No, wait! Where are you going? It’s easy to dismiss a film
by the name of Universal Soldier: Day of
Reckoning. It’s a patently ridiculous title, and when one considers that
it’s a sequel to the schlocky, not particularly reputable Universal Soldier action series starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and
Dolph Lundgren, it sounds even more dubious. But Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning transcends its schlocky roots
because of director John Hyams’ unconventional style, which pushes the action
movie to the point of abstraction.
Scott Adkins plays a man whose family is brutally murdered
by Luc Deveraux (Van Damme), the hero of the previous Universal Soldier movies. When Adkins comes out of his coma, he
starts searching for answers behind what happened to him. Deveraux, it turns
out, leads a group of former super-soldiers (along with former adversary
Lundgren) against the government that had previously controlled them. Adkins
finds reason to question everything he held to be true and, more to the point, finds
that he has the same propensity for violence that Deveraux has.
It’s a flimsy, somewhat murky plot, but it hardly matters.
Hyams (son of journeyman genre director Peter Hyams) succeeds early on by
throwing the audience into a situation where they’ll have as few bearings as
possible and be in the same state of confusion as the protagonist. Any idea
that this will be a standard-issue action flick disappears with the
take-no-prisoners opening scene, an impressive long POV shot in which Adkins is
turned into a voyeur, a man with no control over the violence done to him (a
brutal beating) or to his family. It’s a deeply uncomfortable and disorienting
opening, and Hyams is skilled enough to sustain that sense of unpredictability
throughout the film.
What’s impressive is that Hyams is just as good with moments
of relative quiet as he is at the more visceral action moments. Simple expository
scenes between Adkins and other minor characters have the quiet, humming menace
of a David Lynch or Stanley Kubrick film, aided by Hyams’ exact compositions. Still,
the film is at its most exciting when dealing with outright nightmare imagery
(see: drill into forehead, blood on a teddy bear) or the kinetic action scenes,
which are absolutely breathless. Particularly impressive is six-minute sequence
in which an assassin makes mincemeat of a bunch of brothel-dwelling tough guys.
Here, Hyams makes great use of disquieting sound design, pounding techno music,
florescent lighting in a dim area, and strobe effects amidst the absolute
carnage on display. It's as if Gaspar Noe had directed an action movie. If someone can just get this guy a great script, he’ll no
doubt become one of the finest action directors in the world.
This film is available on Netflix Instant.
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Does that number by the grade confuse you? Go over to this link, where I explain my idiotically specific 100-point system and how it corresponds to the grades.
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Does that number by the grade confuse you? Go over to this link, where I explain my idiotically specific 100-point system and how it corresponds to the grades.
Curious about my favorite films from various years? Check out my account on Letterboxd.
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