Don’t you miss good old fashioned
action movies? You know the ones with the muscled guys that are some type of
military dude that’s unstoppable in some way? The times before CGI took over
and all the big time movies were about superheroes or car drivers. Well it
seems the old guard is there for you to fill that need in your brain. Jean
Claude Van Damme is back again in one of his franchises from his stardom heyday
but this time it’s straight to On Demand.
Universal Solider: Day of Reckoning begins when a group of masked men enter the home of a family, murdering the wife and daughter in front of an unknown man after beating him. Later after an unknown amount of time he awakens in a hospital and we find out his name is John. John decides that he will find the man who did this to him and murdered his family. This man’s name is Luc Deveraux. John then goes on a quest to find out where Deveraux is and in the process learns some things about his own past and origins.
To be completely honest this film
has a lot of problems from pacing to plot to character development and much
more. Other than the very beginning in the setup and the very last 15 minutes
or so none of the movie makes much sense. The main character goes on this
journey but there are times when it goes off to this base with what we are
supposed to believe are other UniSols (The reanimated/clone dead soldiers that
are the focus of the franchise) that are led by Deveraux but all they do is
fight each other. They also focus on this bearded man named Magnus who is
constantly pursuing John much like the Terminator and Jason Voorhees do their
victims. It’s not really explained why he is sent to do so since the scene that
sets it up is randomly inserted into the first act.
In terms of performances there
really isn’t much here to make you want to watch. Jean Claude Van Damme seems
to be having some fun in returning to his role as Luc Deveraux. This time it
feels like he’s playing this character as a super soldier version of Colonel
Kurtz, even sporting the bald head. Scott Adkins does a pretty decent job as John who is driven but doesn’t know what’s really going on, which
probably wasn’t hard since it’s difficult for anyone to know what’s going on in this
movie. Dolph Lundgren is basically playing himself here. They
never really explain how his character, Andrew Scott, is alive again or why
he’s allied with Deveraux after being his enemy. They probably figured no one
really cares. He makes some grave comments and has a couple of quick
fight moments and is pretty much in the movie to sell to fans of the original.
The movie isn’t a complete mess,
though. The action set pieces that involve Magnus killing people and John
facing Magnus in a fight are all really well done and choreographed. The last
20 minutes features a ton of action that flows together nicely. Overall, this movie is at best SyFy Channel material
and the story doesn’t make much sense at all no matter if you’ve seen the
previous movies or if you haven’t. It’s pretty much a waste of time save
yourself the pain of buying it by not.
