Super Soldier Shenanigans: Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning (Part Two)

The upcoming car chase is really the defining moment for how far this movie falls below its predecessor. Universal Soldier: Regeneration begins with a high speed chase through a major city while the Next Generation Unisol kills dozens of bodyguards and police in their path. It establishes how unstoppable the NGU is, it gives as an idea of what to expect from the movie and is a good chase scene on top of it. How does the chase scene in Day of Reckoning compare?

The thrilling battle of Plumbing Work Truck vs 1995 Ford Explorer!

A chase scene between two old fords through the outskirts of Baton Rouge. Are you excited yet? Because I certainly am! To the movies credit, the chase scene is extremely proficient from a technical standpoint, its just so conceptually dull. This isn't evocative of a battle between two super soldiers, it looks like random road rage caught on film. Hell, maybe someone just sideswiped Arlovski while he was driving the plumbing truck and they raced after him to get it all on film?

"OH MY GOD SOMEONE CALL AN AMBULANCE!"
"Hahaha, cut! That was perfect, now lets bail before the cops get here!"

After the two vehicles crash, Magnus throws John into a sporting goods store and the movie teases us by delivering an actually great fight scene between them. The fight scenes for UniSols can often be described as "glacial" but they turn that convention on its head, probably due to Scott Adkins having a kick so fast it changes the weather in China. The fight generally goes for Magnus at the start, with John being overpowered by Magnus until he just randomly realizes he's a Unisol.

"Wait a tic, I'm not disabled: I'm a post human killing machine!"

This revelation completely turns the course of the battle, as he's suddenly physically superior to Magnus in every respect. Again, its actually a good fight that plays up how strong and fast these guys are as they start beating on each other with bats and 50lb weights. John brutally beats down Magnus the UniSol Plumber then executes him with a aluminum bat.

Good night sweet Plumber, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. 

After Magnus gets knocked out of the park, John stops to reflect for a moment on the complexities of life. Well, he only contemplates that his fingers have all fully regrown as good as new but he somehow didn't notice till now. Which begs the question of course, of you know, how the fuck did he not notice that?

"Oh...there they are!"

Ignoring the raging impossibility of that, he gets infuriated at the revelation that he's a super soldier and tears a sink off the wall and throws it. And that's it. Just like absolutely every other revelation that is revealed to him though, he forgets about it 30 seconds later. The guy is like a plot point goldfish, moving forward without a seconds reflection at anything he has learned about himself thus far. How ridiculous a revelation can this guy just blasé his way past?

"Wait, there are two of us? Shit, we're in a Van Damme movie aren't we?"

Yes, when he gets to the cabin, he finds out another version of himself. This is the one that killed Isaac, messed up the mob boss and works for Deveraux. He laments though that he realized that Deveraux was not freeing him from slavery, just exchanging one master for another. He also tells John that he has a tracking chip in the back of his head and that Deveraux is up river.

And then our John kills the original  John and he's never talked about again

This is really the fundamental plotting problem with the movie. Lets ignore the character inconsistencies because lets face it, the series has the continuity of a choose your own adventure story with mislabeled pages. No, the main problem is that there is absolutely no point to this entire plot line.. This is a movie about a man who finds out that everything he knows about himself is false, but there is never a moment of realization of his true self. He seems to flat out ignore every single piece of information he acquires, instead opting to blindly proceed forward.

"Arlovski get more development despite no lines"

You could replace every plot point in this movie with a carrot on a stick and it wouldn't change anything. This is a series with government kill bots so prone to introspection, that asking them if they contemplate the complexities of life is a standard diagnostic test. Jean Claude Van Damme has done more with these elements and he's generally only capable of playing himself in his movies with the exception of the ones in which he plays two Van Dammes.

He did this five times. FIVE!

