Jean Claude van Damme might have taken his role in Universal Soldier a bit too seriously, given the way that he is refusing to vacate the silver screen. Granted, he has a decent turn in the tongue-in-cheek JCVD, but aside from that, he hasn’t done much of mention recently – except for star in three additional Universal Soldier films.
This brings us to Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning. (I don’t care how you name it; it’s Universal Solider 4.)
[Full disclosure: I had no idea they made any sequels to the original until I received a manila envelope in the mail. Shortly thereafter, I was unsure whether I was more surprised that studios felt that this film warranted a review, or that the franchise hadn’t died yet.]
Regardless, the disc is on my television stand and primed for viewing, so a complete review will be available after this weekend. Until then, I can only ponder the connection between Luc Devereaux and Jean Claude van Damme. (For a brief moment I also wondered if The Expendables 2 served to propel JCVD and his counterpart Dolph Lundgren back into relevance, but I figure this is more coincidence than anything else.)
For anyone unfamiliar with Universal Soldier, the premise is such: Luc (and Scott – Lundgren) was killed in Vietnam (by each other), effectively providing the army with test subjects for its ambitious new project to reanimate fallen soldiers. Any storyline predicated on the Vietnam hangover cannot flow smoothly, and this one does not. As metallic fighting machines for “UniSol,” which sounds more like a sleep aid than any nefarious plot cooked up by the army, they are the perfect carnage machines, until flashbacks surface for both soldiers. For Luc, he sees his wife; for Scott, he remembers that he needed to kill Luc in order to put in motion his plans for genocide. There are battles. There is violence, but there is no death … because they’re mostly cyborgs.
And this is where van Damme has taken method acting to a new level – let’s call it “method living.”
In Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Luc once again emerges from the depth of obscure mystery. This time, he’s the target of someone else’s wrath, but we need to wonder whether or not this latest foray in front of the camera as Luc is van Damme’s way of flashing back. Is it possible that he saw before his eyes the glory of Bloodsport, or his talent-testing (apply as much sarcasm as you wish here) role as twins in Double Impact? Does the alliterate “Muscles from Brussels” moniker haunt him each day that his frame diminishes with age? Or, does he simply want to outperform the seemingly immortal and much-less-lucid-than-the-Under Siege-days Steven Segal?
Perhaps I’m too pessimistic here and influenced by van Damme’s string of duds until he parodied himself 2008 and then lent his voice to Kung Fu Panda 2 in 2011.
Or, perhaps I’m thrown off by the notion that a cyborg can age.
Regardless, the PTSD issues emerging from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan are sure to provide a context and backdrop for this and subsequent installments, but couldn’t this theme be given the diligence it deserves and not a movie that is in itself a flashback to others just like it?
