If you instead think of Soldier
as being directed by Paul Andersen who did last year’s chiller set
in outer space, Event Horizon which consisted of bits stolen from other
(better) movies, then you might stand a better chance at not being disappointed
by this movie. Like Event Horizon, Soldier is hacked together
with bits stolen from other movies, the most notably being those 1980s-style
Rambo movies. Yup, that’s right: Soldier never goes
beyond the macho action man killing off all the baddies one by one and
then finally facing off against one single opponent in a drawn-out hand-to-hand
fight scene. Pretty disappointing stuff coming from the same pen as the
man who gave us two veritable modern sci-fi classics . . .
Odds are that Soldier was probably more interesting on paper than
how it eventually turned out to be on celluloid. This suspicion is confirmed
at the start of the movie where we allowed to witness key scenes from
the training the main character played by Kurt Russell (who speaks even
less than he did in Escape from L.A.) underwent
since childhood.
To recap: Russell is trained from birth to be the ultimate
soldier – cold, emotionless, ruthless, to follow orders without questioning,
etc. He is more of a machine as much as the replicants (androids) hunted
by Deckard back on earth in Blade Runner. However, like all machines
he becomes redundant when even better genetically engineered soldiers
are introduced and like a piece of machinery he is left for dead and discarded
like an old piece of machinery on a planet used for dumping trash.
Until about this point Soldier
is vaguely interesting, but things take a sharp downward turn from there
on: on the planet he is taken in by a group of refugees who becomes the
target of the new genetically engineered troops who are out on a practice
run. Russell, well, kills them all – just as he vowed to do in the
trailers – and the film becomes a pure Rambo action film.
Taken as an example of this particular brand of action movie, Soldier
makes for passable entertainment. The special effects and production designs
are good. Russell is also clever enough to sustain his military man persona
throughout the movie – he "Sirs" everybody, for example.
Soldier throws some dangling leads at its start at what it could
have been. Recently I’ve seen quite a few movies dealing with similar
themes of war, emotionally dysfunctional soldiers and a newer breed of
killer taking over from the old, namely Saving Private Ryan, Savior
and The Wild Bunch. All of these movies are much better
and I would recommend any one of them over Soldier. Even taken
as a loud no-brainer action movie you’ll find that Soldier
ends rather abruptly and unsatisfyingly . . .
If you’ve heard that Soldier
is written by David Webb Peoples who also wrote the excellent