From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 2 16:35:02 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.online.no!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!howland.erols.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-west.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!192.220.250.21!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Harvey S. Karten" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 21 Oct 1998 05:03:47 GMT Organization: None Lines: 86 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <70jpvj$dh0$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer35.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 908946227 13856 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #14929 Keywords: author=karten X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer35.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14117 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2137 SOLDIER Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Warner Bros./ Morgan Creek Director: Paul Anderson Writer: David Webb Peoples Cast: Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Connie Nielsen, Michael Chiklis, Gary Busey "Soldier" is yet another video game for the big screen which has momentum and a terrific set going for it. Otherwise it is as formulaic as the genre comes, though the ultimate battle is not between good and evil but between two men who are merely following orders as per their lifelong training. One of the fighters has the moral advantage which insures the support and cheers of the audience, however. He has evolved beyond the role of robosoldier into the beginnings of a human being after his contact with a pacifist community on a distant planet. The principal action of Paul Anderson's film takes place in the middle of the next century, with a military operation that will determine the future of a nice little community that has built a utopia amid the detritus of a common garbage dump. But the story begins from the birth of one particular soldier, Todd (Kurt Russell), who attends a military school that makes West Point look like an institution run by the Green party. Instruction at this academy includes having the elementary school boys watch three Doberman Pinchers tear apart a wild boar, and pits the lads against one another, giving each gold stars, apparently, for the number of successful, bare-fisted punches he lands on his opponent. Needless to say only a small group survive, but even that elite company are put to a severe test when a Robosoldier par excellence, Caine 607 (Jason Scott Lee), and a merry band of fighters virtually annihilate the combatants, making them as obsolete as a B-1 bomber. Todd is left for dead and dumped on a distant planet which, for some reason is invaded by the new breed of fighters with orders to kill every pacifist on the planet. For all its intergalactic, sci-fi histrionics, "Soldier" is really a small-scale venture: in fact, the final battle is really between just one man, Todd, and a small band of invaders. Russell, a fine actor who electrified the movie public with a three- dimensional role in the under-appreciated "Breakdown," gets to say very little, but expresses whatever minimal feelings he has with his eyes. A new study shows that kids really cannot blame their parents for the way they turn out: at least 50% of their character is formed by their contact with peers--most of the rest being by genetic makeup. Jerry Weintraub, who produced the film, is eager to show that with the proper nurturing, even a thirty-something soldier whose only connection with peers has been brutally aggressive can be made into a feeling human being once more. The role of sustainer and nurturer falls to the lovely Sandra (Connie Nielsen), who has a son unable to talk since he was bitten by a snake. Russell is successful in showing how he and the community change one another. As he becomes more human, more loving, the community realizes the need for fighting men. After all you can't defend your land with flowers. There's plenty of firepower here, some brutally violent combat between Russell and Jason Scott Lee, and an overly sentimental scene to conclude the work that gets some in the audience laughing at its stickiness. If Russell does not get much chance to act, he does succeed in showing off some powerful biceps and his courage and ability to do some of his own stunts. This is a movie about a shellshocked military man, though it's hardly in a class with "Regeneration," a recent, sensitive, British offering about a group of World War I soldiers who are institutionalized after having broken down psychologically in the heat of battle. Nor can "Soldier" be regarded as much of anti-war treatise; in fact, in pointing out the naivete of the utopian gardeners and dancers, it is a call for more balance between Mars and Muse. Todd is, after all, ostracized by and exiled from the community because they fear his militarism but is called back when they realize that the pen is not quite mightier than the sword. Ultimately, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a video game is a video game is a video game. Rated R. Running Time: 95 minutes.(C) 1998 Harvey Karten From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 2 16:36:12 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.ecn.ou.edu!independence.ecn.ou.edu!news.ecn.ou.edu!skywalker.ecn.ou.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!logbridge.uoregon.edu!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: PBBP24A@prodigy.com (Edward Johnson-ott) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 23 Oct 1998 04:09:17 GMT Organization: Prodigy Services Company 1-800-PRODIGY Lines: 35 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Distribution: world Message-ID: <70ovhd$1o8i$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer24.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 909115757 57618 (None) 140.142.17.39 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #14951 Keywords: author=johnson-ott X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer24.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14165 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2141 Soldier (1998) Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Connie Nielsen, Michael Chiklis, Gary Busey, Sean Pertwee, Jason Isaacs. Written by David Webb Peoples. Directed by Paul Anderson. Rated R, 1.5 stars (out of five stars) Review by Ed Johnson-Ott, NUVO Newsweekly www.nuvo-online.com Archive reviews at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Edward+Johnson-ott To receive reviews by e-mail at no charge, send subscription requests to pbbp24a@prodigy.com Author's Note: By my count, Kurt Russell says only 104 words during the futuristic fight movie, "Soldier." I'll attempt to do the same in the following review. Russell plays super-soldier trained from birth. Name, blood type and rank tattooed on face. Russell looks great, extremely buff. His humanity buried by training. New genetically-engineered soldiers, including Jason Scott Lee, makes him obsolete. Russell discarded on waste planet. What, no recycling? Meets hippie colonists. Stays stoic. Stares at pretty woman, saves young boy, gets banished because he scares the hippies. Sits alone, tears flow silently in slo-mo. Touching. New soldiers arrive. Russell fights them. Many battle scenes, some pretty cool. Movie like long World Wrestling Federation match with explosions and cheesy special effects. Genetically-engineered soldiers die way too easy. For testosterone freaks only. Postscript: 104 words. Mission accomplished, sir. © 1998 Ed Johnson-Ott From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 2 16:36:40 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.online.no!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Ssg722@aol.com (Susan Granger) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: 25 Oct 1998 16:01:45 GMT Organization: None Lines: 30 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <70vi19$k02$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer38.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 909331305 20482 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #14967 Keywords: author=granger X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer38.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14168 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2142 Susan Granger's review of "SOLDIER" (Warner Bros.) In this sci-fi thriller, Kurt Russell plays a New Millennium mercenary, chosen shortly after his birth by nefarious, militaristic government forces. He was psychologically programmed and brutally trained to be a highly disciplined, emotionally dead fighting machine. Raised with the credo - "kill or be killed" - he became a lean, mean monster who subsequently proved himself in many galactic battles. Then, at age 40, he suddenly becomes aware that he and his colleagues have outlived their usefulness and are being replaced by a new breed of test tube warriors who have been genetically engineered to stronger and meaner. After losing a gladiatorial bout to one of these psychopaths (Jason Scott Lee), Russell is unceremoniously dumped like garbage on a distant planet and left for dead, but he's nursed back to health by a pacifist space pioneers who were stranded there years before. Predictably, when the new mercenaries, under a wretched, villainous leader (Jason Isaacs), return and attack the settlers, Russell defends them. The underlying theme of David Webb People's script is not new. It's a sci-fi adaptation of the western, "Shane," just as the theme of "Star Wars" bore a striking similarity to "The Searchers" and "Outland" was adapted from "High Noon." Unfortunately, director Paul Anderson ("Event Horizon," "Mortal Kombat") is focused on ballistic, video-game visuality rather than character development. Kurt Russell has announced that this is his last action movie, and his subtle characterization proves he's ready to move on to other things. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Soldier" is a brutal, blood 'n' guts 3. The trick is that it could have been a treat. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 2 16:37:32 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.ecn.ou.edu!skywalker.ecn.ou.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Nathaniel R. Atcheson" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 28 Oct 1998 05:44:31 GMT Organization: Film Psychosis (http://www.pyramid.net/natesmovies) Lines: 87 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <716avv$11fq$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer06.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 909553471 34298 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #14999 Keywords: author=atcheson X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer06.