Universal Soldier: The Return

Jean-Claude Van Damme

TriStar, 1999

The quality of this film is so bad that for awhile I couldn't believe that it was actually a TriStar picture. Maybe their role was limited to distribution only, I don't know about this business: these things are too esoteric for me.

All I know is when I see a good movie or not. This was not.

Which is sad, because was a time when I liked pretty much every movie I saw, regardless how bad they were - maybe the more I watch and the more I blog the snootier I become. Maybe I'm just becoming more aware of "watching" the movie rather than just enjoying it. I don't know.

But then again, maybe I've just hit a bad batch.

Listen: if you like action flicks with macho meatboys, then this one would be good. Honestly, this movie shows like a run-down of the WWF to me. Lots of bodybuilder bodies, which I have known for a very long time do NOT equate into the actual athletics that are required in this flick.

As far as plot goes: Van Damme's a Universal Soldier who somehow has gotten back his humanity (didn't see the first movie, so can't comment how that happened), and Seth the computer is facing shutdown (termination of the UniSol project) so it goes on a rampage - ramps up all the UniSols to become killing machines and puts his own brain into a top notch rockhard bod, in order to whup up on Van Damme. However, at the beginning of the movie, when Seth was nothing more than a cube floating in electroplasmic goo, Van Damme's daughter was sitting in front of him learning science like any good student with the ultimate electronic babysitter.

Now, later on in the flick, Seth uses the daughter to get back at our buddy JCVD and I was waiting for some inclination that Seth was never really going to hurt the girl, in fact, to show some affection for the kid, as a way to "humanize" the computer and make us slightly empathetic to Seth's plight. However, that never materialized and so Seth remained a one-dimensional character and JCVD whupped him with some cryogenic freezing and one well-placed roundhouse kick.

Not much of a movie. If you like this sort of thing, then you've got yourself a decent hour and a half entertainment.

VG