You could argue that its just a direct to video movie so why bother with a decent script? You could also argue that chickens should be required to wear pants and it would be about as correct. Low budget movies can for better or worse be way more creative than blockbuster movies. If I'm making a movie that costs $200m, there is going to be a bunch of uptight men in suits who want me to play it safe. If I make a movie that only costs $10m, I can swing for the fucking fences with either creative directing or bold ideas.

Do you read Sutter Cane?

At this point in the movie, it becomes obvious what the creative process in the movie was. They sat down to write this movie and someone pitched "Total Recall meets Apocalypse Now meets The Sixth Day" and everyone was too busy high fiving each other over their creativity to realize they should have just made a straight Universal Soldier movie.  Deveraux becomes Colt Kurtz, Scott becomes the Photojournalist and John is an extremely boring Willard/Quaid/Whatever the fuck his name was in 6th Day. You can easily start to see this as John has the tracking device removed from his neck and kicks Phantasia out of the movie. He wanders around the "jungles" of Louisiana until he gets picked up by boat that will take him "Up the river" to see Deveraux.

"I wanted a leading role and for my sins they gave me one"

He arrives at a hole in the ground bunker and gets escorted to the doctor in charge of the UniSols and who is obviously supposed to be the doctor from the previous movie despite him getting an impromptu eye exam courtesy of Sgt Scott's thumbs in the last movie. He tells John that the equipment he was supposed to bring to them was the missing tech required to mass produce UniSols...from their bunker in Louisiana. I know some people are upset about that whole "War of Northern Aggression" thing still but this is taking things too far guys! He then starts operating on John to stop his pain by removing his memories.

Literally. 

He actually uses a drill press on John's skull, then proceeds to reach in with a pair of forceps to yank the memories out of John's head. This is a thing that happens in the movie. He goes knuckle deep while John starts to have all his implanted memories flash before his eyes. The memories get stuck inside Johns head though and the doctor is unable to pull them out.

Again, literally.

John snaps when he feels the guy tugging at his cherished fake memories and breaks free of his restraints and just starts to kill everyone. Does this make any sense from any kind of plot perspective? Absolutely not. Is the scene completely fucking awesome? Hell yeah it is. The movie utterly shines when it drops its retarded plot and just starts shooting dicks off and kicking faces in. Its like the movie remembered it was an action movie and not a drama.

You should have been doing this a god damn hour ago. 

John kills all the grunt UniSols in the directors signature faux oner style and its honestly a great action scene. Its dynamic, its creative, its the directors core competency. This is a guy who knows how to do action scenes and decided to do as few of them as possible, with only a total of probably 25 minutes of action in a two hour movie. Its like Usain Bolt dropping running and taking up curling: What the hell are you even thinking?

Arlovski killed more people in the opening of Regeneration than die in this entire movie. 

After easily dispatching the regular UniSols, John fights Sgt Scott in the armory. Again, its a great scene because the director understands low budget action. Scott is actually the incredibly hard to kill juggernaut he is supposed to be and the scene is dynamic as hell, with the two of them grabbing weapons off the shelves lots of melee gun-fighting between the two as John shoots, stabs, impales, shoots again and machete's Scott.

THIS IS THE WAY A REAL UNISOL DIES

From here, John proceeds to an odd chapel where he confronts Deveraux, who wants to know just what the fuck John's deal is. John tells him that he killed his family, to which Deveraux points out that not only did he not kill them, they're not even real but John refuses to accept this explanation.

I want an explanation of why the hell he did this. 

This starts easily the best fight in the movie as Deveraux and John actually act like super soldiers and hack each other to pieces. The centerpiece of this fight is a machete that the two of them battle for control over, up to and including using their own bodies to block their opponents strikes with it. After a great deal of back and forth between the two, John gets the upper hand and kills Deveraux after he gives John the generic "You'll only know war if you kill me" speech.

Its not an effective tactic to use against a worshipper of  Khorne

Wrapping things up: John finds out he has control over the remaining UniSols...somehow and he meets up with Agent Gorman who we find out is also a Unisol because the movie wants to throw in as many final act plot twists as it can. He gives yet another info dump about how John is special because he has such strong memories and then immediately tells him they're going to wipe those memories. Predictably John doesn't take that very well. 

