head up after a defeat and cracking a stupid grin. He may have actually had some oneliners now that I think of it! He was basically the only comic relief in the movie, which translated into a bit of relief from having to watch the movie.
ANYTHING ELSE GOOD?
Well.......hmmmmmm......ummmmmm......hmmmmmmmm........let me see..............no.
On one level, if you're a wannabe film maker, and you want to be insprired, and gain some hope that someday you too can be a film maker, this is a great movie to watch. It's one of those movies that makes you say, I can make crap just as bad as this, and for half the price! One good director and a randomly chosen crew from people in the test screening audience could assemble a better movie just based on everyone's reaction to this, the latest hollywood masterpiece.
I give it one evil thumb down. Now here's my evil co-reviewer's take on it.
Van-Damaged!!
Universal Soldier: The Rerun
Review by Darth Ebert.
The Van-Damn name always comes with a few disclaimers. Don’t expect believable drama because Van-Damn has no acting skills. A Van-Damn movie usually has as much substance as the movie popcorn… without the butter! They are watered down, Americanized versions of Hong Kong action flicks. Sometimes they are fun, but not this time.
THE PLOT!
I loved the plot in Universial Solder:The Return, especially when I saw it the first time as Terminator II, 2001, and half a dozen other ORIGINAL action movies.
Van-Damn reprises his role as Luke, the soldier who was killed in Vietnam and revived as a Universal Soldier who’s memory of wanting to go home drives him to be a hero against an army of other revived vets. You know this because there’s a couple of odd references to the first movie and a chopped up flashback that removes all images of Dolf Lungren. Otherwise he might as well have been playing his own twin brother again because this movie has no flicker of character in it.
Instead of BEING home, he now works for the a Universal Soldier 2500 program designed to make a better Universal Soldier, probably because the first program was SUCH a good experience for him. Of course he married the reporter from the first movie, and she died of cancer after they had a daughter, who is now 12 years old and allowed free access to the billion dollar research lab where they make Universal Soldiers. This includes free baby sitting from SETH. The super computer brain that runs all the new Universal Soldiers.
Let’s see. Daughter, Super computer brain, action movie, can anyone NOT guess the plot?
If you’re still wondering, this should clinch it. The General comes in and shuts the program down because of budget cuts. That’s right my apprentices of the Sith, the super computer does a HAL 9000 and reads the lips of, or just listens in on, they never make that very clear, the general giving the heads of the project the bad news. But then it still has to guess that Mr. Project Director is lying when he says everything is all right. So SETH goes crazy to preserve himself and turns on all the Universal Soldiers. Then he creates all kinds of high power computer glitches that fry people trying to shut him down. Don’t you love when computers in movies make desks explode by magically sending them a power surge, then don’t even have to reboot and run scan disk for 2 hours!?!?! Mr. Project Director, who happened to be one of two people who knew the secret code that SETH needed to keep himself from shutting down after 8 hours, was of course killed. The other one is of course Van-Damn who is then chased around in the movie by Universal Soldiers like the little bald guy in a Benny Hill skit. At this point Van Damn meets his new reporter love interest to replace his old reporter love interest, who happened to be getting a tour of billion dollar research lab where they make Universal Soldiers. Why not, they let little girls do their homework on the super computer brain. She then follows him around because he’s “her story” after her camera man is discarded by SETH like tissue during flu season.
First they try to shut off SETH’s main power. At the same time Luke’s sidekick played by Kia, the ESPN2 workout slut, is trying to get his daughter to safety when she has to fight Goldberg, the main evil Universal Soldier. Luke’s daughter re-enacts the Medic-Alert commercial where Ms. Fletcher has “fallen and can’t get up”, and is taken to the hospital.
Van-Damn and the reporter go to a strip club so Van-Damn can hack into SETH on the strip clubs internet, and then have a stupid bar fight scene. Also because this movie is in desperate need of some breasts. At this point the Universal Soldiers follow them in their high tech shiny black, TOYOTA Mini Vans. You know a movie is in trouble when the army is driving things with airbags.
