The new Universal Soldier picture, the latest in the series about genetically-modified supermen raging against their government creators, is a curious exercise in cognitive dissonance; here you have an action flick high on gory, bone-crunching slicing and dicing and kicking and punching — everything star and Ben Affleck doppelganger Scott Adkins (Undisputed II and III) can possibly do to evoke oohs and aahs in 3-D in the serious-faced, beefy fashion of his '80s and '90s predecessors — and yet director John Hyams didn't sound completely delusional this week at Fantastic Fest when he said his UniSol fourquel was influenced by David Cronenberg, Michael Haneke, and (yes, I see it, kinda!) even art house provocateur Gaspar Noe.
Stylistically these references are obvious, even if they add little to the overarching point of Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning 3D. Hyams opens with a neat, tricksy sequence that sets up the plot (and makes the best use of 3-D) through the first-person POV of family man John (Adkins); forced to watch as masked intruders murder his wife and child, we see through John's eyes as he's beaten to near-death, the only lasting clue left in his brain being the stone-faced mug of Jean-Claude Van Damme (reprising his role as veteran UniSol Luc Deveraux).
When John comes to in a hospital recovery bed with nothing but the lingering memory of that night, he sets out to put the missing puzzle pieces together, which leads him to a strip club and a dancer (Mariah Bonner) who seems to know him. Meanwhile, an agent nicknamed The Plumber (Belarusian MMA fighter Andrei Arlovsky) is activated to wipe out his own kind but is re-educated by a swaggering, confident ex-UniSol (Dolph Lundren) bent on spreading the…
Amber Brkich Amber Heard Amber Valletta America Ferrera Amerie Amy Cobb Amy Smart Ana Beatriz Barros
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