Not one bit. 

And then another Agent Gorman steps out of the van, heads over to the dead Gormans car then just stares at John for a while before driving away. And then the movie ends with them driving the blood soaked van away while John turns on the windshield wipers. And that's it. That is the ending of this whole mess. Nothing is resolved and the twist is so awkwardly jammed in it might as well be them flipping through a series of hastily scrawled cue cards. What kind of incompetent writer thinks that an utter non sequitur is a good ending for something?

Fuck it, right?

Super Soldier Shenanigans: Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning (Part One)

I think the fact that the Universal Soldier franchise absolutely refuses to accept its death is oddly appropriate for a series about undead super soldiers. This is a series that has so many retcons that its only a matter of time before Luc Deveraux wakes up to find Sgt Scott in the shower, alive and well.

For those of you not in the know, Universal Soldier is a franchise where the government creates super soldiers out of the reanimated corpses of dead soldiers and generally manages to completely lose control of them approximately 120% of the time. The details of how they work, what limitations they have and how crazy they go varies from movie to movie because consistency is not in the series repertoire. The one consistent element is that they're basically a Toyota Hilux that walks like a man and require ludicrous amounts of firepower to put down.

So a movie that has dozens of them should be absolutely god damn amazing right? I mean, a single sixth generation UniSol can tank gunfire all damn day and fight on like it was nothing, so a guy fighting an entire army of them should be amazing right? Also, mass producing Metal Gear Ray should provide an absolutely unstoppable force, the more ninjas the better and if the recipe says 250 degrees, I can cook it at 500 degrees in half the time right? The last one is the most appropriate because this confused mess of a movie is almost certainly a result of too much baking, if you catch my drift.

I'm saying something like this was involved.

The movie begins with the as yet unnamed protagonist being woken up by his daughter who says that there are monsters in the kitchen and asks him to check it out. He tells there is no such thing as monsters but she insists she saw some in the kitchen. He slowly but surely checks out the entire house while humoring her the entire time by calling out where he is in the house. This sequence is actually somewhat effective because its the singular good use of all the movies gimmicks. Its in first person view the entire time, with absolutely no soundtrack save for his beating heart and filmed with a minimum of light with a slight strobing effect applied to simulate his blinking and weariness. And as he slowly investigates the entire house, it really builds up a great feeling of tension because you know something is going to happen when he gets to the kitchen but it lets it build. So when that door to the kitchen door opens...

"Dark Brotherhood, we've got a work order to destroy everything you love. We let ourselves in. "

The main character is then beaten with a crowbar for a solid minute of screen time as he probably wonders how the hell his daughter could not realize they were robbers, before they drag his family out of the bedroom. One of them pulls off his ski mask to reveal that he's Luc Deveraux before staring into his eyes for a good thirty seconds so he (and the audience) gets a good look that its Deveraux, before executing his family without saying a word. Which is supposed to be intriguing but its basically a flag thrown out on the field informing you that there will be a twist or some serious character assassination ahead.

Spoiler: Its both. 

He then wakes up in a "hospital" which is clearly an office space they wheeled machines that go ping into, staffed by some of the worst actors to ever deliver exposition. The doctor informs him that he's been in a coma for 9 months but it "feels like I'm meeting you for the first time". Well yeah, since this is the first time he's been conscious in 9 months, you were just watching someone sleep and I think 9/10 restraining orders agree that's not considered meeting someone. He then introduces him to an FBI agent named Gorman, who informs him that his wife did not survive and begins asking our hero, identified as John, some questions.

"We have to hurry, the Asylum wants to film some hospital scenes here too"

He asks him if he can think of a reason why Deveraux murdered his own family but John apparantly has almost total memory loss, able to only remember the night his family was killed and a few bits and pieces of memories of his family. He's informed by Gorman that Deveraux is a highly decorated soldier who deserted and is now a wanted criminal. The doctor tells him that's enough exposition for right now and Gorman makes a call telling someone to "Put the plumber to work".

