Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009)

Wonderful character development!

Excellent adaptation.

A Major Disappointment

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

I enjoy Universal Soldier immensely. It's one of my favorite Action films. Even Universal Soldier II: The Return was fun in an extremely cheesy way, but this tends to suck the life out of everything. They completely ignore everything that happened in Universal Soldier: The Return and I can sort of understand that. It was fun, but it's not exactly a worthy sequel, but neither is this. Van Damme is stuck doing counseling sessions for the majority of the first half. I actually enjoyed that portion. Van Damme trying to become humanized was fairly riveting stuff and he pulled it off like a champ. My problem with the direction of Van Damme is that he is merely a supporting character here. Van Damme himself is solid, but I felt they underutilized him. He's still the hero, but now the reluctant hero. He's worn down, cynical, and ridden with guilt. I dug that part of his character, but there wasn't enough for my liking. Dolph Lundgren is even more wasted than Van Damme. I do like Dolph, even if he tends to make a lot of mediocre DTV films. He's always had presence, and here is no different. He has 20 minutes or so, here approximately. He was fun as Sgt. Scott, but it felt like a fun nostalgia act than anything else. Andrei Arlovski felt like a circus attraction. He was physically imposing, menacing, but he wasn't all that for me. The supporting crew did what they had to do well, but nobody really stood out. Now, the fight between Van Damme and Lundgren is where I give the film its main praise. It's a tad longer than the one in the original and they have more to play with; I won't spoil it for you but it gets downright vicious. In the end; this fails due to not having Van Damme & Lundgren at the forefront of things, and the inconsistent pacing. Final Thoughts: I didn't hate it, but it was disappointingly mediocre. I fully grasp that Van Damme is no longer what he once was, but he still has the it factor. I simply wasn't interested in the happenings when Van Damme & Lundgren were off screen. A few moving scenes, and the awesome fight between Van Damme & Lundgren is not enough for me to make a recommendation. It won't ruin your life if you watch it, but you'll most likely be a bit saddened by it. I know I was.4/10

With the help of a corrupt scientist (Kerry Shale) and his 'next generation' Universal Soldier (Andrei 'The Pitbull' Arlovski), a group of political terrorists kidnap the Russian prime minister's children and threaten to blow up the Chernobyl power station unless their demands are met. Decommissioned first generation Universal Soldier Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is reactivated and tasked with rescuing the hostages, his mission not only pitting him against the new improved 'Uni-Sol', but also his old adversary Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren).A pair of old-school action stars whose best days are behind them, a couple of ex-UFC fighters turned 'actors', and a writer/director/editor who has yet to prove his worth in the action field: not exactly impressive credentials, but somehow this reboot for the Universal Soldier franchise isn't as bad as one might expect. Although John Hyam's plot is hardly groundbreaking stuff, his direction and editing is surprisingly good, meaning that the film succeeds where it matters most: in delivering hard-hitting and very brutal action with plenty of blood and gore.The film starts immediately as it means to go on—with an exhilarating kidnap scene in which plenty of people die horribly, lots of stuff gets destroyed, and Andrei 'The Pitbull' Arlovski has plenty of opportunity to glower menacingly and cause much pain (something that he naturally does rather well). Jean Claude just about manages to keep up with the newcomer proving he still has a few cool moves under his body armour, particularly during the inevitable smack-down against Lundgren (it's hard to believe that they have a combined age of over 100!).Admittedly, the simplistic story-line is all a bit predictable and matters do get a tad dull during the non-action scenes, but any film that features Dolph Lundgren getting his head impaled on a metal pipe and then having his brains blown out with a shotgun has got to be worth a look in my book.

"Universal Soldier" is a rip off of the Terminator movies. The difference is in the semantics. The Terminators here are called universal soldiers: efficient killing machines who feel no pain or remorse and are capable of wiping out entire platoons. Some of the killing machines are working for the U.S. Army (which raises the question why normal soldiers are needed in the first place) and others are working for this terrorist group that is fighting for the independence of Parsalan (a fake name for Chechnya, since the producers obviously did not want to offend movie viewers from the Republic of Chechnya) and the liberation of 230 of their fellow terrorists. The two sides fight it out in the time honoured tradition of the video games, featuring endless gun battles, big explosions and some martial arts fighting. Then finally the U.S. Army wins thanks to "universal soldier" Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme).This movie is so bad that I felt, while writing this review, that even my outline of the Universal Soldier's recycled plot is misleading. This movie, aside from having the bare bones of an already worn out formula, has no plot. It only has macho men punching and shooting each other and blowing things up in order to prove their manhood. There are not even any good martial arts sequences, which is the sort of thing one would expect from a film with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lungren in it. Needless to say, the Universal Soldiers are better at wiping out whole platoons, beating up people, and blowing things up than the ordinary American soldiers are. As a result, the Americans soldiers feel that their own manhood is being threatened. After all, if you can't kill or maim anybody, then what can you do? And in case anyone accuses me of sexism, I should add that I have not seen a single female soldier in "Universal Soldier." So all charges of sexism should be forwarded to director John Hyams and producers Moshe Diamand, Mark Damon, and Craig Baumgarten.But the other reason why "Universal Soldier" is so boring is that the characters are for the most part monotone macho men. The only character who is interesting at all in this picture is scientist Dr. Sandra Fleming, who is played by Emily Joyce. Dolph Lungren's Universal soldier, Andrew Scott, is obviously meant to be based on Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator. But unlike the Arnold, Lungren takes his macho personality far too seriously and, as a result, he comes across as monotone, robotic and dull. The same problem is applicable to Van Damme's Luc Devereau. In fact, Van Damme is far more interesting in real life than he is in this film. A student of ballet between the ages of 16 to 20 who went on to become a martial arts fighter and a movie star. He overcame struggles with drug addiction and bipolar disorder and, after becoming clean, remarried his second wife and has stayed with her ever since. But here he is reduced to a dull, monotone robot. Sad really...2/10