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14212 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2145 Soldier (1998) Director:  Paul Anderson Cast:  Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Jason Isaacs, Connie Neilsen, Gary Busey, Sean Pertwee, Danny Turner Screenplay:  David Webb Peoples Producers:  Jerry Weintraub Runtime:  100 min. US Distribution:  Warner Bros. Rated R:  violence, language By Nathaniel R. Atcheson (nate@pyramid.net) From the director of Event Horizon comes Soldier, a bland and uninspired action film, flowing with richly-textured cliches and a soothingly sensual story with almost no originality whatsoever. Paul Anderson, whose last film is far superior to this one, unfortunately forgot that action films need innovation to survive. But Soldier, penned by Blade Runner writer David Webb Peoples, merely begins with an interesting idea and regresses quickly into a competently-made bore. Not even a mute Kurt Russell can inspire a glimpse life in the film. The best moments are early on, when we meet our hero, Todd, as a young boy. He and other young males are forced to go through military training that begins at birth and ends in the late teen years. The training is harsh and grueling, and enforces simple rules like "mercy is for the weak." The military breeds the boys to be emotionless killing machines; this is one of the interesting ideas in the film, for most movies about amoral monsters take the morally easy route by making the monsters not quite human in some way (The Terminator comes to mind). That's about as far as the originality goes, for Todd (played by Russell as an adult) and his fellow soldiers are soon replaced by bigger and faster superhuman soldiers, genetically engineered by Colonel Mekum (Jason Isaacs). Thought to be dead, Todd is dumped on the garbage planet of Arcadia (you know it's bad when the planets have Star Wars-like themes); while there, he meets a peaceful band of garbage people, the most prominent members being Mace (Sean Pertwee), his beautiful wife Sandra (Connie Neilsen), and their mute son. Lucky for the film, the military decides to test their new soldiers on Arcadia, assuming that no one lives there (and certainly having no idea that Todd is still alive). Todd, naturally, becomes the only force capable of standing up against the superhuman maniacs. And he bonds with the mute kid. And, unfortunately, there's not much else to say about it. Soldier isn't downright awful; Anderson, though clearly not at his best, is incapable of making an ugly picture. The special effects are good, and the sets are nice (much of the garbage planet is convincingly done). The digital effects are also swell, and the action sequences are pretty square. The problem is that you, I, and everyone else has seen all of this before. Stuff explodes. People die. The hero wins. I mean, come on -- familiarity is okay, but Soldier is so familiar that it really just strikes us as boring. If there's anything interesting aside from the setup, it's the acting. Russell is always a watchable performer, and he plays Todd the way Todd needs to be played -- silently, and with no emotion. It's hard to say whether or not Russell took the role seriously, because there isn't enough characterization to show a significant change in whatever small personality he has. Backup performances from Neilsen and Pertwee both exceed the quality of the material, while Jason Isaacs is mildly amusing in his dreadfully cliched role (as the head military guy who refuses to listen to reason). If I sound lost for words, that's because I am: Soldier is a standard action picture. It's too loud to be considered serious science fiction (everything in the film explodes at some point), and since Anderson relies on hollow shots of Todd crying or Todd staring to convey depth, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Peoples' script was a little more thought-provoking than the film. It's not a loathsome movie -- there's nothing morally objectionable in its content (except, maybe, that the film is action pornography that pretends to have depth, but that's an entirely different subject). It's likely that most will describe Soldier as "just another action film," and, with that in mind, you can decide for yourself whether or not it's worth your time. ** out of **** (5/10, C) **********/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\************ Visit FILM PSYCHOSIS at http://www.pyramid.net/natesmovies Nathaniel R. Atcheson **********/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\************ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 2 16:37:44 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Michael Dequina Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 28 Oct 1998 05:44:50 GMT Organization: None Lines: 31 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <716b0i$1182$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer09.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 909553490 34050 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15002 Keywords: author=dequina X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer09.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14235 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2152 _Soldier_ (R) * Literally blink, and you'll miss _Soldier_'s lone flash of wit: a fleeting glimpse of a computer screen listing futuristic supersoldier Todd's (Kurt Russell) numerous war commendations, among them the "Plissken Patch"--referring, of course, to Russell's character in John Carpenter's _Escape_from..._ movies. The rest of this sci-fi actioner is brainless junk though writer David Webb Peoples and director Paul Anderson serve up an interesting basic premise. In the future, a select few males are chosen at birth to be trained their whole life as soldiers, nothing more; veteran soldier Todd is among the best, if not _the_ best. But when a new genetically engineered brand of soldier is developed, Todd and his ilk are rendered obsolete. From here, the story takes a most uninspired turn. Presumed dead, Todd is dumped onto a trash dump planet, where he meets up with a peaceful community of people who look and act like extras from _The_Postman_. For reasons that are never clear, the new soldiers attack this trash planet, and the film becomes an outer space _Rambo_, boldly declaring, "I'm gonna kill 'em all, sir!" Thus ensues much machine gun action and laughable "emotional" content where Todd finds the humanity within his tough exterior. It plays even worse than it sounds. __________________________________________________________ Michael Dequina mrbrown@iname.com | michael_jordan@geocities.com Mr. Brown's Movie Site: http://welcome.to/mrbrown CompuServe Hollywood Hotline: http://www.HollywoodHotline.com __________________________________________________________ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 2 16:37:54 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.online.no!newsfeed1.telia.no!masternews.telia.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Allan Woodward" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 28 Oct 1998 05:54:46 GMT Organization: University of Washington Lines: 101 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <716bj6$168k$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: "Allan & Mariann Woodward" NNTP-Posting-Host: homer36.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 909554086 39188 (None) 140.142.17.39 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15002 Keywords: author=woodward X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer36.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14218 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2147 Obedience. Strength. Conviction. These are virtues prized by peoples around the world. Determination. Skill. Bravery. These are the qualities we wish to possess ourselves. But what happens when these behaviors, these positive traits, are instilled through a process that robs their owner of the common satisfaction of their possession? By what means could we relate to a person whose entire existence has been turned toward a single focus at the exclusion of everything else that makes up the totality of life? What can we learn from such a person? What would we see? Soldier, the latest film from Brit director Paul Anderson (Event Horizon), attempts in some small way to answer these questions. Working from a script by legendary screenwriter David Web Peoples (Blade Runner), Anderson has enlisted the acting power of Kurt Russell to tell the story of Sergeant Todd, a warrior of our future, who has never known anything except the pursuit of soldierly perfection. The story is fairly straightforward. Todd is one of a group of men selected through a grueling eugenics program to be a band of more-or-less super soldiers. They do not take pleasure in anything, do not feel anything except a relentless drive to perform their tasks and are, as such, ideally suited to their role. Until the next generation of their kind comes around. Todd and his fellow "obsolete" soldiers are replaced. Todd himself, thought dead, is dumped onto a desolation of a planet to rot. Here, bereft of his primary function, he finds new purpose among the ranks of a scavenger community, especially when this community comes under grave threat. Anderson describes Soldier as a futuristic version of Shane, but that's incorrect. Shane was the story of a gunfighter who turns away from his past and then learns to put it to constructive use in the service of a higher calling (helping the powerless). Shane was a decent man with upright motives. Kurt Russell's Sergeant Todd is a far more complex piece of work. Todd is a difficult character, both for Russell and for the audience. During the course of the movie Todd speaks perhaps 100 words, not enough to reveal character through the words themselves. Consequently, everything that is known about Todd grows from the way, and the circumstances under which, he speaks. This doesn't make getting to know the man any easier. And when Todd, who has been raised literally from birth to be a soldier and nothing else, behaves in a sometimes brutal and unpleasantly realistic way, he can be downright hard to identify with. It could be said that Todd is humanized through his contact with the scavenger people. Taken in by the kindly Mace (Sean Pertwee), Todd experiences contact with a beautiful woman for the first time (Mace's wife, played by Connie Nielsen) and also comes face-to-face with children, most notably Mace's silent son, Nathan. It's in the bowels of this interstellar junkyard that Todd interacts with "normal people" and sees what a "normal life" is like. However, Todd is 40 years old during the events of Soldier. He has fought and killed for his entire adult life and his childhood, viewed in harrowing flashbacks, was a wasteland of indoctrination and violence. Realistically, it would take a lot more than a few smiles and a friendly hand to change a man like Todd. And in Soldier, that holds true. Kurt Russell plays Todd from the inside-out, using his body language to convey emotion, his delivery of Todd's terse language to hint at greater intricacy beneath the surface. When he kills, he kills with a calm, satisfied demeanor that is far removed from the blood-lust of most contemporary action heroes. He literally is a soldier. Anything else, any emotion or action, that falls outside that purview is unnatural. Just watch the scene where Todd finally interacts with young Nathan directly for the first time. Is it a tender moment? No. Todd tries to teach Nathan how to kill something. Russell's performance is bracing, primal and deserves attention when award season comes around. Since it's in a SF action movie, however, it won't. Overlooked classics like Tequila Sunrise have already shown that Kurt Russell is a fine actor. Soldier simply hammers the point home. The direction is the film's weakest area. Perhaps Anderson, whose big breakthrough in the US was the pretty good Mortal Kombat, is not the best director for this sort of material. Soldier is a very pretty movie, though at times the unreality of sound-stage shooting makes it seem a little cheesy. Combat scenes are handled with verve and flash. However, the focus of Peoples' script is more intimate and this kind of stürm und drang filmmaking can disrupt that. It's Anderson's direction that keeps Soldier from being a classic. The flaws in the screenplay (underwritten "bad guy" roles, for example) are magnified by some of the bombastic staging, but Soldier is filled with so many other, more subtle, moments thanks to Kurt Russell's characterization of Todd, that the film becomes more than a simple action-fest. Grade: B Just Rent It This Week: Primary Colors; Starring John Travolta and Emma Thompson, et al. Grade: B. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 2 16:38:01 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!nntpX.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: redman@indepen.com (Michael Redman) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 28 Oct 1998 16:12:52 GMT Organization: ... Lines: 111 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <717fq4$1e2k$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: redman@indepen.com NNTP-Posting-Host: homer11.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 909591172 47188 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15032 Keywords: author=redman X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer11.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14223 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2149 Old soldiers never die, they just turn into cliches Soldier A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1998 By Michael Redman *1/2 (Out of ****) The Warrior and the Lover are two personality aspects that find it difficult to exist in the same body. Jungian archetypes, these two opposites need each other to create a whole, but it's difficult to integrate both. Often we'll encounter Lovers who think everything is just wonderful and, with the help of Jung's Magician, sit around imagining grand schemes. Without the drive to manifest their plans, much less the wisdom to recognize the darkness, all they have are dreams. Warriors on the other hand, are ready to go to war at the drop of a hat, and will do combat with every last bit of their energy. They don't care enough about anything to know what's worth fighting for: gladiators who live only for the battle. This dichotomy not only describes individuals that we all know, but can also illustrate societies. America during the late sixties was a conflict between old style Cold Warriors and the new hippie Lovers. Todd 3465 (Kurt Russell) is a living, breathing archetype. Chosen from birth as a soldier, he is raised by the government to be a killing machine. His childhood is cruelty and competition. He is indoctrinated with the big rules. Never question authority. Winning is everything. Strength beats knowledge. A veteran of numerous intergalactic wars, Todd is 40 and he's obsolete. A new generation of genetically engineered soldiers are faster and stronger. Left for dead after a test battle with the best of the new killers, Caine 607 (Jason Scott Lee), he's unceremoniously dumped as trash on Arcadia 234, a garbage world. Obviously our hero is still alive. He finds a group of shipwrecked settlers abandoned on the planet who nurse him back to health. When the peace-loving colonists get a good look at who Todd is, they are afraid of him and he is exiled to live by himself amid the junk on an environmentally hostile world. They are the other good guys. These Lovers find that they need a Warrior when the military coincidentally chooses this world to conduct exercises for their improved human weapons. Todd finds himself in the role of protector. What could have been a fascinating look at the roles played in our culture and the fears of an ultra-right wing future is ruined by turning the film into a cartoon. The effects are mostly second-rate explosions or jerky slow motion. The plot is old hat. We don't get even a glimpse at the society that created the soldiers. Hardly anything makes sense. The film's science fares badly. With all the remarkable advances we've made in just 37 years (the film takes place in 2036), we're still stupid. After conquering the stars, for some reason we use vast amounts of energy to load up huge space ships with rubbish tote it to a landfill light years away. Even stranger, the garbage barges appear to double as time machines. Virtually all the trash is vintage 1960. There is nothing in the story that is not predictable. The first thing that Todd sees after coming back to life is Sandra (Connie Nielsen), the woman just a little too beautiful to be living in such harsh conditions who is taking care of him. It doesn't take a genius to foresee that her husband isn't going to be around much longer. Is it a shock to find out that the film's climax is an unarmed battle between Todd and Caine? Who would you guess wins? Some of the scenes would work if this were a comedy. Todd's first awakening of human emotion comes when he glimpses Connie's nipple poking through her thin blouse. Later as he sits by his lonely campfire, a tear rolls down his dramatically lighted cheek in slow motion. Supposedly this cliché isn't meant to be humorous. Dastardly Col. Mekum (Jason Isaacs) with a pencil-thin mustache is as real as Snidley Whiplash. Responsible for last year's quirky and visually enticing but problematic "The Fifth Element", director Paul Anderson sees the film as "Shane" in outer space. Maybe, if Shane were played by Sylvester Stallone in Rambo mode. The movie doesn't even work as an action film. There is never a question as to the outcome. Somehow the new superior soldiers don't prove much of a match for Todd. The acting isn't anything to write home about. Nielsen almost comes across as a real person but is soon relegated to a background victim. Russell is buffed-up and does a credible job but it's not much of a challenge. Uttering around 100 words during the film, mostly what Todd does is hit things and stare grimly into space. Gary Busey as Todd's commanding officer is completely wasted in his low-key role. Everything blows up and occasionally it looks cool. Sometimes the sets are impressive. Unfortunately "occasionally" and "sometimes" don't make a film. Most disappointing is that the screenplay is by David Webb Peoples who wrote "Blade Runner", possibly the best science fiction movie ever made. Sharp-eyed viewers will notice a few obscure references to that film. Peoples says that this is not a "Blade Runner" sequel, but a "sidequel" that takes place in the same universe. Although that may have been the intent in his original script, the result is more like a bad television series that the "Blade Runner" replicants watch to pass time. Perhaps those artificial humans would find this entertaining. (Michael Redman has written this column for over 23 years and wants to wish everyone an appropriate Halloween...whatever you'd like it to be.) [This appeared in the 10/29/98 "Bloomington Independent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at Redman@indepen.com] -- mailto:redman@indepen.com This week's film review at http://www.indepen.com/ Film reviews archive at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 2 16:38:08 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!nntpX.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Steve Rhodes" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 28 Oct 1998 16:12:47 GMT Organization: Internet Reviews Lines: 92 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <717fpv$1e2i$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer35.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 909591167 47186 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15031 Keywords: author=rhodes X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer35.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14224 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2150 SOLDIER A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2 For those of you who've always thought that Arnold Schwarzenegger was too emotional in THE TERMINATOR series, Kurt Russell, as Sargent Todd in SOLDIER, is so unemotive that he gives a whole new meaning to the word acting. With all the charisma and liveliness of a tree, he gives a wooden performance as a wooden character. Where's the art in that? Director Paul Anderson, whose last movie, EVENT HORIZON, deservedly made many of 1997's worst of the year lists, is back with another space movie. Borrowing many of the scenes from STAR WARS and the look from BLADE RUNNER, he paints the now popular bleak vision of the future. (Has anyone ever thought that the future might be better?) With so few science fiction movies being made every year, Paul Anderson's bad ones are in danger of polluting the market for other would be science fiction filmmakers. The story opens in the present as babies, including Todd, are chosen to be raised in the army in ways that would make the Hitler youth camps look like knitting societies by comparison. In a cold, steel gray environment, they are trained to watch violence without flinching. The young boys are made to watch as wild boars fight dogs to the death. The movie contains realistic scenes of 8-year-old boys beating each other to a pulp as the blood spurts from their battered bodies. (The adults treat each other worse in one of the goriest films of the year. Eyeballs are almost ripped out of their sockets, limbs snapped, bodies mutilated and so forth, ad nauseam.) The body of the film happens in the year 2036, when new models are replacing Todd and his generation of soldiers. Todd still has rippling muscles, but his haggard face, full of visible battle scars, shows he's past his prime. The new model of fighter, typified by Jason Scott Lee as Caine, can run faster and fight harder than the veterans. The only characteristic they share is that all soldiers have their first (and only) name, rank, serial number and blood type tattooed prominently on their cheeks. Director Anderson has no concept of subtlety. Todd loses out in a fight to the (almost) death with Caine so he is banished as waste material to a desolate planet. Think there might be a rematch? You are way ahead of the story. Actually you could easily complete the predictable screenplay. Once on the planet, Todd finds that there is what looks like an old hippie commune there. They've been hoping for years to be rescued. Todd, acting like a robot, has two modes -- staring and fighting. In the first, his brain seems to be in an idle loop. In the second, he's a mean killing machine who is smarter, if not faster and stronger, than the new edition soldiers. Todd spends a lot of time getting beaten-up and generally abused, but he manages to keep on going. In our audience, one of the few big laughs came from some young kids, who were inappropriately at an R rated movie with their father. After one of Todd's big falls, one kid yelled out, "He got a big owie!" Ah, too bad writer David Webb Peoples couldn't have come up with some funny lines like that to insert into the leaden script. Only Gary Busey, as the head of the old soldiers, gets any decent lines. His folksy wisdom from his "old daddy" provides a few lines of much-needed humor. "You must feel something?" the woman whom Todd comes to stay with asks of him. Although Todd, in one of the few times he speaks during the movie, comes up with a reply, the real answer is that he doesn't feel, not in any normal sense. He's a human being whose life has been programmed since birth. He doesn't feel; he just moves along on autopilot. If SOLDIER had been rewritten as a parody, it might have had some hope. Or, if the lead had been given some complexity and a touch of humanity, that might have helped. What we are offered instead is a movie in which we have to watch soldiers who kill men, women, and children with no more compassion than we'd reserve for an ordinary housefly. If the story had something to say, we might forgive its needless gore, but it doesn't. SOLDIER has the depth of a television-wrestling match, but without the comedy. SOLDIER runs 1:40. It is rated R for strong violence and profanity and would be acceptable for older teenagers. Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: www.InternetReviews.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 2 16:38:15 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.sollentuna.se!masternews.telia.net!news-nyc.telia.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!192.220.250.21!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Berge Garabedian" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 30 Oct 1998 05:59:43 GMT Organization: None Lines: 99 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <71bkkf$1kuu$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: NNTP-Posting-Host: homer34.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 909727183 54238 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15048 Keywords: author=garabedian X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer34.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14265 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2153 SOLDIER RATING: 6 / 10 --> Barely recommendable For more review and trivia, go to http://surf.to/joblo RAMBO meets MAD MAX in this follow-up to director Paul Anderson's derivative science-fiction exercise, EVENT HORIZON (6.5/10), with Kurt Russell collecting one of his biggest paychecks yet, and the studios passing it off as the first official "sci-fi Western". Anderson claims that compared to Kurt's character in this film, "Clint Eastwood is f-king Hamlet!" PLOT: A boy is born and bred to become a cold-hearted, man-killing machine with only fear and discipline as his emotions. When a new breed of man-killers are created, his kind are obsolete. He is eventually dumped into a wasteland of garbage, and left for dead. Discovered by a host of "homeless people in space", this soldier attempts to grasp newer concepts such as love and affection. Eventually, the newer mankillers arrive on said wasteland, and the battle between this once obsolete soldier and his replacements begins. CRITIQUE: Short, easy to digest, science-fiction Western, that does very little to innovate anything in either genre, and ends up fogging your mind with memories of gunfire and explosions, and not much of anything else. If you like to see a lot of people get shot up, then you should check out this movie. If you like to see a lot of fire and explosions go off, then go see this movie. If you want to see TV's "The Commish", Michael Chiklis play eighth banana in a mediocre science-fiction pic, then go see this movie! Otherwise, skip it, and rent it on video one night when you have absolutely nothing better to do, and you want to shut your brain off for a while. On the positive tip, Kurt Russell does play his cold, feeling-less character to a tee. He apparently only had a handful of words to enunciate during the entire film, but he sure made up for it in unemotional stares. Wow, what a man! All that and he was built like a lighthouse on steroids. Pretty good for a forty-something, if I don't say so myself. Scott Lee also had very little dialogue (probably even less words than Russell), but did provide for some sense of rivalry, I suppose. All in all, the film never bored me at any point, but it also never blew me away at any time. It basically just punched in its time card when it was supposed to, and called it a night. Russell's character kept reminding me of that classic line from John Carpenter's THEY LIVE (7.5/10), where Roddy Piper says, "I came here to chew bubble gum, and kick some ass--- and I'm all outta bubblegum!". That's basically what Russell was like for the entire movie! He was just there to kick ass and not much else. I had more fun that I anticipated because I was with my friend, and we had some fun with the crappy lines and campy hommages (I noticed at least one to RAMBO and one to APOCALYPSE NOW). See it if you like brainless guns and explosions, and a good performance by Russell. Skip it, if you don't like guns, explosions or Kurt Russell. Little Known Facts about this film and its stars: The writer of this film, David Webb Peoples also co-wrote BLADE RUNNER (7.5/10), and wrote 12 MONKEYS (8/10) and the Oscar-winning UNFORGIVEN. Isn't that so very, very odd?! Kurt Russell has 69 words of dialogue in this entire picture. He was reportedly paid $20million to do this movie, which rounds that off to about $290,000/ per word. Kurt...you're a great, great man!! With a middle name like Vogel, how could you go wrong? Kurt played professional baseball (2nd base, AA club- California Angels) until a torn shoulder muscle forced him into retirement in 1973. He was hitting .563 at the time of his withdrawal. His friend, Ron Shelton wrote the Crash Davis role in BULL DURHAM (7.5/10) for him, but the studio insisted on Kevin Costner instead. During one particularly realistic fight scene with Jason Scott Lee, Kurt Russell broke his ankle. Kurt apparently only landed his role in TANGO & CASH after Patrick Swayze dropped out. Also, he apparently only landed his role in BACKDRAFT (8/10), after Dennis Quaid nixed it. Kurt Russell's real-life son with partner and fellow actress Goldie Hawn, Wyatt (Note: Kurt played the character of Wyatt Earp in 1993's TOMBSTONE), plays Russell's character as a 12-year old at the beginning of this film. Jason Scott Lee most famous part before this film was his portrayal of Bruce Lee, in DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY (8/10)-(no relation). Note: Kurt Russell has apparently announced this film to be his last action movie. Stay tuned! Review Date: October 27, 1998 Director: Paul Anderson Writer: David Webb Peoples Producer: Jerry Weintraub Actors: Kurt Russell as Todd Jason Scott Lee as Caine Gary Busey as Captain Church Genre: Science-Fiction Year of Release: 1998 -------------------------------------------- Visit JoBlo's Movie Emporium http://surf.to/joblo -------------------------------------------- (c) 1998 Berge Garabedian From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 2 16:38:22 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.ecn.ou.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!news.idt.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Walter Frith Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 2 Nov 1998 05:35:22 GMT Organization: None Lines: 71 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <71jgaq$1f8u$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer05.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 909984922 48414 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15080 Keywords: author=frith X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer05.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14281 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2155 'Soldier' (1998) A movie review by Walter Frith Member of the 'Internet Movie Critics Association' http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/5713/index.html and Member of the 'Online Film Critics Society' http://ofcs.org/ofcs/ I'll make a prediction right now. Kurt Russell, whom I admire as an actor in a lot of movies, will win the Razzie award for worst actor of 1998 in 'Soldier'. I read somewhere that Russell utters a total of only 68 words in the entire film and to me he spends the rest of the movie looking like a mindless version of Frankenstein's monster, one of the living dead and a cyborg all rolled into one. Russell gave an excellent performance in 1979's 'Elvis', a television classic that brought him an Emmy nomination as Best Actor. Some of his best work can be found in movies such as 'Breakdown', 'Unlawful Entry', 'Backdraft' and 'Tequila Sunrise'. But as an action hero? Russell is too talented for that. His portrayal of the ordinary guy in a lot of films makes his presence work but 'Soldier' is junk. An unsavory mix of several science fiction films scaled down into one mess. Beginning in 1996, Russell is taken from the maternity ward of the hospital he's born at by a secret military attaché that trains him from the cradle to be an unbeatable, unstoppable and pure fighting machine. We see his progression as a soldier at various ages until his training ends at the beginning of manhood when he turns 17. Several more years pass and Russell is now around 40 and a new breed of soldier is created and their Colonel (Jason Issacs) is arrogantly pleased that his men, he feels, are superior to the men lead by a rather sedate Captain (Gary Busey) who is Russell's commanding officer. Issacs challenges Busey to select his best men to take down his most effective new breed of soldier (Jason Scott Lee). Russell is one of the men selected and during the hand to hand combat exercise, Russell is presumed dead along with a couple of other men but not before he can take out one of the new soldier's eye and scar part of his face. The bodies of the now "obsolete" soldiers are disposed of on a desolate planet but Russell turns out not to be dead and upon landing with a large batch of space junk, meets the inhabitants of the desolate waste planet and tries to lead them in the oncoming invasion to be carried out by the deranged Colonel responsible for his current fate. The people are taken a back to Russell's deadly form of fighting power since their way of life is relatively peaceful and the climax is pay back and revenge in a most ordinary way. Director Paul Anderson ('Event Horizon') has made an real turkey of a movie that cries out as the definition of 'empty' if you were to look it up in the dictionary. The film's obligatory violence is meaningless and to a larger extent, no focus is given to create any interesting characters as a contrast to Russell's character. What made 1984's 'The Terminator' work was the fact that the characters portrayed by Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn were truly human and were a good character contrast to Arnold's mechanical elements. Trashy and exploiting, 'Soldier' will have you asking "What's the point?" when you leave the theatre. Not bad for the testosterone crowd but for the rest of us, this film is an example of too much money spent on a film that's been done a million times before. OUT OF 5> * Visit FILM FOLLOW-UP by Walter Frith http://www.cgocable.net/~wfrith/movies.htm From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 2 16:38:29 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.wli.