Universal Soldier (1992) Reviews

• Bad-Ass best Van Damme Science Fiction-Action-Packed Film!

  ivo-cobra82015-12-30

  Universal Soldier (1992) Is one of the best Van Damme action sci-fi classic movies from the 90's also my favorite childhood movie that I am still watching it today. It is my third best favorite Van Damme movie! It has Dolph Lundgren in it and I love this movie to Death!!! Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundrgren are awesome in this film. Action and fighting sequences were awesome till today Roland Emmerich did made a great job as the director of this action sci-fi film flick. Every time I see this action flick I am not bored with it and is definitely Van Damme's best action movie. I enjoy the action, I mainly love this movie, because it focus on Vietnam War and it has experiments that US military actually really secretly did that. The fights scenes between Van Damme and Lundgren were awesome! This is the only movie that I care and love about! All the sequels to me sucked ass! None of them can hold a candle to this movie! Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren reunited 20. years later after working together in here, in the film "The Expendables 2" (2012) my favorite action packed movie. This movie is a bad ass and kicks ass! I love it so much, I even prefer above Kikcboxer and Double Impact. This is the movie that I love. I love all the actors in this movie, Ally Walker was a great cast as reporter Veronica Roberts. Chandra West who played her in TV movies couldn't even hold a candle to Ally Walker./:Ally Walker was also cast as Dr. Samantha 'Sam' Waters in my favorite TV Show Profiler. "ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?" Hell yes. The best science fiction action film ever made. It still holds up great to this day. Whenever I watch this movie I am having fun. A really fun inventive action flick with some really kick ass fight scenes and a sense of fun about it, that makes it irresistible. Van Damme and Lundgren were great in this and it really is a shame that despite this being a hit Lundgren still did not get out of direct to video land and continued to get overlooked by Hollywood after the film's release. This movie it is the film that made Van Damme in to a star and saved his career. It is so aggravating how far they rushed with the sequels. At least we still got the one amazing movie that made Dolph one of the greatest villains ever, well maybe not a "villain" a but a real bad ass! I like the aspect of the cool down process and the story is easy to understand. Also, Dolph Lundgren's scene in the grocery store is one of my all time favorite scenes in any movie. I really love this movie to death. Alongside Hard Target and Bloodsport, Universal Soldier is my third favorite Van Damme movie. I don't care what anyone say's or thinks about this movie, I will not listen to them, I will listen to my self! When I was 13. years old, I was in the hospital talking with my new friends about this movie, that I have made them there, when I was lying on the bed. That time, I never watched or heard about this movie before and they told me how great it is. They where right, it took me few months till I finally watch this movie on TV and I absolutely loved it. This film for me has a great memories on my childhood. This is the basic plot about the film it has death soldiers, that turns in to a cyborg killing machines that are anti terrorist and their experiments goes awry wrong and they start killing innocent people and only one man, a machine can stop them. The final battle scene between Van Damme and Lundgren is epic! Van Damme uses his awesome spin kicks with his legs, that we already saw in Bloodsport, Kickboxer and Double Impact. The meat grinder scene is, when Scott is crushed and killed, that was really a bad ass scene! I am giving this movie my perfect 10, because it deserves it and Roland Emmerich did a great job directing this movie. I can watch this movie over and over again. Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren did a both a perfect solid job playing their characters. I love them!

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• Excellent Action Fluff

  Crap_Connoisseur2006-05-16

  Universal Soldier might be dumb and derivative but I couldn't care less, it is also one of the most entertaining action films to be released in the 1990s and provided signature roles for two of my favourite trash icons, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. The film also serves as a testament to the last good movie made by Roland Emmerich before selling his soul to the Hollywood machine. This film has long been a favourite with genre fans. Universal Soldier was a theatrical box office hit but really developed its cult following on video. I watch this film every couple of years and I'm always struck by the quality of the writing, directing and yes, even the acting. This is simply a well crafted movie and an excellent example of a film that is so much more than the sum of its admittedly tawdry parts. Universal Soldier owes a hell of a lot to "The Terminator". It lifts a whole raft of ideas from Cameron's action classic, including the basic concept of a good guy with superhuman strength protecting a woman from a bad guy with superhuman strength. Actually, it even borrows minor details like the eye-cam, the nude walk and an act of self-mutilation. Nevertheless, the film never feels like a blatant rip off. Roland Emmerich, while never a particularly original mind, injects sufficient change and innovation into the film to ensure it has a distinct energy of its own. The film recycles old ideas with great skill due to the excellent screenplay. The action comes thick and fast, and the dialogue is first rate for an action film. Furthermore, it provides several memorable characters and successfully introduces an element of black humour without detracting from the action. No matter how well written it is, an action film is only as good its action sequences and Mr Emmerich does not disappoint. The film contains several fantastic set pieces, from the grandeur of the hostage rescue to the phenomenal truck chase through the desert, which even manages to find time for a mid-chase game of "catch" with live grenades and a string of memorably corny one-liners. Emmerich is in his element, filming explosions and stunts from every imaginable angle. Universal Soldier is also far gorier than his later films and is all the better for it. The film would not be half as enjoyable without its leading men. Jean-Claude and Dolph both give great performances. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. Jean-Claude was at his physical peak and excels during the action scenes. He performs several signature flying kicks in a great fight with Dolph, which is mercifully filmed in a long shot - I wish the John Woo wannabes from the "cut and paste" school of directing who directed Jean-Claude's later films had taken note. Dolph is great fun as the villain, making crazy eyes for all he is worth and relishing every trashy one-liner. They both are more than adequate in their non-action scenes, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that they are essentially playing refined zombies who walk around naked a lot. The supporting cast is also great. Ally Walker showed a lot of promise as the female lead and has gone on to have a good career in television. Jerry Orbach and Tico Wells, also TV regulars, give memorable performances in minor roles. Universal Soldier is relentless, the film starts with a bang and never lets up. It might be trashy, but it is never less than completely entertaining. In my opinion, this is one of the seminal action films of the 90s. The sequels, however, are only recommended for experienced crap connoisseurs.

