Health warning. If you read the following plot very quickly it might make sense. But it should be treated like quicksand. If you stop you'll be drawn down into the murky depths of idiocy. Now take a deep breath...
The ever-devious US military has been collecting the still-warm corpses of its own Vietnam dead and then re-animating them with super powers (which any mad scientist would tell you is never a good idea). By injecting these zombies with some glow in the dark goo they conveniently forget everything and can be unleashed to defend freedom, democracy and bad plots everywhere. Jean Claude van Damme plays the hero who has to save a plucky reporter (Ally Walker) from the attentions of the US military and a rogue colleague played by Dolph Lundgren. After an interminable series of chases it all ends up as a nasty zombie versus zombie versus combine harvester fight.
You can breathe again now.
If you hadn't guessed, they passed on the original title of 'Zombie Commandos From Hell' and called them Universal Soldiers - a title so unwieldy that they are referred to throughout as Unisols.
Unisol? That isn't very scary; it sounds more like a haemorrhoid preparation. Which might just come in handy.
If it had been a B-feature made on a tiny budget 'Universal Soldier' could have been played for fun. With a witty script and some sly in-jokes the whole thing could have become a camp classic. Unfortunately it is an incredibly po-faced film with no sense of humour - about itself or its cast. And it is dumb - even for an action movie. No care has been taken with basic plot development or continuity.
Our top-secret stealthy commandos go round in a special plane and an even more distinctive truck (one that comes with Transformer-style pop-up sections and a dry-ice machine). Had they painted it green with flowers on the side and named it the Mystery Mobile they couldn't be more obvious. Each Unisol comes with a heads-up camera that appears to show the world through the exciting new medium of Teletext. Despite their super-powers they are sensitive to heat, so they are deployed to a desert wearing padded jackets (Sadly, this does give Jean Claude van Damme the perfect excuse to take his clothes off - again). When Unisols move, they stagger around like the Addams Family butler (and have you noticed how Dolph Lundgren and Lurch could have been separated at birth?), yet underwater they can swim faster than a man can run - AND NOT GET THEIR CLOTHES WET!
Incredible stuff!
Worst of all, there is a plot hole that is so obvious it is incredible no one noticed during production. Our heroes are trapped at a petrol station, the Unisol truck drives up, EVERYONE gets out of the truck and starts looking for them. Do our heroes (a) get into the cab of the truck and drive off leaving their enemies safely behind, or (b) go into the back of the Mystery Mobile and start looking for clues?
Hint: don't choose (a).
'Universal Soldier' is the freakish result of some genetically engineered script writing. A demonic plan was unleashed to graft the undemanding half of 'Frankenstein' to an even less-demanding part of 'Terminator', all Carolco needed were two suitable leads to play the walking dead. They picked Jean-Claude van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. With the exception of the remarkable height difference between the two leads (and we are talking about at least a foot!) this has to be perfect casting.
Unfortunately dream casting can't help a fatally flawed movie. It is a sad fact that it is very difficult to make zombie characters interesting; without any common reference the audience has no emotional involvement with the story. Zombies have largely been restricted to shambling around the woods chewing on teenagers; perhaps wisely no one has seriously considered them starring in a period piece opposite Kate Winslet or a romantic comedy with Meg Ryan ('When Harry Ate Sally' anyone?).
There are two ways to make such characters interesting. One is to give them a tiny facet of humanity - the scene in Frankenstein where he meets the blind man, or the relationship between the Terminator and the child John Conner show how this can be pulled off successfully. The second is to play them as ruthless machines, bent on destruction (Terminator first time round).
There is none of that in this movie, and it manages to miss both solutions. The attempted relationship between the newly human van Damme and Ally Walker is undermined by having him suddenly regain all his memories and playing the part of a normal human being with a Pinnochio complex. The man-child role is a challenging one for skilled actors, in the hands of someone less talented it is embarrassing. Want to guess what it is here?
