Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Console best movie i've ever seen.

ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

skidudenate JCVD and Dolf go hard in this action packed epic movie. Totally worth the watch. Sit down and crack a cold brew because you're in for tons of bullets and brawn. Story is fairly simple but that is not the point of the movie. Dolf is awesome. JCVD is awesome. This movie is awesome.

jonathanruano 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.

jimbo-53-186511 Private Luc Deveraux (Jean Claude-Van Damme) and Sergeant Scott (Dolph Lundgren) are killed during the war in Vietnam. Several years later, they are brought back to life as obedient cyborgs by a covert and off- the-book government programme. However, when both of the former soldiers start to reform their old memories, all hell starts to break loose...In some ways, science fiction films are often the most difficult to review as they are often created in an alternate reality where the writers can make things up (meaning that what may seem like big plot holes in the real world may not be plot holes in the writer's world). However, I do feel that even science-fiction films should have some kind of internal logic and this is where Universal Soldier runs into problems...OK; so a covert team have somehow managed to turn dead flesh into living tissue which enables them to create a team of obedient cyborg soldiers - I presume that lobotomies were carried out on the soldiers to suppress their memories, but this is purely supposition as this is never clarified. Devereaux's memory cap is popped by getting a sense of Deja Vu, or a flashback to his days in Nam (which I suppose is plausible at a stretch). However, Scott's 'Total Recall' comes out of nowhere and essentially occurs when he smashes through a car windscreen. Perhaps a head trauma triggered it, but this is never explained in the film and seems rather ridiculous when scrutinised.The wider story (involving the recruitment of reimagined cyborgs stepping in to assist in crime fighting) is a good idea, but it's given so little thought or consideration in this picture that it actually becomes rather laughable. Once Devereaux's memory cap is popped he goes on the run with news reporter Veronica Roberts (Ally Walker) and the pair find themselves being chased by Scott and the remaining cyborgs. However, what doesn't make sense to me is that a bunch of cyborgs which are controlled by some kind of covert sub-division government would seemingly intentionally draw so much attention to themselves? Literally thousands of rounds are fired and literally everyone that the cyborgs encounter either gets killed or they end up kissing the pavement, but yet there are never any police, FBI or government officials who seem to get involved or investigate any of these occurrences. Even the way that this covert operation (in respect of the cyborgs) is handled feels rather laughable - they have an eye camera and an ear piece that can easily be dislodged which results in the cyborgs being of no use to them. Couldn't they have created something more sophisticated?Still if you overlook all the holes in the story (and admittedly it is hard to do) and overlook the rather bad acting (again difficult, but not impossible) then as an action film it is perfectly serviceable. Many of the fight sequences between Lundgren and Van-Damme are quite well-staged and Van Damme's fight in the diner is a good tongue-in-cheek action fest as well. It's fair to say that no-one was ever going to be Oscar-nominated in this film, but I have to say that Lundgren (despite how bad he was), did at least try to make this film fun - even with his rather atrocious 'I'm all ears' one-liner.With its ludicrous plotting and lack of any sort of logic Universal Soldier remains a serviceable and very basic action flick, but doesn't have the involving narrative of the many films it borrows from meaning that it is OK as a one time watch, but offers little more than that.

Predrag Roland Emmerich turns out decent work when he starts with a decent idea. And this movie is based on an extremely cool idea: a secret government project to use the reanimated corpses of dead soldiers as 'UniSols'. They're like killer combat zombies equipped to receive commands remotely, impervious to pain, quick to heal, and pretty much unstoppable although they tend to overheat if they stay active for too long. There isn't a huge amount of action in the film, but in between scenes we get to see a lot of Lundgren's bad guy one-liners and attitude. Van Damme doesn't have many fights either until the end, when he goes up against the Lundgren character.This is a fun, violent movie, with both stars hamming it up, Van Damme the more stoic of the two. I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more marital arts in the film. Oh, there are a couple of kicks thrown but no real Karate fighting. Though Van Damme was well known for busting' moves by 1992, Dolph had only recently started illustrating his abilities in that department, particularly with the previous year's "Showdown in Little Tokyo", co-starring Brandon Lee. The action is not bad, otherwise, with plenty of stuff blowing' up and dudes being thrown through windows n' stuff. Overall, it has good action, a few cheesy moments but also a few memorable catch phrases (some of which I can't repeat here).Overall rating: 8 out of 10.