Soldier

Rating:
Summary: "Do you know how much it costs to breed you, you big moron?"
Review: Paul W.S. Anderson's "Soldier" is a film with a fascinating premise. Unfortunately, that premise was never realized to its full potential. What could have been a gritty, science fiction equivalent of "Shane" is instead a derivative cinematic mess that is shockingly devoid of energy or conviction. Oh, what could have been.

Sgt. Todd (Kurt Russell) is a legend in his own time but faces obsolescence when a new generation of genetically-enhanced super soldiers arrive on the scene. When Todd is forced to combat Sgt. Caine (Jason Scott Lee), it becomes painfully apparent that he and his colleagues are inferior to their successors. Todd is left for dead on a junkyard planet but finds a new purpose for himself when he becomes the protector of the planet's inhabitants. Forced into a showdown with the soldiers that replaced him, Todd stands his ground and proves to the military commanders overseeing the battle that new is not necessarily better than old.

"Soldier" is an empty and hollow film which boasts some great visuals but little else. The film feels like a series of skits that were assembled with no transitions between them. Furthermore, the embattled populace that Todd protects is so thinly developed that we form no interest in their plight. When they come under fire, they strike the viewer as merely actors and actresses feigning panic. They do not come across as living, breathing cinematic characters who are being threatened by the situation at-hand. Thus, there is no vested emotional interest in seeing Todd save the day. Making matters worse is the wooden performance Lee delivers. The charismatic Jason Scott Lee from "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story" (1993) is nowhere to be found here. His character is a bore and easily one of the least-convincing baddies of the 1990's. Russell tries his best to salvage the film but in the end "Soldier" winds up being one of those films that leaves you wondering to yourself why you dropped good money to see it.

Rating:
Summary: You Gotta Be Kidding?!
Review: This has to be one of the worst sci-fi movies of all time and definitely the worst movie Kurt Russel has ever done.

The genetically-bred/robot soldier story has become so cliche and overdone that it would now take a lot more imagination for such a film to be good than what this trash has to offer. Kurt Russel doesn't really act in this movie as he has an even smaller script than Schwarzenneger had in "Terminator." In terms of quality, "Escape From New York" would really be Oscar material in light of this garbage.

The story is utterly predictable and the action is weak. Terrible film. Don't believe the great reviews for this movie and save yourselves both money and time.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific B movie action adventure science fiction film
Review: Written as sort of a sequel to Blade Runner (it takes place within the same universe) by David Peeples (Unforgiven, Blade Runner), Soldier is a rarity now days; it's a B-Movie masquerading as an A movie. I said it was a rarity because it also doesn't have any pretentions to be anything but that. Kurt Russell plays a man born and bred to be a ruthless, brutal soldier. When he's injured, he's discarded like yesterday's news on a planet where much of Earth's waste is dumped. When the latest genetically enhanced soldiers arrive to dispose of the inhabitants of the planet, Russell's character is pushed into action; he's discovered the barest hints of humanity and compassion that was always denied him before. He's taken to these underdogs and they to him almost as a family.

In many respects the plot for Solider could have been lifted from a Clint Eastwood Western. Here's The Man With No Name suddenly discovering an emotional core he never knew he had. He helps the less fortunate not because of pity but because he realizes he finally belongs. Russell's performance is masterful. While the Russell doesn't have much dialog, he manages to convey what makes the character tick with minimum discussion. Russell uses body language to communicate as much as the dialog. In many respects, he's a variation on the character of Rick Deckard from Blade Runner. He's a man of action that ceases to exist between assignments. This cypher like character suddenly discovers he is more than his past and his actions. In the process he rediscovers his own humanity. Soldier makes a complimentary piece to the Mad Max series.

The film uses the action and science fiction genre for a springboard to examine a lot of different themes and issues but, make no mistake, it is still an ACTION film. The stunts are well choregraphed and the visual effects effective but it isn't drenched in the CGI we've come to expect movies of this type to have.