"But Arlovski do not know plumbing"
"Just play around with it for a bit man!"
"Arlovski out of element"

Here we meet Magnus, the UniSol Plumber. He gets activated by a strobing effect out of nowhere while working on a woman's sink. He looks stunned as hell for a bit then proceeds to get up, puke in the sink, wipe his mouth and walk out the door to peel out in his truck while the woman yells at him to finish the job. To be honest, this is basically in line with every single plumber I've ever hired and all that's missing is him showing up three days later with a bag of washers and a bill.

"Arlvoski often contemplate complexities of life. "

We go back to the "hospital" where they're discharging the amnesiac coma patient hours after he wakes up. I can't decide if this is a clue to the obvious twist in the story or just incredibly dumb. The living uncanny valley of a nurse hands him a form with his address on it and a manila envelope full of plot devices and memory triggers. The one that triggers the most memories is the bracelet given to him by his daughter on his first person birthday. Unfortunately, the actor playing John has the acting range of a store mannequin on muscle relaxers.

"I am a vessel of infinite sadness and despair"

After he hallucinates for a while at home to try to build up pathos, the movie cuts to the scummiest brothel possible in a moment of absolute mood whiplash. We go from a kid with a gunshot wound through her eye to a brothel that makes the one from Taken look like Studio 54. The UniSols are partying it up to the Drums From the Deep pretty hard though. There's lots of T&A, angry sex, neon lights, an old lady playing solitaire and the classic sex game of having a hooker nail your hand to a table with a claw hammer.

Hot.

We see that Sgt Scott is back, minus any previous characterization as he boozes it up with a prostitute in a room that looks like some kind of attempt at a neon tanning booth while music that sounds like a bad Casio rhythm setting hooked up to a subwoofer blares out. Its at this point that our buddy Magnus The UniSol Plumber shows up with a tool bag full of guns and proceeds to kill the old lady and starts in on the UniSol Johns. We're in for a badass action scene given how hard they are to kill and given he's only got a shotgun.Maybe with the close quarters we'll get a real badass-

I...what?

The first guy doesn't even get 3 steps from the bed before he and the prostitute he was with get gunned down, his dong sadly flopping everywhere. It only takes three shotgun rounds to kill him, which in UniSol terms is like if you stubbed your toe and your head exploded. It gets worse from there as he casually guns down two more guys and their prostitutes. I came here for a UniSol fight and I get dudes who go down like total bitches. Hell, one of the prostitutes dies harder than the fucking super soldiers by getting a couple rounds off with a pistol before being blasted across the room.

God Speed  Whore #4

Magnus and Scott get into a pretty decent fight scene but Magnus in a reversal of the previous movie's dynamic is absolutely inferior to Sgt Scott, who easily incapacitates him. Scott waxes on about how despite Magnus came to kill him, he's about to set him free and jams a needle into his neck. He informs Magnus that he's no longer a slave of the government and that he'll seek vengeance on his oppressors. And then the movie absolutely loses its shit.

"Prepare to swallow your tongue, insect"

See, this movie decided that shaky cam was old and busted and that rapid pulsating strobes was the new hotness in annoying cinematic techniques. Oh yes, this movie to the sound of cicadas proceeds to strobe flash for a full two minutes. Its such a visually assaulting strobe effect that despite not being epileptic I was absolutely unable to even look at the screen and had to just keep hammering the screenshot button to even see what happens during this sequence. Had I actually been prone to seizures I imagine I would have not just swallowed my tongue but swallowed my entire face in the grand mal this would have produced. Its seriously that fucking bad and I don't know what the hell they were thinking.

"Where's my check?"

Moving on from that, we see John at home eating cereal when he gets a call from a panicked guy named Isaac telling him he doesn't feel safe and babbling about a shipment. Rather than explaining he doesn't have any kind of memory of what happened and asking the guy to explain the entire thing, he looks at the running time so far of only 24 minutes and says he'll be right over, just stay there and give me the address while you're at it. I have high hopes for this characters survival!

