"We'll have to blow them up and hope the pieces
don't fight us."
Hi-tech military department resurrects soldiers
killed in battle and monitors them with brain
implanted micro-chips. The soldiers are fierce, hard
to kill, and relatively emotionless. Nonetheless, the
program's budget gets cut which prompts the main
computer to take over the Universal Soldier squad and
threaten anything biological that gets in its way.
Jean Claude plays an earlier model minus the chip.
He's the only one who has the code the computer needs
to stay alive.
Like a theme park action show in which
stunt-people run through a set of pops and propane
blasts into safety nets barely hidden behind facade
walls, "Universal Soldier: The Return" is mildly
flashy to look at, but there is no sense of real
danger. The Soldiers themselves are like the little
green plastic guys I used to play with at age five.
We expect a bit more from a Hollywood action movie.
In one scene four U-soldiers are shot up by what
seemed like a hundred SWAT guys. Somehow, not one of
the four was hit in the face. That's way too hokey
for a Van Damme movie.
The script fails to take any real risks as well.
Formula action flick, with standard dialogue: "What's
going on?" "They'll stop at nothing!" ... add
gratuitous expletives. The acting is right on par
with my plastic green army guys. Even Jean (whom I
normally enjoy) was plastic.
I'm sorry to say, "Universal Soldier" seems to be
a quickly made film, with uninspired direction, no
unique purpose, populated with safe stunts and lots
of shooting.
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