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Scott Renshaw Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998)1 Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 23 Oct 1998 04:09:26 GMT Organization: None Lines: 87 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <70ovhm$1o8m$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer16.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 909115766 57622 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #14953 Keywords: author=renshaw X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer16.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14151 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2140 SOLDIER (Warner Bros.) Starring: Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Connie Nielsen, Jason Isaacs, Gary Busey, Sean Pertwee. Screenplay: David Webb Peoples. Producer: Jerry Weintraub. Director: Paul Anderson. MPAA Rating: R (violence, profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 96 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw. David Webb Peoples has contributed to some of the most compelling screenplays of recent years. He fashioned haunting visions of the future in the seminal science fiction film BLADE RUNNER and the psychologically gripping 12 MONKEYS; he has deconstructed the mythology of heroic violence in UNFORGIVEN. Peoples has shown a facility for turning genre films into films of ideas. The specific ideas with which he has concerned himself held out the hope that SOLDIER might be something more than this week's disposable bit of whoop-it-up mayhem. Instead, SOLDIER shows what happens when the writer of BLADE RUNNER and UNFORGIVEN meets the director of MORTAL KOMBAT and EVENT HORIZON: the director wins, and we lose. Peoples's script sends us to a near-future where government soldiers are trained from birth for no other purpose but battle. One of these soldiers is Todd 3465 (Kurt Russell), a scarred veteran of multiple wars who has served as the perfect warrior -- no family, no emotional connections of any kind, no reluctance to obey any order, no mercy. Unfortunately, he is rendered obsolete when an even more perfect, genetically-enhanced breed of soldier becomes the new standard. Left for dead after a display of prowess by new soldier Caine 607 (Jason Scott Lee), Todd is tossed on the scrap-heap of waste disposal planet Arcadia 234, where he tries to fit into a society of marooned humans understandably wary of this new arrival. I suspect that Peoples's original script focused on how the functionally anti-social Todd begins to explore human interaction for the first time. He recuperates in the home of a kindly man named Mace (Sean Pertwee), begins feeling desire for Mace's wife Sandra (Connie Nielsen), and bonds with their son Nathan the only way he knows how. The prologue depicting Todd's relentless training is an effective set-up for a story about the psychology of warfare, the challenges of re-adjusting to civilian life, and whether or not it's actually better to create a cold killing machine to survive the horrors of war. That's not the story director Paul Anderson insists on telling. Though in his production notes Anderson describes the story as "SHANE in outer space," he actually makes it much more like RAMBO in outer space. When the new-breed soldiers arrive on Arcadia for a training exercise led by the heartless Col. Mekum (Jason Isaacs, wearing a thin moustache so we _know_ he's dastardly), Todd straps on the artillery, slaps on the camouflage paint and sets out to tear the new soldiers some new orifices. The final half-hour generally finds Todd picking off his faceless adversaries like red-shirts in a "Star Trek" episode, occasionally interrupted by immense explosions and flying bodies. All this naturally leads to a climactic mano-a-mano between Todd and Caine in which the hulking one-eyed terminator becomes evil personified. Never mind that Caine is a programmed soldier just like Todd himself, and that it would be much more interesting to sympathize with him than to cheer his inevitable defeat mindlessly. There's nothing inherently wrong with black hat/white hat action adventures where we watch a bit of carnage and root for good to triumph over evil. The problem is that Anderson pretends SOLDIER is more than that, offering scenes of Todd perplexed by a tear rolling down his face, or recoiling at displays of kindness. Moments that might have been genuinely affecting instead inspire derisive laughter, because Anderson is far more interested in visceral response than in emotional response. Ironically, he spends most of the film reveling in dehumanizing violence instead of showing how dehumanizing violence created his protagonist. I can't believe that's the story David Webb Peoples wanted to tell, which is what makes SOLDIER more disappointing than it might otherwise be. He turned over a smart idea to a director determined to make a dumb movie. On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 soldier's stories: 4. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit Scott Renshaw's MoviePage http://www.inconnect.com/~renshaw/ *** Subscribe to receive new reviews directly by email! See the MoviePage for details, or reply to this message with subject line "Subscribe". -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Nov 4 16:06:18 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news-nyc.telia.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!192.220.250.21!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Steve Kong Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films Date: 4 Nov 1998 03:50:41 GMT Organization: The Hard Boiled Movie Guide (http://boiledmovies.sbay.com/) Lines: 59 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <71oiuh$1d36$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer33.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 910151441 46182 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15085 Keywords: author=kong X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer33.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14304 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2157 SOLDIER (1998) A film review by Steve Kong Edited by Mark O'Hara Copyright 1998 Steve Kong In the spirit of David Webb Peoples’s economy of words with Kurt Russell’s part in Soldier, I’m going to write this review with less sentences than lines Russell had in Soldier. I’m attempting to write this review in less than 24 sentences. Russell is Todd, a soldier raised from birth to kill and only kill. When Todd is deemed obsolete, he is dump onto a forsaken garbage planet and left to rot. Todd discovers a group of outcasts on the planet and begins to regain his humanity. Todd’s replacement soldiers come to the planet and try to kill everyone, but Todd saves the people. Let’s just get the formalities out of the way: Soldier is one of the worst movies of 1998, ranking right up there with The Avengers and Knock Off. Russell, who is supposed to be a trained killer, takes his part a little to seriously. His mute and bland performance – if it can even be called that – is one of the sore thumbs of this movie. The lines given to Russell by screenwriter Peoples consist mostly of "Sir!" or some other one-word phrase. When he’s not talking, he’s standing around looking like a dolt or shooting a gun killing people. Not an intensive part for the money that he was paid. Soldier’s other sore thumb is director Paul (Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon) Anderson. Anderson should go back to directing music videos; he hasn’t made the transition to features films as well as some other music video to feature film directors. Anderson is not in the same league as David (Alien 3, Se7en, The Game) Fincher, Michael (Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon) Bay, or Alex (The Crow, Dark City) Proyas. Soldier is a big ball of testosterone that has no story, no performances, and no real entertainment value. Of course, I could be wrong because the two guys sitting in front of me during the showing often threw up there hands during a killing and yelled things like "Yeeeah!" or "Alriiight!" or just grunted loudly. The script by David Webb Peoples’s is thin, which is a shame since Peoples’s is the co-writer of sci-fi classic Blade Runner. Women will fear this movie, especially if they’re going to be dragged to it on a date. Testosterone-laced and numb in the brain, Soldier is a bad movie. Skip Soldier and save yourself 90 minutes plus admission. There! A whole review in 23 sentences! --- Steve Kong reviews@boiled.sbay.org recipe for a hard boiled review: one egg, two cups water, a pot, a helluva attitude, and a guy who loves the cinema. i'm your hard boiled movie guide. http://boiledmovies.sbay.com/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Nov 5 16:09:06 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cyclone.news.idirect.com!island.idirect.com!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news-pen-3.sprintlink.net!news-in-east1.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Justin Felix Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 5 Nov 1998 04:08:52 GMT Organization: None Lines: 95 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <71r8ck$g1q$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer24.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 910238932 16442 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15111 Keywords: author=felix X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer24.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14307 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2158 SOLDIER (1998) A film review by Justin Felix. Copyright 1998 Justin Felix. Other reviews by me may be found at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Justin+Felix This review also appears in the Shrubbery -- http://www.theshrubbery.prohosting.com/1198/movie1.html Rating: *** (out of five) Screenplay by David Webb Peoples. Directed by Paul Anderson. Starring Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Gary Busey. Rated R (contains violence and profanity) approx. 