The second part is undermined by not keeping the bad guy as an unthinking machine. Lundgren's character suddenly regains his psychotic personality. This is clearly someone suffering from a medical problem, not the usual two-dimensional movie killer. A clever plot (think Frankenstein (the book)) might want to try and resolve the problem by playing on the human part of the character; a bad plot would have him kicked to death and chopped to pieces. Want to guess again?
The second problem is the casting. Obviously Carolco couldn't afford the salaries demanded by Schwarzenegger and Stallone, so they had to pick from the B-squad, and it shows. van Damme rolls through this movie on the twin charms of having puppy dog eyes and showing his backside. Lundgren emotes his role with all the charm of a run-down Speak and Spell machine. (Which is odd, because when I've seen Dolph Lundgren interviewed he's witty and charming; but put him in front of the movie camera and you're wondering if someone has forgotten to flick the 'ON' switch).
Individually they are painful to watch; together - excruciating.
It's not a complete loss on the performance front; if you watch very carefully you'll see that Ally Walker is in fact acting (and stands out a mile for doing so). Her lines are ludicrous, her character is painfully underdeveloped but Walker does a reasonable job of trying to play a halfway-realistic character. Sadly what starts off as an independent, successful woman is quickly reduced to bimbette status screaming on the sidelines. So much for feminism.
Is there anything else to recommend this movie. No, not really, there is a neat abseiling stunt near the beginning and lots of stuff blows up, but for the first time in my life I would have to admit that not nearly enough stuff blows up.
Universal Soldier's greatest contribution to movie history has to be that it helped sink Carolco. Cinema audiences stayed away in droves from this charmless production and it is perhaps best remembered for the desperate publicity 'fight' between Lundgren and van Damme at Cannes. The franchise spawned some sequels with ever decreasing budgets. The directors, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin went on to make two even worse, but somehow more successful movies - 'Stargate' and 'Independence Day'. The two leads descended to the bottom shelf of your local video store never to return. Ally Walker sadly vanished from our screens and you still can't buy cans of Unisol.
'Universal Soldier' is best watched on a long cold winter's night when you don't want to go to bed and there is nothing else on television.
But then again, have you considered taking up astronomy?
The ever-devious US military has been collecting the still-warm corpses of its own Vietnam dead and then re-animating them with super powers (which any mad scientist would tell you is never a good idea). By injecting these zombies with some glow in the dark goo they conveniently forget everything and can be unleashed to defend freedom, democracy and bad plots everywhere. Jean Claude van Damme plays the hero who has to save a plucky reporter (Ally Walker) from the attentions of the US military and a rogue colleague played by Dolph Lundgren. After an interminable series of chases it all ends up as a nasty zombie versus zombie versus combine harvester fight.
You can breathe again now.
If you hadn't guessed, they passed on the original title of 'Zombie Commandos From Hell' and called them Universal Soldiers - a title so unwieldy that they are referred to throughout as Unisols.
Unisol? That isn't very scary; it sounds more like a haemorrhoid preparation. Which might just come in handy.
If it had been a B-feature made on a tiny budget 'Universal Soldier' could have been played for fun. With a witty script and some sly in-jokes the whole thing could have become a camp classic. Unfortunately it is an incredibly po-faced film with no sense of humour - about itself or its cast. And it is dumb - even for an action movie. No care has been taken with basic plot development or continuity.
Our top-secret stealthy commandos go round in a special plane and an even more distinctive truck (one that comes with Transformer-style pop-up sections and a dry-ice machine). Had they painted it green with flowers on the side and named it the Mystery Mobile they couldn't be more obvious. Each Unisol comes with a heads-up camera that appears to show the world through the exciting new medium of Teletext. Despite their super-powers they are sensitive to heat, so they are deployed to a desert wearing padded jackets (Sadly, this does give Jean Claude van Damme the perfect excuse to take his clothes off - again). When Unisols move, they stagger around like the Addams Family butler (and have you noticed how Dolph Lundgren and Lurch could have been separated at birth?), yet underwater they can swim faster than a man can run - AND NOT GET THEIR CLOTHES WET!
