Runtime:
114 minutes (the Unrated Director's cut, anyhow; the R-rated version
is only about 30 seconds shorter and I do not know if there are any
differences of note besides cuts for violence)
Directed
by: John Hyams
Starring:
Scott Adkins, Andrei Arlovski, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren
From:
Foresight Unlimited/Signature Pictures
Now,
here's a movie I've heard about for months; via a messageboard I
found out about the goodness of the previous film, Universal Soldier:
Regeneration, a movie I watched and reviewed back in '10. I enjoyed
it. Once I began hearing about this one, though, I realized that this
is taking a left turn into the bizarre. With each still of Van Damme
having a painted bald head and other oddities, I wondered which
direction this was really going in. Once it came out, boy were there
mixed reviews. Some loved it and others were just turned off by it. I decided to check it out via Xbox Video, which is a quality service I have used only twice but both times it worked great for me with no problems. I saw the Unrated Director's cut as it was available; if you want to be cheap, at least at the moment it isn't too hard to find on YouTube the original R-rated version, which likely isn't too different aside from cuts for violence.
The
plot: Ignore the previous UniSol movies, pretty much. Luke Deveraux
(Van Damme) is now the bad guy. You see right away that he murders
the wife and daughter of John (Adkins). He has to deal with getting
revenge on Luke, but also the return of the Magnus character
(Arlovski) AND despite the previous film, Andrew Scott (Lundgren) is
still alive and causing trouble too. I could spoil more but I won't.
First
off, this movie was filmed for 3D. I don't think too many people have
actually seen it in that format. Maybe it's for the best. I likely
would not want to see all those strobe light effects in that format!
That is probably an important thing to note: there's a reason why but
at various points throughout you see a strobe light effect where it
flashes from the picture to pure white and back again at a really
fast rate and needless to say, people with epilepsy probably
shouldn't watch this, just in case there's a negative reaction to
that effect.
As
to the story... I heard it is more like a horror film where it's
broken up by strong violence, and that isn't the worst description.
Problem is, I thought much of this was just flat out boring if it
wasn't off-putting! A movie with its head up its own ass, I say. The
story didn't grip me; sure, it may be because this seemed to be
heavily inspired by Apocalypse Now and the one time I saw it that
film I thought it was highly overrated (the documentary Hearts of
Darkness, about the extremely troubled production, is really good
though), but the story just did not work for me at all. Why they went
in such a weird direction, I don't know, but I wish they wouldn't
have. And I knew this going in, but Van Damme and Dolph have only
real small roles in this film
It's
a shame, as the action scenes in general are well-done, pretty
violent, and entertaining. There's a car chase among all the brawls
and shoot-outs. It's just a damn shame that I did not like the story
all that much. Let's not even talk about the ending; I was real
turned off by several aspects of it, and it's massive spoilers so I
won't go into detail. It was just a turn-off at a few points instead
of one. But hey, some out there think this is great overall, so your
mileage may vary.
I'll be back Wednesday night.
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