I come here to tell you a tale of 2 of the best movies you've probably never seen, possibly never heard of.
And I'm not talking good in a "so bad it's good way", I'm talking good in a "arguably the most original, exciting, and best-shot American action films of the last few years" good. In a time when garbage like A Good Day to Die Hard is what passes for blockbuster R-rated movies, in a little quiet corner, John Hyams has been putting his heart and soul into making kickass action films that also break new ground and push the genre forward.
If you liked Dredd and were shocked by how good it was despite the marketing, these 2 films are worth giving a shot.

It's especially relevant now as the most recent of the two, Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning, is on Netflix Streaming, where I highly recommend you seek it out and give it a watch.

Still with me? Good, in that case, we need to start at the beginning.

The original Universal Soldier was an early 90s sci-fi action film starring Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, about a military program that uses regenerated dead bodies as unstoppable soldiers. Truth be told, it was a cheesy, lame rip-off of The Terminator, and does not hold up particularly well at all.

The theatrical sequel Universal Soldier: The Return, in 1999, was so terrible that it effectively ended Van Damme's theatrical movie career.

It seemed destined to be a series that would fade into obscurity, until 2008, when a young director named John Hyams came along to breathe new life into the series. John Hyams, son of Peter Hyams (B-movie director of 2010: A Space Odyssey, TimeCop, and Outland) clearly felt he had something to prove, because what he ended up making was not only the best direct-to-video action movie ever made, but one of the best action movies of that year PERIOD:

Universal Soldier Regeneration

Effectively a reboot of the series, it takes the concept of re-animated soldiers and grounds it in a very bleak realism with a simple plot. Terrorists kidnap the Ukranian presidents children and take over Chernobyl, threatening to blow up the reactor and the kids. They have a rogue scientist who has brought along stolen US military tech: 2 functioning Universal Soldier models (Andrei Arlovski and Dolph Lundgren), which the rebels will use to stop any attempt at taking back the reactor. The military, as a last result, has to re-activate the original Universal Soldier model (Van Damme) to rescue the kids and take out the rebels.

More than anything, this movie feels like a B-action movie filtered through the Children of Men aesthetic by way of John Carpenter. The cinematography (DP'd by Peter Hyams) is cold, atmospheric, gloom. The film is mostly set at the Chernobyl power reactor and you absolutely feel the cold, oppressive isolation of the location. The score is an excellent ambient drone, reminiscent of 80s John Carpenter films and the first Terminator.

Gone is any semblance of humour or cheesiness. These re-animated soldiers are treated as terrifying murder machines, who will run right at you and bludgeon you to death by punching you in the face repeatedly.
More interestingly, the movie actual manages to strike a tragic, somber tone. These soldiers are Frankenstein monsters, no sense of their past, no sense of purpose, simply following orders. Old worn out weapons of war duking it out. Dolph Lundgren gets a chilling monologue as he struggles with the faintest of memories, and realizes that him and Van Damme are just re-fighting decades old battles. "We've been over this all before" he says, in a bit reminiscent of the ending of Blade Runner.

This more sophisticated tone and thematic content is coupled with bone-crunching, extremely effective action sequences. Van Damme in particular gets some of the best action of his career here, including sequences shot in long extended takes, heavily influenced by Children of Men:

As an objective viewer, Universal Soldier Regeneration is an impressive B action movie and a hell of a feature debut for a talented rookie director. As a Direct-To-Video sequel to a poorly received, largely forgotten action series, it's a fucking miracle.

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So now, after making his mark, one might expect Mr. Hyams to try to reproduce his success.
Well, in 2012 he defied expectations again, releasing Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning, and instead of playing it safe, he went absolutely fucking crazy with it:

This time out, all continuity is thrown out the window yet again, and the series is effectively reset from scratch, as a bizarre, hypnotic, David-Lynchian fever-dream, punctuated with absolutely brutal and amazing action sequences.

This time, Van Damme is the bad guy, having gone rogue and started building an army of Universal Soldiers out in the Louisiana wilderness. In a clear riff on Col. Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, he is only glimpsed in small bits and pieces throughout the film, often in strobing, hallucinatory dream sequences, and our hero will have to travel up river to confront him.

In the opening sequence, the protagonist of the film, John (played by rising martial arts badass Scott Adkins), is woken in the middle of the night by intruders in his house and forced to watch his wife and daughter executed in front of him. Van Damme is one of the perpetrators. This happens in an extremely unnerving extended take POV sequence reminiscent of Enter the Void and the rape scene in Strange Days. Next thing we know, its 9 months later, and John has woken from a coma, with most of his memory missing. The rest of the film plays very strange and off balance, as John struggles with his memory and keeps running across people who know more about what's going on than he does. Gradually, he will piece together what has been going on (there is still a sci-fi element in play), engage in car chases and battles with a mysterious psychopath known only as "The Plumber", and travel up river to confront Van Damme and settle his fate.

This film continues the Frankenstein approach to the Universal Soldiers, exploring how these re-animated weapons try to find purpose and meaning. Van Damme (and his right hand man this time Lundgren) preach enlightenment to their newly recruited army, but are they really just another puppet-master for these disillusioned souls? John is pitted between Van Damme's faction and the Government, and he will ultimately have to choose his own path in life. It's interesting thematically, but thankfully for us, that path also involves a 25 minute blood-bath massacre that will knock you on your ass.

That's the great thing about Day of Reckoning, it's a weird, experimental art film, and also a balls-to-the-wall exploitation action film, and the combination of the two mixed together feels totally original. I can't guarantee you'll like it, but I guarantee you won't see anything like it.

Like I said, it's up on Netflix and worth giving a shot just for the crazy action that kicks in throughout the second half, though be warned, the movie is extremely violent, brutal, and full of strobing flashes, so epileptics stay away. Hate it/Love it, report back what you think.

Last edited by bullet3 (2013-03-07 07:02:43)