Incredible stuff!
Worst of all, there is a plot hole that is so obvious it is incredible no one noticed during production. Our heroes are trapped at a petrol station, the Unisol truck drives up, EVERYONE gets out of the truck and starts looking for them. Do our heroes (a) get into the cab of the truck and drive off leaving their enemies safely behind, or (b) go into the back of the Mystery Mobile and start looking for clues?
Hint: don't choose (a).
'Universal Soldier' is the freakish result of some genetically engineered script writing. A demonic plan was unleashed to graft the undemanding half of 'Frankenstein' to an even less-demanding part of 'Terminator', all Carolco needed were two suitable leads to play the walking dead. They picked Jean-Claude van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. With the exception of the remarkable height difference between the two leads (and we are talking about at least a foot!) this has to be perfect casting.
Unfortunately dream casting can't help a fatally flawed movie. It is a sad fact that it is very difficult to make zombie characters interesting; without any common reference the audience has no emotional involvement with the story. Zombies have largely been restricted to shambling around the woods chewing on teenagers; perhaps wisely no one has seriously considered them starring in a period piece opposite Kate Winslet or a romantic comedy with Meg Ryan ('When Harry Ate Sally' anyone?).
There are two ways to make such characters interesting. One is to give them a tiny facet of humanity - the scene in Frankenstein where he meets the blind man, or the relationship between the Terminator and the child John Conner show how this can be pulled off successfully. The second is to play them as ruthless machines, bent on destruction (Terminator first time round).
There is none of that in this movie, and it manages to miss both solutions. The attempted relationship between the newly human van Damme and Ally Walker is undermined by having him suddenly regain all his memories and playing the part of a normal human being with a Pinnochio complex. The man-child role is a challenging one for skilled actors, in the hands of someone less talented it is embarrassing. Want to guess what it is here?
The second part is undermined by not keeping the bad guy as an unthinking machine. Lundgren's character suddenly regains his psychotic personality. This is clearly someone suffering from a medical problem, not the usual two-dimensional movie killer. A clever plot (think Frankenstein (the book)) might want to try and resolve the problem by playing on the human part of the character; a bad plot would have him kicked to death and chopped to pieces. Want to guess again?
The second problem is the casting. Obviously Carolco couldn't afford the salaries demanded by Schwarzenegger and Stallone, so they had to pick from the B-squad, and it shows. van Damme rolls through this movie on the twin charms of having puppy dog eyes and showing his backside. Lundgren emotes his role with all the charm of a run-down Speak and Spell machine. (Which is odd, because when I've seen Dolph Lundgren interviewed he's witty and charming; but put him in front of the movie camera and you're wondering if someone has forgotten to flick the 'ON' switch).
Individually they are painful to watch; together - excruciating.
It's not a complete loss on the performance front; if you watch very carefully you'll see that Ally Walker is in fact acting (and stands out a mile for doing so). Her lines are ludicrous, her character is painfully underdeveloped but Walker does a reasonable job of trying to play a halfway-realistic character. Sadly what starts off as an independent, successful woman is quickly reduced to bimbette status screaming on the sidelines. So much for feminism.
Is there anything else to recommend this movie. No, not really, there is a neat abseiling stunt near the beginning and lots of stuff blows up, but for the first time in my life I would have to admit that not nearly enough stuff blows up.
Universal Soldier's greatest contribution to movie history has to be that it helped sink Carolco. Cinema audiences stayed away in droves from this charmless production and it is perhaps best remembered for the desperate publicity 'fight' between Lundgren and van Damme at Cannes. The franchise spawned some sequels with ever decreasing budgets. The directors, Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin went on to make two even worse, but somehow more successful movies - 'Stargate' and 'Independence Day'. The two leads descended to the bottom shelf of your local video store never to return. Ally Walker sadly vanished from our screens and you still can't buy cans of Unisol.
'Universal Soldier' is best watched on a long cold winter's night when you don't want to go to bed and there is nothing else on television.
But then again, have you considered taking up astronomy?