There was a brief period after Wrong Bet aka Lionheart and Bloodsport came out when Van Damme mania was at its highest and they tried to maximise this by churning out as many films as possible. Don't worry it didn't last long.The original Universal Soldier – to me at least – signified the beginning of the extremely drawn out end. It took a vaguely intriguing concept and wasted it by taking every short cut and turning the film into a sub-B movie shlockfest.Teenage boys probably loved it, brain-dead guys who like seeing sh*t blown up good probably loved it. I thought it was crap.But whaddya know enough people watched it to justify a sequel which was even worse, and I think even more sequels followed... none that I watched.Then some 20 years later here I am in the video shop needing one more DVD to complete my 3 for $10 deal and what do I see? Perhaps it was due to frustration at the lack of good titles on the shelf, perhaps it was a brain fade, perhaps it was a simple mental trigger that conjured up memories of classic Van Damme.In any case whatever it was here we are.A pretty effective opening gets us right into the action. The children of a high-up are kidnapped in a hail of buwets that kill many innocent bystanders (are there ever any guilty bystanders? Felons and criminals that just like standing around watching things happen around them?). A long car chase ends when the getaway car reaches "da-choppa" – as Arnie would say – and off they go.The scene is perhaps 10 minutes, totally dialogue free and works very well.Promising so far.It turns out that the kidnappers are bad guy terrorists who have set up base camp in Chernobyl and are threatening to set off a bomb that will release all the pent-up radiation trapped since the 80s meltdown.(Now logic says that the threat of another nuclear meltdown would be enough to demand attention from the government and that kidnapping the kids of a dignitary is a little redundant and unnecessary; but if there is one thing that action movies have taught us over the years it is that you can't rescue a bomb.) The first Universal Soldier introduced the concept of super-soldiers created from reanimated corpses. They were largely immune to most deadly situations and immensely efficient in both firepower and manpower, as one soldier could do the job of dozens – you didn't even have to pay them! Of course that wasn't enough for a movie so they made one go haywire (Dolph Lundgren) and had Van-Damme have to hunt him down and save the day.In this "reality" Unisols as they became known have been banned for decades, however a rogue scientist with delusions of magnificence has been secretly redesigning a new and improved Unisol... The Unisol to end all Unisols.The terrorists have hired the evil scientist and his creation to provide the muscle for their operation, and we see chilling evidence of the new Super-Sol's efficiency and abilities when the base is attacked by the army.So Plan B = Fight fire with fire. Four of the old-school Unisols are thawed out to defeat the Big guy – let's call him Larry – Larry toasts the other 4 in about 7 minutes in a variety of brutal and violent ways. Advantage : Naughty guys.But wait there's one more… The only remaining Unisol is the still thawed out Van Damme who they have tried to reintegrate back into society with mixed results – if the definition of mixed results include the death of a simple coffee shop worker.The guy has a name but let's call him JCVD from here. He is retrained and unleashed on the scene to save the day and kill the bad guys, mainly Larry.Only that ain't all folks. The scientist has kept another weapon up his sleeve… In the end it was always inevitable that JCVD would take on the bad guys for all the bikkies, otherwise why is he on the DVD cover. The addition of the kids provides a "human" element to the film which was really not required. Isn't big muscly guys punching each other reward enough? There are some good long combat scenes and thankfully they manage to make it look like two beefy guys with almost superpowers going at it, rather than two guys on wires clumsily pawing at each other. The punches and kicks seem to have real impact and there were a few blows that made the lips purse together in an "ow that musta hurt" way.All in all Universal Soldier: Regeneration is solid B movie "weekly-rental" fare, for guys aged 16 – 39 at least, the inclusions of Van Damme and a Lundgren cameo aren't likely to get you misty eyed but they don't hurt either, and the big Larry Unisol is legitimately fearsome and capable as the dead-eyed robotic bad guy.I had low expectations from the point I pressed play, this met all of them and exceeded a few. If the film was an employee this might not put the guy in line for promotion, but he is definitely carrying his weight.Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. An efficient low budget shoot-em-up that is as entertaining as it could be considering the limitations of the material and the team behind it.