In the mean time SETH calls the disgruntled slob ex-programmer who made him so he can find out where his body was. Then SETH gets his unburned Spawn actor body and becomes a Super Universal Soldier/T1000 wannabe. After a brief speech by SETH about how he’s better than mankind, he heads off to capture Luke, but ends up letting him go for no apparent reason and after killing the programmer who was helping him. Instead he goes after Luke’s daughter killing a few generic white shirts along the way just for good measure. Luke shows up there just a minute too late to prevent SETH from kidnapping her because he was fighting Goldberg again.
Then everyone goes back to the billion dollar research lab for the big finale where the General who cut the budget is about to blow up the base. Of course Luke’s daughter is in there. This is when we get the only good line of the movie. Luke turns to the hot reporter chick and says, “You have to cover me while I go in and out.” When he gets in he finds out ESPN2 Kia has been turned into a Universal Soldier and he shoots her in a scene with all the regret and intensity of clearing off your tray at McDonald’s. Then it’s off to face SETH. SETH has placed his daughter in one of the Universal Soldier rejuvenation centers which now apparently works for anyone with any ailment as long as the computer program is running. So SETH kicks Luke’s ass all over the place making like Black Terminator while LUKE keeps pressing the return key between blows to keep the rejuvenation program running. Then in a totally predictable climax he crawls around the cryogenic freezing unit, and when SETH is in position, he shoots the controls and freezes SETH ala T1000! Then he does a flying kick and shatters him.
The End right? Nooooo! The torture isn’t over yet. He has to have one last fight with Goldberg who is now leading the Universal Soldiers since SETH is gone. He gets away when Kia shows up one last time to shoot Goldberg, and say “It’s too late for me.” Then he runs out with out giving a look back at his partner. In the mean time SETH had disabled the bombs on the building, and Goldberg’s troop are following him out to kick the army’s ass. So as Luke is running away he shoots the bomb and sets them off all over the building even though they're electronically triggered and not close to each other.
Thank god, now the hurting can stop.
Other notes…
If you thought Chuck Norris was too old for action… wait till you see Van-Damn now. Gone is his stereotypical leg on each counter move, along with the rest of the action. There are two kinds of actors in major films, great ones like Anthony Hopkins, Robert Deniro, and Pacino, and people who play themselves, like John Wayne, Schwartzeneger, and Van-Damn. Only Van-Damn doesn’t have the luxury of World War II, or writers. I don’t think anyone ever goes to a Van-Damn movie to see him practice his craft, we go because he has a brand identity that says this will be a mindless action flick. That means WE don’t have to think about it, not that the writers shouldn’t!
Goldberg has all the charm of the Stone Cold rip-off he is. As the Dolph Lungren wannabe he falls far short ending up more funny than menacing, and making Dolph’s original part seem Shakespearean in quality.
Kia doesn’t show her cans (sometimes called love lumps) and is seen in a bra only once. Plus she’s barely in the movie at all never mind enough to warrant a third credit above the line.
When Luke’s daughter is brought into the hospital they say they can’t operate without parental consent even though her injury is life threatening. I guess her HMO didn’t cover Universal Solider injuries. She would have done better going to George Cloony…. as Batman.
Over all, the movie is the same commercial junk that lines mom and pop video stores from sea to shining sea. The action is handled about as well as it would be on Star Trek Voyager. In one scene Van Damn actually seems to sleep through a gun battle to explain why he survived. The plot is so generic that they could have saved the money on all the so-called stars and made the movie a direct to Sci-fi channel release.
If you like movies with a kung fu theme, and some sci-fi in it, go see Matrix again. This movie wasn’t even good enough to be a Van-Damn film, and is a MUST MISS unless you’re a film student who wants to see a great example of what’s wrong in modern film. I saw it for free and demanded my money back!
I give this movie one dark force throat grip.
I find your lack of plot disturbing.