95 mins. Synopsis: In the near future, Sergeant Todd, trained from birth to be a remorseless killing machine, and his squad of merciless soldiers are replaced by genetically engineered warriors. Believed dead, Todd is dumped onto a garbage planet where a small group of colonists struggle to survive. Todd defends these colonists from the warriors who replaced him when their superior officer decides the colonists would make good target practice. Comments: On paper, SOLDIER has the ingredients to make a superior film. It is written by David Webb Peoples, who penned the screenplay to the classic BLADE RUNNER and the critically-acclaimed 12 MONKEYS. It is directed by Paul Anderson, who was responsible for EVENT HORIZON, an unfairly criticized cross-genre film, and MORTAL KOMBAT, a popular movie based on the video game of the same name. It even stars Kurt Russell, who has acted in good science fiction films such as STARGATE and John Carpenter's remake of THE THING. Though SOLDIER is an entertaining and visually interesting film, it proves to be somewhat disappointing considering the talent involved in the film's production. SOLDIER begins in the year 1996, when Sergeant Todd is born. Apparently, on the date of his birth, Todd, along with a group of other babies, is chosen to be involved in a government(?) program to raise and train a group of fearless ground soldiers. Through a series of rapid flashbacks, the audience sees Todd grow to adulthood and some of the campaigns on other worlds that he is involved in. Already, the audience is keenly aware of the major flaw in the movie: nothing is ever really explained. SOLDIER never details (a) who Todd fights for, (b) why a technologically savvy society needs human ground troops when they could probably find less expensive means of achieving military goals, or (c) how our planet becomes an intergalactic colonizing force within the next 20 years. Apparently, the only things the filmmakers wish us to know is that Todd is a killing machine and the person in charge is a really bad guy. What follows is the standard sci-fi cliche of the underdog against a supposedly superior opponent; in this case, Sergeant Todd and a ragtag group of colonists try to defend themselves from a horde of genetically-enhanced, heavily armed, well-trained soldiers. Guess who wins. Having criticized the screenplay, I can now say that I still enjoyed SOLDIER. This is a movie which attempts to cross genres to create something different. EVENT HORIZON, Paul Anderson's last film, combined horror and science fiction, giving the audience a haunted spaceship. Similarly, SOLDIER combines science fiction with the western and the action movie, giving us SHANE on another planet. The mix of genres works for the most part. Though the story, including the ultimate resolution, is quite obvious, the film's landscape, an apocalyptic garbage dump of a planet presented paradoxically beautiful in its harshness, and some brilliant pyrotechnic fight scenes make SOLDIER a fun Saturday afternoon matinee movie. Like EVENT HORIZON, however, SOLDIER doesn't pull any punches [no pun intended] when it comes to violence -- one of the reasons I suspect EVENT HORIZON was so squarely criticized. SOLDIER is violent; it has many bloody scenes, a number of grisly deaths, and some rather sadistic moments (these warriors, for instance, have no reservations shooting unarmed young children in combat situations). Kurt Russell plays Sergeant Todd quite effectively. Todd does not have much dialogue in the movie; he remains largely silent. This silence, however, adds to the tension of the film, as the colonists fear that his training will make him snap at any moment. SOLDIER, thus, like EVENT HORIZON, is an extremely tense film. Russell, though, exaggerates the tough guy image a little too much at times, granting the film some much needed melodramatic camp humor. Gary Busey plays his signature stock character, a slick though ultimately well-meaning individual, adequately here. Rising star Jason Scott Lee, like Russell, isn't given much dialogue, but he portrays the main antagonist suitably enough. SOLDIER strikes me as a made-for-the-SciFi-channel movie with a budget. Despite the talent behind the film, it is not great. SOLDIER, however, doesn't seem to carry the pretense of greatness. It's a little sci-fi action film which delivers enough special effects and action sequences to carry it through. It's not worth six bucks, but it's certainly worth a matinee price. Rated R, SOLDIER contains many graphic scenes of violence which may be inappropriate for children. Although, to give the movie credit, SOLDIER, more so than other recent action films like the "video game"ish BLADE and the humorous RUSH HOUR, shows the results of violence, both physically and mentally, on its victims. (Review written on October 24, 1998) From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 9 17:26:17 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cyclone.news.idirect.com!island.idirect.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Homer Yen Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 6 Nov 1998 03:37:45 GMT Organization: None Lines: 61 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <71tqu9$1e5i$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer03.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 910323466 47282 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15115 Keywords: author=yen X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer03.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14325 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2160 A Battle-Weary "Soldier" by Homer Yen (c) 1998 Sometime in the not-so-distant future, a new generation of soldiers will be created. Babies are conscripted right after birth and begin a harsh training regimen that spans the entirety of their young lives. They are groomed to become ruthless, strong, and tireless fighting machines. Todd (Kurt Russell) is just one of many of these new breed of soldiers. During a training exercise, soldiers take shooting practice where cardboard cut-outs of both innocent bystanders and enemy troops move left and right. In one particular instance, an enemy soldier shields himself behind an innocent person. While the other soldiers-in-training freeze for a moment to contemplate their shot, Todd, giving only a moment's hesitation, coldly pulls his trigger. The cut-out of both the enemy soldier and the innocent person are obliterated. As everyone else looks at him, he shows no signs of remorse or regret. This soldier will graduate at the top of his class. There have been many movies that focus on the comeuppance of a soldier and the bitter sacrifices that he makes in fighting for his country, or in this case, his planet. Here, it's not all that different, although it takes place in the future where the weapons do significantly more damage and the landscape seems eternally ravaged by war. Todd evolves into a lethal fighting machine whose emotion and humanity have been stripped away. When he is replaced by an even more potent type of soldier and is subsequently discarded on a planet far away, the story shifts gears and parallels the plight of the war veteran with no place to go. The fight continues inside of him, and here is a person who can not be easily reintroduced into society. Falling upon a settlement on this planet, he is first taken in. They try to teach basic skills such as gardening. Their attempt to assimilate Todd back into normal society injects a little bit of humanity, but Todd's aggressive behavior and alarming tenacity begin to frighten the settlements' denizens. It seems that the only way for Todd to be appreciated is for some battle to take place. And, (no surprise here) an opportunity to show his fighting skills soon presents itself, ironically with a landing party that consists of the upgraded soldiers that replaced him back on Earth. "Soldier" doesn't break any new ground and could have been easily named Rambo IX if it starred Sylvester Stallone. Yet, for the most part, the film was tolerable. I liked the offbeat choice of casting Kurt Russell as the aging war veteran. And the film wisely decides to keep dialogue at a minimum, allowing it to be a mindless thrill ride. The film's best part showcases a final 25-minute battle pitting the veteran Todd against a platoon of next-generation soldiers. Given its limitations, "Soldier" is all that it can be. Grade: C+ _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 9 17:27:22 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: David Sunga Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 8 Nov 1998 19:08:54 GMT Organization: MegsInet, Inc. - Low Cost, High Performance Internet Services Lines: 62 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <724q86$tna$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: zookeeper@criticzoo.com NNTP-Posting-Host: homer38.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 910552134 30442 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15162 Keywords: author=sunga X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer38.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14381 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2162 SOLDIER (1998) Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 4.0) ******************************** Key to rating system: 2.0 stars - Debatable 2.5 stars - Some people may like it 3.0 stars - I liked it 3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie 4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out ********************************* A Movie Review by David Sunga Directed by: Paul Anderson Written by: David Webb Peoples Ingredients: Robotic supersoldier, another planet Starring: Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Connie Nielsen Synopsis: >From birth, Sergeant Todd (Kurt Russell) and other babies are raised and brainwashed to be the perfect soldiers - - robotic in mentality; proficient in combat; unable to speak unless spoken to; emotionally handicapped, and; unable to feel anything but fear and discipline. 40 years later, this line of soldiers is outdated and replaced by a new line of genetically engineered and brainwashed soldiers. Todd himself is junked, left for dead, and dumped on a garbage planet inhabited by shipwrecked humans. One day when the army reappears and attempts to exterminate the shipwrecked humans, Todd defend the humans against his former organization. Opinion: Usually in flicks where the main character is not human enough to carry the film, the side characters take up the slack and supply a lot of drama and dialogue so that audiences don't get bored. Either that or the action content is brought way up to compensate for no personality. (Think of ET or THE TERMINATOR). SOLDIER probably won't satisfyingly hold the attention span of most action-oriented audiences because there are long periods of time where the emotionally handicapped Todd (Kurt Russell) sits silently without saying anything at all, and the audience is left to twiddle its thumbs. SOLDIER's focus is perhaps too much on the silent Todd, but he doesn't say enough to make it interesting. The second flaw is that there isn't really any believable reason for the army to go to Todd's planet and attempt to exterminate the human shipwreck survivors, other than to force a predictable movie ending. A last minute showdown isn't enough. SOLDIER's futuristic and other-worldly setting might be good enough for a science fiction novel, but SOLDIER needs to increase its action content, creepy crawly creature content, or side character involvement throughout the entire film in order to attract mainstream theater goers. Reviewed by David Sunga November 6, 1998 Copyright © 1998 by David Sunga This review and others like it can be found at THE CRITIC ZOO: http://www.criticzoo.com email: zookeeper@criticzoo.