Waste Of A Good Dolph

I feel cheated. I feel swindled. In order to watch Universal Soldier: Regeneration, the third movie starring Jean Claude Van Damme as Luc Devereaux, I thought I'd have to watch the second movie 'Return' to ensure I was up to speed. Three things have now come to light. That Universal Soldier: The Return is shit. That it in no way explained what happened to Devereuax in the intervening years since the first movie. And that Universal Soldier 3 has NOTHING to do with the second film, making that experience a waste of my life (except to warn you good people).

Regeneration has a second generation of Unisol, which is appropriately unstoppable, assist some Russian freedom fighters as they take control of the abandoned Chernobyl reactor and threaten to release a lethal radiation cloud. The Unisol program has been shut down, so the remaining first generation Unisols are sent in to take down the big bad (played by Andre 'The Pitball' Arlovski)...which they spectacularly fail to do. So they track down Van Damme's Devereaux, who is undergoing treatment to deprogram him from his killing ways, and make him a bad ass once more.

There's two sides to this film. On the positive side, it's a good thriller with a serious tone, solid direction (from son of Peter Hyams, John) and a strong central nuclear blackmail plot. As an action film it's less bullshitty and more adult...there aren't any electric guitars accompanying the fisticuffs on this one.

As a character story, it's a failure. Van Damme who was home, pretty much human and happy at the resolution of the first film is an unhappy, introverted, near catatonic zombie at the beginning of Regeneration...and that's BEFORE he gets converted back into an emotionless killing machine. Some emotional journey. Lungren makes a cameo as a cloned soldier designed to bodyguard the rogue Unisol scientist. It makes no sense why the scientist would recreate a soldier that had gone psycho...or why he's surprised when Dolph goes nuts again. It's just an excuse to have the boys come together for a scrap...and when it does it's completely anti-climatic.

Still it could be much much worse. Yes Universal Soldier The Return...that means you.