The DVD transfer is very good as is the audio quality. The extras includes commentary by director Paul W. S. Anderson (Event Horizon, Resident Evil), a theatrical trailer, production notes and both the wide and full screen editions of the movie. My only complaint is the fact that writer David Peeples isn't given any room for a commentary track. Since he's truly the author of the film (and it was intended as a sequel of sorts or companion piece to Blade Runner), it would have been very interesting to get his take on the finished product.

Solider isn't Citizen Kane nor does it pretend to be; it's like many of the classic B-Movies of the 50's to the 80's (most notably The Terminator)in that there's far more than meets the eye going on here.

Rating:
Summary: Ugh, this old theme again?
Review: ...

Anyway, I would call this movie mediocre. Okay plot, but nothing to expansive. The acting is okay, but over emotional and predictable. The plotline in particular is very predictable. From the moment Kurt Russell falls off the rope wall fight event, with his opponent, whom he scars, you know that you will see his scarred opponent again elsewhere in the movie. The movie's main villain, a westpoint snob, is like a Snidley Whiplash ripoff, with a weapon wielding Dudley Do-right ...

The action is decent, but the usual predictable implications of honor, and veiled morals are evident.

In short nothing special. Seen a million others just like it.

Rating:
Summary: A very emotional action film! My mom was in tears!
Review: As far as memorable action movies come, I have extremely hard time forgetting Curt Russell's Soldier. The premise of Soldier is great. It is about a ice-human killing machine who wants to feel. But unlike other people Todd (Russell) grew up under millitary control that brainwashed him to be nothing more but a killer. It is hard journey for Todd, he has to become human and in the process he will kick some serious butt.

Rating:
Summary: Expression
Review: excellent action movie, but falls too much under a basic "action movie" during the end. THe things that save this from being a Jean-Cluad Van Damme film are one, Kurt Russels expressions on his face( ANd the fact he BLINKS ONLY ONCE!) and the unique approach to the battlefield of tomorrow. THe beginning with the kids being shot and them witnissing boars being slaughtered is the genious of how paul anderson can make things disturbing (EVENT HORIZON).

Rating:
Summary: Kurt Russell does it all with his face.
Review: As much as I like the storyline, what makes this film is the fine job Kurt Russell does with only a half-dozen or so lines. It is the lines on his face that convey what is going on inside this charactor whose only feelings are "fear and discipline". This is a terrific story of awakening humanity in an individual deprived from birth of such things, and some of the best scenes are between Russell and Connie Nelson's character as he tries to fit into the frightening world of normal life. I knocked off a couple of stars for "borrowed" plot lines from similar-themed films, and gave one back for Russell's fine performance.

Rating:
Summary: 5 Star Soldier
Review: This movie is a must for every action fan.
The DVD contains a perfect video- and audio transfer + some nice extras. Kurt Russell did a great job. He must trained so hard to come in superb shape for that movie.
I think he is a great actor and shows the audience that there is still hope and love in that destroyed character "Todd", not with words but with mime.

Rating:
Summary: Good acting, but poor scientific verisimilitude
Review: ---
SOLDIER is very good praxeological ("soft") speculative fiction in that it employs thoughtful extrapolation of sociological and psychological trends to establish the premises upon which it is based. What's more, anyone who decries Kurt Russell's work in this film betrays an ignorance of acting and a lack of good taste that fits the silly booger perfectly for a career as a newspaper movie critic. More punishing insult I cannot possibly offer.

The problem with this movie is that there are aspects of the production that beat the living hell out of us "hard" science fiction fen. Back in 1969, in his essay "Science Fiction: its nature, faults and virtues" (*The Science Fiction Novel*), Robert A. Heinlein made the following comment on the genre:

"A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method.

"To make this definition cover all science fiction (instead of 'almost all') it is necessary only to strike out the word 'future.'"

