Inspired by Sean's near nude picture of Jean Claude, and inspired by Dolph Lundgren's gripping performance in Rocky IV, and inspired by my love for ear necklaces, and inspired by everything awesome that ever existed, I decided to Netflix (is that officially a verb now?) Universal Soldier. I used to love this movie. According to wikipedia, it is a trilogy now. This excites me a great deal. They are also making a FOURTH Universal Soldier starring the original leads and set in a "more modern setting" than, um, the early 90's? The first Universal Soldier was not a period action piece. It was awesome though.
Here's pretty much what happened:
The movie starts with Jean Claude standing in a rain-soaked Vietnam. That war had so much rain. Then, Jean Claude tells everyone to leave. Except they can't leave because they are all dead. Dolph Lundgren killed them. He then cut off their ears and made a necklace out of them. His ear fetish was not explained. Nor was his hysteria. We just needed to know he thought everyone was a traitor, and that he was CRAZY. His craziness was accentuated when he shot two innocent Vietnamese people. Similarly, Jean Claude was not crazy because he wanted the Vietnamese people to live. Unfortunately both Jean Claude and Dolph killed each other three minutes into the movie.
WHAT!?!?! The leads can't die.
Oh yes, they can. Because the Vietnam clean-up crew can cryptically said, "Put those bodies on ice." As an unknowing member of the audience, I was sure intrigued. Why would they need to put a corpse on ice? Because obviously the government needed a whole slew of dead soldiers to reanimate into super killer brainwashed Universal Soldiers. And also of course, the world could not know about these soldiers.
Transition to the future! Some bad guy terrorists of Arab decent (like all of them) have hijacked a dam. A dam? Yes, a dam. They were going to, um, I don't know, terrorist the place or something. The local law enforcement was so useless in this situation. They couldn't save anybody. Then all of a sudden the government sent in some soldiers. Man were they impressive! They started to climb the well and take out the guards and all of a sudden boom! solved the dynamite. The mission went off without a hitch except for that brainwashed super Jean Claude saw a Vietnamese couple tied up and flashed back to the time in Vietnam where Dolph killed a Vietnamese couple. The movie was nice enough to show us this flashback even though it had happened only seven minutes prior. Thanks Roland Emmerich, director extraordinaire!
The movie then cut to a bossy reporter. We were supposed to find her sassy and out of control because she was sassy and out of control! She smoked cigarettes and wore a men's jacket. Can you believe this girl? Being a part of the liberal media, she of course didn't believe the sergeant who told the press that his elite team of soldiers was to remain classified. She ended up convincing her cameraman to sneak into a military base! They snuck in by driving straight into the military base. Security sure was light for a top secret ultra classified genetic brainwashing lab.
And it turns out the sergeant was corrupt and did not want to admit his program had some deficiencies. The nerdy scientists tried to tell him that Jean Claude is starting to remember his past. What they don't know is Dolph does too. Some stuff happens and Jean Claude escapes with the obnoxious reporter chick right after Dolph shoots the cameraman. All hell breaks loose. Then the typical action sequences begin.
Typical action sequence: Calm moment, followed by introduction of funny and/or obnoxious character, false character development, bad guys show up, bad guys confront funny and/or obnoxious character, bad guys start to shoot up everything to no avail, good guy escapes using trickery, bad guys huff and puff and leave the scene, funny and/or obnoxious characters stares in disbelief and sums up the situation with a hilarious one-liner.
The first action sequence took place at a hotel with an obnoxious night watchmen. He was so greedy because he tried to bribe the reporter and Jean Claude for cash when all they wanted was a room with a working phone. That's not too much to ask. He asked for a $20 security deposit. Then his entire hotel got blown up to hell. His mother condescendingly asked him, "only a $20 security deposit?" Who knocked on Action's house and let in Comedy?
The second action sequence took place at a gas station with a funny gas station attendant. He was flummoxed. His gas station exploded, but he didn't care because he got Jean Claude's shirt. Also, the reporter felt Jean Claude's penis and decided she wanted to help him figure out who he was.
The third action sequence took place at a diner for no reason. Jean Claude ordered plate after plate of food. Finally the waitress got angry because she assumed Jean Claude couldn't pay. We don't know why she felt this way. She then called over the cook who was insulted that Jean Claude wasn't going to pay for all the food the cook made him even though Jean Claude very well might have paid if given the opportunity. We don't know because the whole diner started to beat up Jean Claude because they really believed food should be paid for halfway through a meal. Jean Claude of course, being a super upgraded reanimated fighting guy, beat them all up, even the strong guys playing pool.
Then the bad guys showed back up and Jean Claude killed them all. We know this because he walked away without making sure Dolph was dead but after watching all the other ones die. Clearly Dolph was dead. Also sometime before that, Dolph killed all the nerdy scientists and Jean Claude found out that the program was created so the government could have super soldiers...um, thanks? Did they really need to tell us that one hour into the movie? I'm pretty sure that was obvious the second the government-created super soldiers showed up and stopped the terrorists at the danger dam.
Because all the bad guys were clearly dead, Jean Claude and the stupid reporter that never got naked went to Jean Claude's parents' house. His parents acted rather subdued seeing as their son that died in Vietnam returned home twenty years later looking exactly the same. They also took the story about him now being a zombie soldier with a lot of grace. That's good parenting. Love your children for who they are! Then the reporter left, in the rain, in the rain like Vietnam, uh oh, I had a bad feeling about this. She tried to start the car, but then Dolph showed up in the same outfit that he had on in Vietnam (there was a GAP on the way to the Jean Claude farm) including his weird hair tassle thing. He also had an ear necklace. Good for him for stubbornly holding on to his fashion ideals in light of his clear craziness!
The fight scene in the rain commenced with Dolph giving some of the best acting of all time. Dolph's delivery of, "I'll shoot her in the head," made me weep. Bravo you actor for all that acting you do! Eventually, just when it looked like Jean Claude would die, Dolph got cut up inside of a combine or something. I don't know what it was. It was a farm though, so it was probably a combine. I know it wasn't a tractor. Maybe it was a wood shredder? Do those exist? I should know all of this. ANYWAYS, the big question is how does Dolph Lundgren come back for the third movie when he's now symbolically chopped up into little ear sized pieces? I hope it's as good as Chucky's reanimation in Child's Play 2.
This movie is great. Yes, it was lame as hell and there was no plot at all aside from "bad guy want good guy dead good guy need to kill bad guy." The soldiers started to remember their real selves after one scene for crying out loud. They could have milked the Universal Soldiering for at least two more scenes. Oh well though, right? The fact that the movie follows every convention of an early 90's movie, including absolutely no character development, earns it seven ear necklaces.
I really wanted to find Youtube videos of Dolph Lundren shouting, "Let's shoot her in the head!" and the diner fight, but I couldn't. Instead, I'll leave you with this:
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