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Nov 9 17:27:38 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cyclone.news.idirect.com!island.idirect.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!news.alt.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: James Sanford Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 9 Nov 1998 05:39:12 GMT Organization: CWIX Lines: 51 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <725v60$1598$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer18.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 910589952 38184 (None) 140.142.17.37 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15195 Keywords: author=sanford X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer18.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14384 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2163 Every star has their good and bad moments, but few can match the rollercoaster ride that Kurt Russell's career has been on during the past 10 years. When he's hot ("Overboard," "Executive Decision"), look out; when he's not ("Captain Ron," "Escape From L.A."), duck and cover. Russell must have been laughing all the way to the bank after netting multiple millions for "Soldier," a science-fiction tale as generic as its title, which requires him to deliver a total of perhaps 12 words -- and considerably fewer facial expressions -- in between running around and gunning down countless extras. But viewers may be excused if they find it's more fun to play shoot-'em-up yourself than to watch others do it, particularly in a movie as alarmingly shoddy and poorly written as "Soldier." In several eerie ways "Soldier" echoes "The Postman," the collossal Kevin Costner turkey the kind people at Warner Bros. dumped in cinemas last Christmas, and anyone who feels any nostalgia for that excruciating opus should be in a mental-health clinic rather than a movie theater. Once again, we're treated to that hoary old tale about the lone renegade -- in this case a genetically engineered fighting machine known as Sgt. Todd (Russell) -- who sticks up for the poor, peace-lovin' folk when their frontier settlement is attacked by the forces of evil. Imaginatively, screenwriter David Webb Peoples dresses the villianous militants in pseudo-Nazi attire, which definitely sets them apart from the heroes, most of whom are clad in jumble-sale rags. But while the mellow residents of the Arcadia 234 Waste Disposal Area can't seem to find a decent clothing store, they obviously have some sort of state-of-the-art hair salon nearby since a large percentage of the population seems to sport frosted tips, two-tone dye jobs and carefully crinkled tresses. All Sgt. Todd sports is a crew cut, multiple scars and an unwavering scowl, although back in the days of the War of the Six Cities he used to coat his face in patriotic red, white and blue greasepaint. If all this talk about the movie's fashion sense seems beside the point, you should understand it's by far the most fascinating aspect of "Soldier," which throws buckets of blood around in an attempt to perk up a deadwood plot. Director Paul Anderson never met a cliche he couldn't appropriate, so the film also includes numerous scenes of bodies hurtling through the air in slow-motion, several instances of people scurrying away from fireballs and a handful of moments in which shadowy characters are illuminated by flashes of lightning. At least "Soldier" might have had the courtesy to whip up some snazzy visuals, but the none-too-special-effects on view here look like they were taken from some Saturday morning kids' show; they're laughably cheap. As in "The Postman," there's a busty babe and some lovable moppets on hand to put our unemotional hero back in touch with his heart, so we can sit through a sequence in which Sgt. Todd weeps -- in slow-motion, naturally. Anyone who pays good money to sit through "Soldier" will feel like joining in the pity party. James Sanford From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Nov 19 14:20:12 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cyclone.news.idirect.com!island.idirect.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!192.220.250.21!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Craig Roush Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 13 Nov 1998 06:27:47 GMT Organization: ExecPC Internet - Milwaukee, WI Lines: 65 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <72gjh3$cm6$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer24.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 910938467 12998 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15230 Keywords: author=roush X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer24.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14448 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2171 SOLDIER * 1/2 (out of 4) - a below average movie Release Date: October 23, 1998 Starring: Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Connie Nielsen, Sean Pertwee, Michael Chiklis, Gary Busey, Jason Isaacs Directed by: Paul Anderson Distributed by: Warner Brothers MPAA Rating: R (strong violence, brief language) URL: http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio/reviews/1998/soldier.htm For those interested in the true spirit of moviemaking - or what's left of it in mainstream Hollywood - movie which are star vehicles are terrible things. As a rule, the ignore general principles of cinema because they are not made to advance the media but rather to advance the career of a particular actor. An actor might be chosen on the up-and-up, to give him exposure; or he might be chosen on the way down to hand him a paycheck. Generally, though, the actor doesn't matter, and SOLDIER, the latest from the beleaguered Warner Brothers, exemplifies this: the picture lacks pizazz. The star for the vehicle in this case is Kurt Russell, otherwise known as the man of thirty words or less. Russell plays Todd, a human trained from birth in the ways of waging war and becoming emotionally distanced from the carnage he has wrought. The movie lets us see this degenerate process, but by the time the real plot starts, we're into Todd's later years. He's about to be replaced by a new breed of soldiers, ones who, instead of being trained *from* birth, are genetically selected *before* birth. The pride of this class - Caine 607 (Jason Scott Lee) - will be our villain, and you know he's the villain because he has a staring contest with our hero near the movie's start. Between the two leads, less than a full typed page of dialogue is spoken, and it's possible to imagine a script which is ninety percent stage direction. Director Paul Anderson, who helmed last year's icy thriller, EVENT HORIZON, doesn't show any inventiveness here and instead is content to let the actions play out on screen ad nauseam. Todd, upon being replaced, is left to die on a garbage planet; but in order to stretch the running time out, the villains return to the garbage planet on a "routine patrol" and set the stage for the final firefight. Events are predictable from the time that the setups are made, and neither Anderson nor scriptwriter David Peoples attempts to show any creativeness here. The most annoying plot facet is the reason that the whole of the movie comes to be: Todd fails to show physical superiority against Caine - in fact, not even Todd and two of his companions can best the baddie - but near the end of the movie he shows remarkable prowess with automatic weaponry. It's not as though Todd undergoes any significant character changes throughout the plot of the story, and so the plot has a very canned feeling about it. The best route through this disaster is to take it lighthearted in spirit, and treat it as a parody of typical action fare, like UNIVERSAL SOLDIER. A strict interpretation, however, reveals an unmistakeable and unforgiveable lack of style, class, or substance; and by next year, a large percentage of the people who have seen this will have taped it off of network television. -- Craig Roush kinnopio@execpc.com -- Kinnopio's Movie Reviews http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Nov 19 14:23:29 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!newsfeed.xcom.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!192.220.250.21!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Arnold Kim Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 16 Nov 1998 06:16:48 GMT Organization: None Lines: 53 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <72og0g$1l84$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer27.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 911197008 54532 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15265 Keywords: author=kim X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer27.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14483 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2172 Soldier (1998) Film review by Arnold Kim "Soldier", by director Paul Anderson, is a film in which any presence of originality is fleeting. The best moments of the film are in the opning scenes where Kurt Russel's character Todd is shown growing up under strict military supervision. Brutality through the eyes of the innocent and stripped of it every single day growing up is something that has a lot of emotional potential power behind it, and the opening scenes tap into it a little. Then it goes nowhere with that idea. There is perhaps one rather fleeting scene afterwards that deals with the potential trauma of this dehumanization, and the rest of the film is just some of the biggest action movie cliches I've ever seen. The whole idea of the inhuman, soldier-type character gaining some degree of humanity by defending a potential female love interest and family from his evil counterpart out to kill her is done, and it's been done much better. I was able to predict the plot of the _whole_ story, which wouldn't be so bad if other aspect of the film somewhat interesting. Between the action sequences, it tries to deal with the aforementioned issues of humanity through the performance of Mr. Russel in the film and the tiny little window to his soul that is his eyes, since his dialog is extremely limited. His performance in that way isn't all that bad, but certainly is not enough to carry this film. Other performances in this film are really not worth much mention at all, and they generally are about as weak as their characters. But enough of this stuff about plot and character, right? Isn't the most important part of an action film, well, the action? Even in this aspect the film is a disappointment. In Mortal Kombat (1995), Director Paul Anderson proved that truly engaging use and choreography of action in a film can override problems with plot and produce something entertaining. However, he fails to repeat that in this film. The combat scenes, particularly the big one at the end, is incredibly unimaginatve. Fighting and combat scenes are supposed to bring about thrills in this type of movie, a point which even an otherwise unimpressive film like Starship Troopers seemed to realize. But instead of reaching for something truly interesting to end the film with, it goes for the old, shoot-em up, one guy vs. an army type of cinema that I thought died with the military action films of the 80s. If the film went with some of the ideas it opened up with the introduction more seriously, it could have been a rather engaging science fiction film. However, it utterly failed to go in any new directions after that, making the film a big disappointment. My score(out of 10): 3 Arnold Kim kim5@erols.