Did the world really need yet another Universal Soldier movie? Well, no. But at least this one is "official", in the way that it's got the original ensemble, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. This time we get Andrei "The Pitbull" Arlovski as well.
The story is simple. Terrorists have placed bombs at the abandoned Chernobyl Nuclear reactor and threatens to blow the place up (thus exposing the core) if their terms aren't met.
This wouldn't normally be such a problem, but unfortunately they have a scientist from the Universal Soldier program on board, and he brought along some of his "experiments": The Next Generation Universal Soldier (NGU). And so the original, Luc (Van Damme) is found and brought into action again. But he will not face only one, but two Universal adversaries.
Sure, the movie is predictable and clichéd to oblivion, but somehow I found it to be pretty entertaining. There is also a long cut with Van Damme kicking ass which I first believed would be done in one long take. Unfortunately it wasn't. It was still a relatively long take, and kudos to the directors for that.
In the end we have a fairly polished B-movie. Effects are reasonably well done, acting is mostly pretty pathetic, but it's all quite entertaining in its own way. I give the movie 7 out of 10 which is based on the fact that it's a b-movie (straight to video) and the fact that I didn't really expect much from it. Solid effort.
The story is simple. Terrorists have placed bombs at the abandoned Chernobyl Nuclear reactor and threatens to blow the place up (thus exposing the core) if their terms aren't met.
This wouldn't normally be such a problem, but unfortunately they have a scientist from the Universal Soldier program on board, and he brought along some of his "experiments": The Next Generation Universal Soldier (NGU). And so the original, Luc (Van Damme) is found and brought into action again. But he will not face only one, but two Universal adversaries.
Sure, the movie is predictable and clichéd to oblivion, but somehow I found it to be pretty entertaining. There is also a long cut with Van Damme kicking ass which I first believed would be done in one long take. Unfortunately it wasn't. It was still a relatively long take, and kudos to the directors for that.
In the end we have a fairly polished B-movie. Effects are reasonably well done, acting is mostly pretty pathetic, but it's all quite entertaining in its own way. I give the movie 7 out of 10 which is based on the fact that it's a b-movie (straight to video) and the fact that I didn't really expect much from it. Solid effort.