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• Dolph Lundgren + Jean Claude Van Damme = Awesome

  AwesomeWolf2005-03-03

  I remember first watching 'Universal Soldier' on TV when I was about 8 or 9 years old. After that, whenever I saw it it didn't have sound, or I was rather inebriated, or both, or had other circumstances prevent me from appreciating the awesomeness of Van Damme v. Lundgren, until it was on TV again recently, and I got to revel in the glory of 'Universal Soldier'. Van Damme plays Luc Deveraux, a soldier serving in Vietnam, under the command of Sergeant Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren). Deveraux has an attack of conscience when Scott seems to lose his altogether. In fact, Scott seems to be somewhere between insane and plain evil. After Deveraux refuses - on Scott's orders - to kill innocent villagers, the two soldiers kill each other. Listed as Missing-in-Action, the bodies of the two soldiers are used in the Universal Soldier program, and the two are re-activated some time later as GR-44 (Van Damme) and GR-13 (Lundgren), supposedly with no memories of their past. When reporter Veronica Roberts (Ally Walker) stumbles onto some things she shouldn't have seen (seriously, if you want to keep your project secret, you don't drive around in an armoured bus, leaving unlocked crates lying around outside), her cameraman is murdered by one of the UniSols. GR-44 has flashes of his past, and takes Veronica on the run, with the slightly (very?) unstable GR-13 in hot-pursuit. Action abounds for the rest of the movie, and while there isn't anything truly special, it is way cool, or even Awesome. We have car chases, heavy vehicle chases, Van Damme beating people up, and Lundgren being one of the awesomest bad guys ever. What is there to complain about? Nothing, that's what. I must say that Dolph Lundgren is at his best playing villains, and I'd even argue that his role in 'Universal Soldier' has been some of his best work to date. Van Damme also gets to credit 'Univeral Soldier' as being one his best movies. Plot-wise? Again, little - if no - originality, and a pretty thin plot. However, as I always say "Less plot = More action = Awesome", and everyone is happy, and if you don't agree, then you really should not be watching 'Universal Soldier'. I love 'Universal Soldier'. It stands close to the pinnacle of action B-movies, a genre everybody loves! It is a shame that I can the official and un-official sequels on DVD, but I can't get the original in all its awesome glory on DVD here in Australia. 'Universal Soldier' is a must-see for action fans everywhere - 8/10

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• An action classic

  Flagrant-Baronessa2006-06-29

  Muscles from Brussels and the Swedish man-of-war Dolph Lundgren team up as superhuman soldiers brought back to life from Vietnam in this movie. I'm not sure what it is exactly that they do – I wasn't paying attention. But I'm pretty sure it's something about struggling with obeying the orders from their commanders and having flashbacks from their past lives. What I know is that they do fight a lot. They also fight civilians. They even fight each other, and that's when things start to get very entertaining. It is only fair to watch this movie at least once since it has brought us not one, not two, but THREE sequels. What's even more awesome about these sequels is that they are all rated under 3.5 but not by enough votes to get them on the bottom 100 list on IMDb. If you fail in getting on a list like that, you even fail at failing and that is admirable. Universal Soldier is much more well-liked and higher-rated and rightly so. I do not recall who, but another film critic put it best when he pointed to how different Universal Soldiers was from your average science-fiction movie. To summarize this, where most sci-fi movies get to the part where all the complex science needs to be explained by some brilliant professor, Universal Soldiers simply offers the explanation "we hypercharged their bodies to turn dead flesh into living tissue." And that's how dead soldiers were reanimated into superhuman killing machines. Brilliant. There's no pretension – just take it or leave it. I can't find it in my heart to give this movie anything less than a 7 based on what it set out to do. Even though the acting is atrocious, the script is a joke and the dialogue is stupid, it's still a classic in my opinion. It had some intentionally funny moments like when Van Damme was in the diner and ate like ten meals of "today's special" and everyone was staring at him. If you don't find stuff like that funny, you have to watch it strictly tongue-in-cheek and just go for the brainless early-90s style action and cut-rate explosions. 7/10

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• Great entertainment!

  supertom-32003-03-15

  This may not be Shakespeare but it's certainly more fun. The film is basically elements of various other action movies and it works well. The key to this being the decent budget, the tongue in cheek style and the accomplished direction from Roland Emmerich (Independence Day). This is one of the few action films from Van Damme and Lundgren to really compete with Arnold and Sly in terms of production values, large scale set pieces and a sense of real fun, with the mindless and excessive violence. Van Damme is above his usual standard with a fairly subtle performance,let no one call it wooden. Ally Walker has charm and is watchable but it is Lundgren who steals the show with a delightfully villainous performance. Amongst fans they consider this one of his best roles. The action is big, loud and well choreographed. With some fantastic set pieces, such as the opening Hoover Damn sequence and the chase between a prison truck and an armoured truck. There is also the obligatory showcase karate from Van Damme. Basically is you like a good action film you won't go wrong with this. This is at the time when the brainless action movies were still entertaining without being painfully un-original like modern popcorn films such as XXX, Exit Wounds and various others. ***

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