The original Universal
Soldier stands as a solid entry of early-90's action cinema with
Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren as Vietnam vets brought back from the
dead to serve as resurrected super-soldiers. There's nothing particularly
noteworthy about it aside from the fact that it helped launch the careers of
Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the purveyors of blockbuster schlock like Independence Day and 2012. Universal Soldier spawned two forgettable DTV sequels that most
people don't even know exist. Van Damme wasn't in either of them, but chose to
reprise his role of Luc Deveraux for Universal
Soldier: The Return, a movie so terrible that it killed the franchise for
nearly a decade until the arrival of John Hyams, the son of Peter Hyams, director of Van Damme's Sudden Death and Timecop.
Just like the characters, the series was brought back to
life with Universal Soldier: Regeneration,
a standard low-budget affair that saw the return of Dolph Lundgren, despite
being ground to pulp in a wood chipper. None of what came before could prepare
anyone for Universal Soldier: Day of
Reckoning. Hyams does away with conventions and boils the concept down to
its horrific roots that of a government willing to resurrect dead soldiers and
send them back into battle. Those expecting another cheaply made B-movie set in
an abandoned warehouse because that’s all the producers could afford will be
greatly surprised. Day of Reckoning
is a feverish horror show of an action movie if it were directed by
David Lynch.
The protagonist, John (Scott Adkins), awakens in the middle
of the night to his daughter's complaints of monsters in the house. He realizes
too late there are three intruders in his kitchen. They mercilessly beat him
with a crowbar before executing his wife and daughter. The ringleader unmasks
to reveal Luc Deveraux, the hero of the first Universal Soldier. Deveraux has become the leader of a rebellion
movement of fellow UniSols seeking to strike back against the government that
created them. John's search for retribution takes him down a dark path as the
truth of revealed about himself and the murder of his family.
Hyams has cited auteurs like David Cronenberg, Gaspar Noé,
and Michael Haneke as heavy influences in the production of Day of Reckoning. Those influences are
apparent from the very beginning with a prologue that has the uneasy feel of Haneke's Funny
Games with the first person perspective of Noé's Enter the Void. Another
technique from the Noé playbook is a frequent shuttering effect meant to
simulate a character's disorientation and blur the lines between reality and
fantasy. Hyams also flagrantly borrows from Apocalypse
Now with Van Damme cast as a modern day Colonel Kurtz and Dolph Lundgren as
his Dennis Hopper. The third act sees John literally going up the river to
confront Deveraux. Some fans may be disappointed to learn that Van Damme and
Lundgren only have minor supporting roles, despite their prominent positions in
promotional material. They don't even share a single scene together.
While Lundgren's Andrew Scott was well established as being
mentally unbalanced, the question remains how the once heroic Deveraux grew
equally mad. The film offers no clear cut answers, but posits several
interesting possibilities. In the 80's, Alan Moore revolutionized the comic
book industry with his bleak deconstruction of the superhero mythos. He
shattered the simplistic Silver Age tales of British superhero Marvelman by
revealing they were false memories of a virtual world, part of an elaborate and
cruel experiment to create superhumans. The idea that previous installments may
be implanted memories crafted by someone fed a strict diet of formulaic action
flicks is deliciously twisted. The layers are peeled back to reveal a fatalistic reality where death gives no respite to eternal warriors locked in never-ending combat.
Don't mistake the filmmakers' arthouse aspirations as intent
to create a bloodless drama. Day of
Reckoning has no shame in trotting out thoroughly brutal and exploitative
violence. The movie received a very limited theatrical run where it was slapped
with an 'R' rating. The Unrated version available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Netflix
certainly would have received an NC-17. The prologue is utterly unflinching as
is a sequence taking place in a neon-lit brothel where a naked hooker takes a
shotgun blast in the back. That's right after a UniSol has a prostitute casually
hammer a nail into his hand. Adkins brawls with former UFC champ Andrei
Arlovski inside a sporting goods store using baseball bats and barbell plates. The
insane climax was filmed handheld in the style of one continuous shot with a
few obvious editing cheats. John cuts a swath of destruction until he and his
white wifebeater becomes caked in blood and viscera.
Universal Soldier: Day
of Reckoning isn't altogether successful due to wooden dialogue and some
slow sections. However, it should be commended for wanting to be more than
another hackneyed, low-budget shoot 'em up.
Rating: *** (*****)
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