UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)
The
dead of night interruption that begins UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF
RECKONING is a familiar one in homes with young children. John (Scott
Adkins) is awakened by his daughter, who claims there are monsters in
their house. The dutiful father gets out of bed and goes room by room
to assure her that everything is fine. The difference in this situation
is that there really are predators lurking in the dark. A trio of
black-clad bad guys clobber John and then execute his wife and child in
front of him.
Nine
months later John awakens from a coma. His memory is shaky, but when
an FBI agent (Rus Blackwell) shows him a photo of Luc Deveraux
(Jean-Claude Van Damme), John recognizes him as the man who murdered his
family. Deveraux was one of the first government-created super
soldiers. Now he leads the UniSol underground against their makers.
Among his troops is Dolph Lundgren reprising his UniSol character in
what amounts to something between a cameo and a supporting role in
screen time.
Upon
his release from the hospital John begins his quest for vengeance with
the assistance of a stripper (Mariah Bonner) who suggests he had a
different life than the one he recalls. Standing in the way is Magnus
(Andrei Arlovski), a sleeper super soldier who Deveraux turns and sends
after John.
After
Roland Emmerich’s UNIVERSAL SOLDIER debuted in 1992, the series
puttered along with a couple TV movies and a 1999 theatrical sequel
until John Hyams revived it in 2009 with REGENERATION, an entry that
went direct-to-video in the United States. For the fourth installment
DAY OF RECKONING director and co-writer Hyams treats ‘90s brain-dead
action like art cinema.
It’s
a far cry from what Van Damme and Lundgren were doing twenty years ago,
but in the end this film comes off like a band that claims all of the
“right” influences in interviews but can’t synthesize good taste into
work of merit. The first-person point of view opening scene, complete
with a blinking eyes effect, recalls Gaspar Noé’s ENTER THE VOID. The
surreal tone of David Lynch’s films heavily informs UNIVERSAL SOLDIER:
DAY OF RECKONING’s unreal and rudderless feeling. The body horror in
David Cronenberg’s oeuvre and APOCALYPSE NOW’s journey ending with
confronting a charismatic leader are also quoted.
With
its muddled story, familiarity with the ongoing UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
series doesn’t appear to matter. If only there weren’t so much of that
ponderous, slow-moving plot leading up to and between the fight scenes.
A car chase that spills into hand-to-hand combat in a sporting goods
store and two climactic boss battles give the primal satisfaction that
action movies can deliver. Hyams’ action chops and some neat
flourishes, like the strobe effect and noise that accompany the
summoning of Deveraux in visions, demonstrate his potential to
invigorate the genre if he find or develop source material that isn’t
such a slog.
Grade: D+
THE EXPENDABLES 2 (Simon West, 2012)
When
the stars of yesteryear lose their luster, it’s common for them to keep
working and try to remain relevant by parodying themselves, sometimes
to the point of debasement. The faded action heroes in THE EXPENDABLES 2
aren’t making mockeries of themselves for the general public’s
amusement, but they’re toeing that line when Chuck Norris turns up
essentially to play along with his own meme.
The
group of mercenaries led by Sylvester Stallone’s Barney Ross are
persuaded once again by CIA operative Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) to do a
job for him and to include Maggie (Yu Nan), one of his own personnel, on
their crew. This time the Expendables, including Lee Christmas (Jason
Statham), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren), and newcomer Billy the Kid
(Liam Hemsworth), are dispatched on a recovery mission in Albania’s
Gazak Mountains.
They
retrieve the desired item but are forced to hand it over when Jean
Vilaine (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and his men intercept them. Vilaine
gives them reason enough to want to hunt him down before Maggie reveals
that they’ve given him a map to the hidden location of five tons of
plutonium.
The
makers of THE EXPENDABLES 2 can claim to have given audiences what they
want. You want action stars, you got ‘em. In addition to the primary
cast of Stallone, Statham, Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and
young blood Hemsworth, also on hand to get their hands dirty are Willis,
Norris, Van Damme, Jet Li, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Scott Adkins.
Looking for numerous action scenes? Here you go.
At
issue, though, is that most of the biggest names are present for what
amount to glorified cameos. Schwarzenegger and Willis get to do more
than they did in the first film, but they’re hardly reliving their glory
days in the genre. Director Simon West doesn’t skimp on shootouts,
which would be all well and good if they weren’t spatially incoherent
and nonsensically cut. A brief sequence of Jet Li battering baddies
with pans is more pleasing to follow than all of the time in which shots
are held for about as long as heavy artillery can fire off a few
rounds.
THE
EXPENDABLES 2 isn’t a parody, yet it doesn’t help its cause naming the
villain Vilaine. The oldies on the soundtrack are reminiscent of what
scores erectile dysfunction pill ads. One-liners like “rest in pieces”
and “I now pronounce you man and knife” are artlessly added and
overused. The movies that many of these guys made in the 1980s and ‘90s
were hardly bulletproof, but this is a cynical exercise in settling for
what is expected to be passable. THE EXPENDABLES 2 doesn’t give the
impression that anyone is making a serious effort, not when they can
coast on nostalgia.
Grade: C-
