With the imminent release of a third Universal Soldier movie, this time reuniting stars Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, I thought I'd better check out the first sequel, Universal Soldier: The Return.
Oh dear. Unlike Roland Emmerich's first Universal Soldier, 'Return' has absolutely no aspirations to be an epic, A-list action movie. This is cheap, dumb (and not in that fun way, I so enjoy) and crap. JCVD's character Luc Deveraux now works as a chief consultant on a revived Unisol project. The super soldiers are now controlled by mega-computer S.E.T.H. But the oversized Mac goes all War Games, Devereaux (along with yet another female reporter) just has to hold on to the termination codes for 8 hours, in order to shut off the silicone bad boy. To make matters stupider, S.E.T.H. transfers his programming into the souped up frame of one Michael Jai White...just so we can get a big face off, at the end.
It's directed with all the flair of a dire '80's cop show and acted with a fraction of the talent behind an American daytime soap. Half the time is spent enclosed in a confined, Canadian warehouse...where they escape to a hospital (where all the orderlies look like wrestlers)...to then return to the cramp confines of the Canadian warehouse. The action is generic and accompanied by some cool metal tracks, which, unfortunately, just dumb the thing down even more.
It will now take all of my will power to watch the next installment. Or if I'm lucky, a Unisol might strike me down now...
