Allen Shapiro, Craig Baumgarten and Joel B. Michaels
Screenplay:
Richard Rothstein, Christopher Leitch and Dean Devlin
Music:
Christopher Franke
Cast:
Luc Deveraux: Jean Claude Van Damme
Andrew Scott: Dolph Lundgren
Veronica Roberts: Ally Walker
Col. Perry: Ed O'Ross
Dr. Gregor: Jerry Orbach
Woodward: Leon Rippy
Garth: Tico Wells
When I first saw Universal Soldier
at the cinema, I thought it was unworthy junk. It didn't make a lot of sense
and nothing gelled together. When I saw it again a few months later at the
Keele Film Society, it was still as cheesy, but everything clicked into place
and I hugely enjoyed it. I do so even more now.
The film starts in Vietnam, 1969, when Sgt. Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren)
and his underling Luc Deveraux (Jean Claude Van Damme) are on tour and
Scott's going a little loopy. Deveraux's suspicions are confirmed when Scott
corners a Vietnamese couple, shoots the man in the head and blows the girl
up with a grenade as she tries to run off. An exchange of gunfire later and
the two soldiers are dead.
Fast forward to the present day - well, 1992 to be exact - and the US army are,
unbeknown to the government, resurrecting dead soldiers so as to retrain them
as super-human cyborgs - or Universal Soldiers (UniSol) - and carry out deadly
missions so as not to endanger those still left as a regular human being.
A big explosion.
Just one problem: on their third mission - and the one on which we join them -
Luc's starting to remember his past when he spots a familiar female face
amongst the hostages. At the same time, roving reporter Veronica Roberts
(Ally Walker) sneaks into the UniSol compound with her cameraman, but
when he is summarily executed by Scott in the same way as done in Vietnam,
to cut a long story short she takes off with Luc and they go on the run - she
trying to save her life and him trying to understand his.
What follows is a first class action chase film, something Van Damme fails to
do regularly. It's packed full of witty one-liners, such as when Luc asks
Veronica to remove a tracking device placed somewhere about his naked person,
proclaiming "look for something hard", as he moves her hand towards his
nether regions; and visual gags such as later in a restaurant fight scene
when Luc knocks a guy out and throws him onto a pool table causing most of the
balls to be pocketed (!)
Big, loud and very proud, director Roland Emmerich and co-screenwriter
Dean Devlin, not handling the producing reins this time, deliver
nearly 100-minutes of action-packed delight that raises two fingers and shout
a big 'fuck off' to just about anything Van Damme or Dolph Lundgren have
done before or since.
Ooh, he looks pissed off.
This film didn't have a happy life when first released as a widescreen video.
Placed inside a box-set with a colour-change T-shirt that reacted to your
body sweat - all the rage in the early 90s - the picture was cropped to a
paltry 1.66:1 ratio. A few months later, a single-tape video was made
available in 2.35:1, but not as part of the same boxset.
Thankfully, everything has been put right here. 2.35:1 again, but anamorphic
for a marked increase in resolution, I spotted a couple of so-slight
defects throughout the film that you'd see on just about any print,
plus some minor artifacts that you only notice with your face pressed against
the screen, but on the whole it looks damn fine for a nine-year-old movie.
The average bitrate is a fairly high but erratic 7.59Mb/s.
Momentum Pictures have delivered the good in giving us not only a Dolby Digital
5.1 soundtrack, but a spanking fresh DTS 5.1 which kicks major ass in the
fight and action scenes, is at its best when it comes to big explosions
and provides crystal clear atmospheric effects even in the quietest moments
with split-surround phonics that made me feel like my ears were blocked with a
cold (this is good, by the way, because it demonstrates the capability of
the sound format).
Oh - and Germans are only treated to plain Dolby Surround.
# "Dolph's got a brand new combine harvester,
Jean'll give him the key." #
The extras consist of 2 Trailers, one teaser (1 minute) and one theatrical
(2½ minutes), both in non-anamorphic 16:9. The Making Of Universal Soldier
is seven minutes of chat with the cast and crew interspersed by non-anamorphic
film clips in 1.66:1 (15:9) and the Behind-the-scenes footage is 15½
minutes of B-roll work in progress on-set material. Finally, comes a feature-length
Audio Commentary track from director Roland Emmerich and
co-screenwriter Dean Devlin.
The disc contains a decent 20 chapters, subtitles in English, German, Dutch
and Turkish and the menus contain some action noises and clips from the film.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
