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Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent but underrated film

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

We would all like to see a movie with the youthful Jean Claude Van Damme work, but the problem is that "Universal Soldier" is not a good film. The whole premise of the film is not new: the "Universal Soldier" is really a pale imitation of the Terminator from the 1980s and 1990s. Of course, an unoriginal premise would not be a problem if they did something fresh with the material. After all, Terminator Part II was a very good movie. Yet "Universal Soldier" really consists of a number of car chase scenes on desert high ways and Dolph Lundgren's heavy-duty jerk firing his big guns at Jean Claude Van Damme and his female companion, Veronica Roberts (Ally Walker). Is someone trying to overcompensate here with the big guns? You be the judge. There is very little suspense generated in these chases, partly because they are not well filmed and partly because the good guys never really seemed to be in any danger. Finally, there is the big fight at the end and I don't need to tell you who wins that one. The only element in the film that worked was Ally Walker who had some humorous and witty lines during her panic attacks, which made me smile. Unfortunately, Jean Claude Van Damme has even fewer lines than Ally Walker and is incredibly restrained and robotic throughout this picture. I realize that Van Damme has to be robotic as a universal soldier (that's the whole premise anyway), but they could have done something original with the material by showing how inept Van Damme is at understanding human emotions and behaviour. For instance, there is a hilarious scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger's terminator gets schooled by John Connor on why he cannot kill people (a robot programmed to kill people would not necessity make that leap in logic without some help). But Van Damme sadly is only there as a piece of furniture and for some pretty drab action scenes. As a result, Ally Walker almost by default nearly steals the show. One wonders in retrospect if Universal Soldier would have been a better film if it was about Ally Walker discovering the universal soldier program through investigative journalism than about the universal soldiers themselves.

Big, dumb, loud, and fun. Four words that could aptly summarise the appeal of this blockbuster movie which proved a hit with audiences back in '92 and spawned three inferior sequels. UNIVERSAL SOLDIER is probably Van Damme's most successful mainstream movie to date and his pairing with Lundgren as the enemy is a good one; Lundgren's height alone gives him the imposing edge over the smaller, tougher Van Damme and their final one-on-one battle is one to remember. Packed with lots of hard-edged violence and some unwanted comic relief from a highly annoying female support (Ally Walker), UNIVERSAL SOLDIER is a movie that gets better as it goes along.At first, the sheer woodenness of Van Damme and Lundgren is inexcusable. I know that they're supposed to be playing emotionless dead robots, but even after they first rebel they seem wooden and unable to even say their lines convincingly. Thankfully this wears off as time goes on and the pair settle down into their roles. In fact Lundgren goes a 360-degree turnaround at the end and actually becomes quite good as the psychotic soldier who believes that he's surrounded by the enemy. Van Damme? Well, here he plays a more sympathetic character than usual which will no doubt endear him to female fans, while still providing the high-kicking action that the fans expect. Ally Walker is terrible, though, as the intensely annoying female lead, and although it's good to see Ed O'Ross make an appearance as a colonel, he's underused and killed off quickly.The flimsy plot strings together a scene of big-budget action sequences (no surprise, as most of Roland Emmerich's films are thus styled, e.g. INDEPENDENCE DAY) which are pretty impressive. From the opening hostage stakeout at the Hoover Dam to the shoot-up at a motel, to the climatic truck chase and the final battle with Van Damme and Lundgren, things just keep getting better and better. The high body count sees lots of people getting shot or killed in nasty ways, and of course there's the usual quota of bullet-shedding and big explosions.Lundgren's method of death at the end of the movie (like you couldn't guess) is highly graphic and unexpected. The loud score is sufficiently adrenaline-pumping to work and the film tries so hard to please that the feeling rubs off on the audience. Although it may be dumb entertainment, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER "delivers the groceries" so to speak and is quite watchable in a forgettable way, in that it passes the time and engages the attention but doesn't leave much impact afterwards. It may be a popcorn movie but it's undoubtedly a well-made one.

'Shared universes' are kind of in vogue these days, largely thanks to Marvel's superheroes movies. However, if one film was supposedly happening in the same world as another back in the early nineties, I'd wager that 'Universal Soldier' would be happening while the Terminator and John Connor busted Sarah out of that mental institution.Yes, both films are made by the same production company and some of the same producers are behind the two of them, however Universal Solider will never quite be remembered as fondly as Arnie's second cyborg outing. T2 had bigger stars, better effects and a deeper plot, but there's no denying that the two films share the same 'vibe.' Van-Damme plays a Vietnam soldier, killed in action during the war, and then resurrected by a black-ops military agency as a 'super soldier,' used for thwarting terrorists. Yes, feel free to ignore what happened to Van-Damme's corpse during the twenty-five or so years between death and revival. This would be all well and good if it wasn't for the fact that the same unit also revived Van-Damme's borderline psychotic commanding officer, played (amazingly!) by Dolph Lundgren. Now, these two bad boys had a history of animosity between the pair of them when they were alive, so old grievances are soon revived along with the soldiers' bodies and the two go head to head.And it's great fun – violent, action-packed, big, dumb, stupid fun. And it knows it. Like T2, there's actually some nice moments of humour which are never overused and do help to lighten the mood and give it a 'comic-book feel.' Both lead actors have been criticised over the years of being little more than muscle men with no real acting ability. However, in my opinion, both shine here. Van-Damme is the good guy, but never boring due to his naïve personality. He can't really remember what he was and what he's here for and has a childlike quality in the new world he's found himself in. Lundgren is just psychotic. In know this is just a loud, over-the-top sci-fi film, but, in terms of lunatic badguys, he's right up there with them.Maybe Universal Solider is mainly for guys, especially those who (now) enjoy The Expendables-type movies which bask in the glories of the silly old action films of yesteryear. It's not T2, but it's a nice little comedian piece to it.

This was really the first time that JCVD graduated beyond low budget karate movies and into the realm of popcorn entertainment. Unlike fellow early 90s karate man Steve Segal, who would more or less make the same film over and over for his entire career, Van Damme flirted for a while with becoming the next Arnold, and perhaps no film in JCVD's filmography is more Schawzeneggerian than 'Universal Soldier'.Directed by the man who would go on to become the king of the disaster movie, Roland Emmerich, it's heavy on gory violence, but paradoxically light on action. The result is a surprisingly dull film carried mostly by a strong turn from villain Dolph Lundgren, who steals the movie right out from under JCVD.