In 1981, Heinlein followed up in "Ray Guns and Space Ships" (*Expanded Universe*) with:

"Science Fiction is speculative fiction in which the author takes as his first postulate the real world as we know it, including all established facts and natural laws. The result can be extremely fantastic in content, but it is not fantasy; it is legitimate -- and often very tightly reasoned -- speculation about the possibilities of the real world. This category excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."

And that last particularly sums up the true science fiction fan's problems with SOLDIER. Posit a spacegoing civilization and tell me, please, that they would ever bother going through the expense (economic as well as thermodynamic) and bother of hauling refined metal and other salvagable scrap materials out of one gravity well and then carelessly dumping the stuff on the surface of a planet somewhere else (i.e., at the bottom of yet *ANOTHER* gravity well). Even if they were planning future colonization of that windy mudball, anyone but a mundane (or a dimwitted fan of "soft" sci-fi) would know that all that junk could be more efficiently and cost-effectively used in a microgravity environment (in other words: up in orbit) as raw materials for any contemplated new manufactures. Once you've achieved the technology necessary for spaceflight, it's simply easier and less costly to make most rough and finished goods in space than on a planetary surface. That's true today, and cannot be otherwise in the future.

The whole of this idiocy is summed up by the director's use of a particularly gormless background image: a bloody great aircraft carrier flopped over on its port side (apparently the *USS Franklin Delano Roosevelt* -- like you couldn't set the damned thing down on its keel?) with the island superstructure sticking up at a 45-degree angle. Yeesh.

SOLDIER is an entertaining movie, and I extoll Kurt Russell's work in this film. He is generally quite horribly underappreciated as an actor, and his professionalism -- here as elsewhere -- is beyond reproach. This having been said, would it have killed the silly sonsabitches responsible for the production values in SOLDIER to have gotten input from some people who understand "established facts and natural laws" and who aren't (like writer David Webb Peoples, director Paul W.S. Anderson, and production designer David L. Sawyer) total and absolute mundane cement-heads?

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Note: One of the earlier reviewers mentioned that SOLDIER is set in the same plenum as the inappropriately-titled 1982 movie BLADE RUNNER (drawn, like so many of the past two decades' ghodawful dimwitted "skiffy" flicks, from the work of hack SF writer Philip K. Dick [1928-1982], who is the unspeakably mundane Modern Language Association's present-day darling, his signal claim to fame being a Hugo Award given for THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE [1963], and who has been for the most part largely -- and rightfully -- ignored by hard science fiction fen). The reviewer's surmise is incorrect, as there are also in-joke references to a bunch of other sci-fi movies, including Russell's own ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and the Star Trek film THE WRATH OF KHAN.

Rating:
Summary: A potential great turned terribly wrong
Review: This movie could have been so much better than it was. The original idea for the movie is totally awesome. The idea of a soldier trained from birth into a human killing machine has some potential, but ended up failing miserably. In the first three minutes of watching this movie I got excited because it looked like there was going to be a good movie for to watch. It was the equivalent of watching a football game where there is an 80 yd kickoff return and then the ball is fumbled on the first play.

I enjoyed the movie because I like Kurt Russell and I enjoy just about any movie with guns and a military presence to it. Kurt Russell's character reminded me a little or the Terminator character. The film spent a great deal of time getting the audience to understand the mind and character of the soldier and what they were like. Russell did a good job of playing his part, too bad nobody else did. There really wasn't the cast to support a character that speaks 1 sentence every 10 minutes. The reason why Terminator films and others, in which the star hardly ever speaks, is because of an outstanding supporting cast. Russell needed more than a bunch of B actors with him in this film.

I liked this film, but can perfectly understand why others may not. This isn't a typical Kurt Russell film, he doesn't do very much talking. I'd be shocked if the total number of words he said in the movie was even 100. Make sure you rent this movie before you buy to prevent getting something you really didn't bargain for. There is a place for the story line of this film, but no place for this script.