When I saw that they were actually releasing a "Universal Soldier" sequel in theaters, I just shook my head. When will Van Damme just give it up already, how many times can his movies bomb before studio executives stop sending him scripts? Honestly, who green-lighted this movie in the first place? Did they see money-making potential somewhere? Personally, I don't think there was a script, I think they just hooked Van Damme up with Michael Jai White (anyone remember "Spawn"?) and Bill Goldberg and said, "you guys are basically gonna kick the crap out of each other and we'll try to incorporate some kind of plot line into all the violence". Van Damme is at his usual acting worst in this picture, but surprisingly Michael Jai White and Bill Goldberg do an above par job of acting. The fight scenes are mesmerizing, particularly the flawlessly executed fight between Van Damme and Jai White. Goldberg has some pretty good fight scenes himself, and he even gets to incorporate some of his trade-mark wrestling moves. Van Damme proves that he is still at the top of his martial arts game, even though he is graying and getting older. Never-the-less, he is still a pleasure to watch in action, it's just his acting that makes you look at your watch couple of minutes when there is not action going on. The romance between Van Damme and the reporter is so contrived and shallow that it will make you nauseous, as will the whole sub-plot (if you can call it one) with Van Damme's daughter. But if you can look past a silly plot and horrible acting, you will find a great no holds-barred action movie that boasts some incredible fights and lots of explosions and gratuitous deaths. My only other complaint other than a lack of script and an over-abundance of bad acting is that the sets looked too cheap. They looked as they were borrowed from some straight-to-video movie set...hmmmmm? Anyway, I wouldn't pay $6.50 to see this, but I would recommend seeing it when it's at the cheapie theater.
Review of Universal Soldier: The Return