"God damn it, we can just kiss that deposit goodbye now!"

He rifles through some stuff, grabbing an exposition recorder, a matchbook for a strip club and looks at a picture of what the guy looked like with a face and heads down the strip club. He listens to the exposition recorder tell him that they have the Unisol cloning process down to below 9 months and that they're still working on memory implantation. He heads down to the club to get information from a random prostitute about what the guy was working on but gets blown off so he heads to the bathroom. Magnus stabs him with the same needle that Scott used on him. The movie is going to waffle on this for another half hour but its fucking obvious at this point: John is a UniSol. It was obvious from the beginning but the movie thinks its more clever than it is by holding onto this forever.

"I'm sorry sir but you have all the symptoms: Rapid recovery from injury, uncontrollable flashbacks, wooden acting..."

Instead we get treated to another minute of that cicada\strobe combo while Deveraux tries to mind control him but his memory of his family being killed is too strong. Before he can attack Magnus, he's thrown out of the club by the bouncers. He decides to pursue his investigation by ambushing the stripper outside her home, dragging her inside and overpowering her while yelling at her the whole time to calm down before telling her that he's going to hurt her if she doesn't stop screaming for help. Because that's the way to get answers: Simulate a rape.

"WHY ARE YOU TAKING THIS SO POORLY!"

This is such a terrible idea from both a character and writing perspective. Its seriously plays out just like he was going to rape her and that's a terrible thing to have your main character do. She calms down though and asks him why he came back but before anyone can expand on that, Magnus the UniSol Plumber comes in with an ax for a plot interrupt.

"Arlovski hear rape, come to make citizen arrest"

 What follows is another actually good fight scene with a lot of ebb and flow to it as Magnus smashes through the scenery with that ax like it owes him money as John tries to survive. It has a low moment where the stripper knocks him out with a toilet tank lid but its still a fun action scene. During the course of the scene, John loses four fingers on one hand and Magnus loses half his foot in an ax strike before John and the stripper.

Don't worry, it happened in a bathroom so I think we can swing a good workman's comp claim for it. 

Unfortunately, the plot escapes from the bathroom that it was locked in and we cut to Magnus being led to a speech by Scott in a secret underground bunker about how UniSols will infiltrate society and take over the world. Meanwhile we get an info dump from the stripper named Phantasia, in which he finds out that he's a truck driver who has a shack by the river. She also tells a story about how he beat a guy almost to death for looking at her and how he loves Whiskey, which was clumsily established as the official drink of UniSols earlier in the movie. He has a dream where Deveraux tries to take control of his mind but once again, the memory of his daughter snaps him out of it.

"What have they done to my chaaaaraaaactorrrr..."

He wakes up in a panic and calls the FBI agent who shows up at the hotel to deliver yet more exposition about how they believe Deveraux has a mind control serum before dismissing John's missing fingers and the fact that he's being hunted by a psychotic plumber from Belarus before leaving, having accomplished absolutely nothing as a character.

Also Arlovski has a fight scene with zero plot relevance to pad things out.

John heads down to his old trucking job to get information on a container he was supposed to deliver but never did. He asks to see his old boss, the leader of the local crime syndicate who "controls the river". He tries to get information but the man is a disabled mess of scar tissue and John is apparently the one who is responsible thanks to an unexplained incident. The mobster reveals that they got curious about his friend Isaac and planted camera's in his apartment. He plays the footage revealing that it was John who killed Isaac.

"Ain't that a fucking twist?"

John freaks out about this and drives off with Phantasia. He tells her that they need to find the cabin that he lived in but she can't remember exactly where its located. They're arguing about this when they forget about one critical detail:

"IT ARLOVSKI TURN TO DRIVE!"

The second half of the movie is about to start and shit is about to get real (and also unreal)

Continue to Part Two.