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Jan 8 15:14:08 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cyclone.news.idirect.com!island.idirect.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Matt Williams Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Solider (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 16 Dec 1998 06:39:45 GMT Organization: None Lines: 83 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <757kjh$lru$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer22.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 913790385 22398 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #15710 Keywords: author=williams X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer22.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:14864 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2199 SOLDIER A film review by Matt Williams RATING: [no stars] out of * * * * What's that smell? Why, it's Soldier, an insipid science fiction action yarn that makes you long for the realism of Pigs in Space. Right now, under our very noses, if you believe the timeline the film gives us, an elite unit of men trained exclusively to be killing machines are being raised by a top secret military unit. Apparently stolen from their cradles, these children are raised, in a Clockwork Orangian fashion, to only understand discipline and violence. Apparently, wars of the future are fought on a very small scale. There are only 20 of these soldiers (who survive their training, anyway), and they're involved in what seems to be each and every war or conflict in space. (Oh, yes, by the way, in the next thirty years, humankind has colonized the known galaxy). The best of these 20 men is known only as Todd (Kurt Russell), as you can read from the tattoo on his cheek. In any case, this elite group of soldiers has never lost a single man (at least until the main plot of the movie gets underway, that is). You see, the soldiers are being replaced. There's a new breed of tougher, faster, stronger soldiers (without hair, even) which are being introduced. And, since there can only be 20 soldiers in the entire galaxy, Todd's unit is being retired...forcably. For some reason, even though this replacement project must have been in the works for most of the time he's been in command, the head of Todd's soldier unit, Captain Church (Gary Busey), knows nothing about the replacements, and doesn't believe in their superiority. What better way to test your men than to have them fight to the death? Well, you can guess the outcome... Todd's unit has been replaced, and Todd (mistakenly thought to be dead) is simply thrown down the nearest trash chute. Hey, do you have a better way to dispose of a corpse? Well, conveniently, Todd's coma lasts for the entire duration of an interstellar flight to the local trash planet, where he's luckily dumped on the top of a giant trash heap (rather than underneath it). Strangely, this planet has incredibly strong windstorms that apparently ignore these huge trash piles, which remain standing despite the 300+ mph winds. Anyway, as luck would have it, there's a lost colony of humans thriving amid the trash and the winds. This colony adopts Todd as a pet. But can a man who's been bred for forty years to kill and to obey ever learn to cope in normal society? Or is there a conflict just around the corner which will utilize all of Todd's lethal training? You be the judge. Granted, Kurt Russell is supposed to be playing a virtually emotionless soldier, bred only to kill and obey, but his performance is so flat, glassy-eyed and featureless, that he's actually out-performed by a garden snake! Just because you're an emotionless killing machine, doesn't mean you have to be uninteresting (just take a look at the Terminator series). But one look into the blank stare of Russell's soldier makes you yearn for the thespian talents of Arnold Schwarzenegger, or, heck, even Steven Seagal. As the film blunders from one cliched subplot to another, it's actually stunning to note the absolute lack of creativity on the screen. The closest thing the film ever gets to originality is in creating elaborate death sequences. And even those are foreshadowed so heavily, you could probably name them before the deaths ever happen. The only way in which Soldier is conceivably enjoyable is in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 sort of way, in which, reveling in the absolute horridness of the mess on the screen, you create your own entertainment in the way of joking insults. But, even then, you'd have to be pretty desperate to pin your entertainment hopes on Soldier. Copyright 1998 Matt Williams - Matt Williams (matt@cinematter.com) Reviewer for Cinematter: http://www.cinematter.com Home of over 650 reviews, and information on nearly 700 upcoming releases From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Feb 11 16:33:29 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: James Brundage Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 31 Jan 1999 20:05:30 GMT Organization: None Lines: 45 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <792d2a$ff2$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: "Mr. Brundage" NNTP-Posting-Host: homer11.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 917813130 15842 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #16426 Keywords: author=brundage X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer11.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:15622 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2248 Soldier (1998) As reviewed by James Brundage Just how many times has Paul Anderson seen Dune? I mean, when you find yourself on a planet with massive wastelands, lots of sandstorms, and one person who leads the social group that he's not originally from to safety or some such crap, doesn't that remind you of a certain David Lynch film circa 1984? Maybe if he was in Lynch's territory it would have turned out better. Anderson, director of Mortal Kombat, and Event Horizon, set his sights on making his "sci-fi masterpiece" with a human element this time by setting himself down to work on a good premise movie, and ended up screwing that up, which you'd figure would be easy. If he'd made it out of studio, tried the independent road, the film might just have turned out quasi-semi-decent, instead of ye load of crap which we see before us now. But he decided to stay with the high paycheck security of a movie that relies on being blind and not noticing the plot holes that are large enough to walk through. The movie has a specific cadre of people drafted at birth and becoming the perfect soldier, not speaking unless spoken to, and following all orders. Not speaking is good news, we don't have to listen to Kurt Russell attempt to utter a line… in fact, we don't hear his voice until about a half hour into the movie. All of these people watch atrocities, kill civilians, and go through life without emotion. Good premise. He's replaced, of course, when they come out with genetic models that were designed in Japan and made in China, in otherwords, cheaper, better. And of course he's still alive when they dump him on a waste planet. And, of course, he finds other inhabitants and isn't quite accepted amongst them, due to massive war flashbacks and a nice little human element that almost works… until they put the action in. In fact, if you took out the action sequences at the end, it'd be a good movie. But, no, instead, you have Kurt Russell kicking butt like he always does… badly. And you end up hating the movie that started out so good, started out so intriguing. If I could just make a single splice, I'd save it… But, hey, you know what they say, always the critic, never the criticized. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Mar 30 17:37:20 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!uio.no!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: ram.samudrala@stanford.edu (Ram Samudrala) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Soldier (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 30 Mar 1999 05:41:34 GMT Organization: Movie ram-blings: http://www.ram.org/ramblings/movies.html Lines: 56 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <7dpo6e$vta$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer28.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 922772494 32682 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #17509 Keywords: author=samudrala X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer28.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:16714 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2277 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Soldier http://www.ram.org/ramblings/movies/soldier.html /Soldier/ is mindless entertainment, pretty much devoid of any substance. But that has its appeal too. Sergeant Todd 3465 (Kurt Russell) is one among a line of soldiers who have been selected at birth and trained since to be efficient and brutal killing machines. One day a new Colonel, Mekum (Jason Issacs), arrives and introduces a new line of soldiers to replace the old ones: these soldiers have been genetically enhanced and are superior in intellect, stamina, and strength. To prove his point, Mekum sets one of the new soldiers against three of the old (including Todd) resulting in their deaths. Or so the Colonel thinks. As the bodies are deposited on planet Arcadia 234, designated as a interstellar garbage dump, Todd regains consciousness and stumbles into a lost human colony. As his injuries heal, thanks to the care of the colonists, Todd begins to form bonds with his hosts. However, his training and violent nature makes him unfit to live in the colony and he is banished: until the new soldiers arrive on the planet and go about exterminating everyone on it as a training exercise. Todd wages war on the new soldiers led by Mekum to protect the people he cares about. There's nothing to be said for acting here: Kurt Russell is as stiff as a corpse. The visuals and the setting are pretty good and the cinematography is what makes the movie bearable. Any commentary about war I would make is already done in my review of /Saving Private Ryan/. The notion of using genetically enhanced soldiers to wage wars in the future has been dealt with before: I predict a more Orwellian scenario along the lines of /Brave New World/ or /Gattaca/ where there is a class differentiation based on genetic enhancements. In the end, rather than make any sort of commentary on the issue of genetic manipulation, the movie anthropomorphises. Todd is easily able to defeat almost twenty of the enhanced soldiers, because of his "street smarts" and human intuition. Soldier is worth renting on the video if you're looking for a well-done piece of highly predictable and formulaic entertainment. Brave New World movie review: http://www.ram.org/ramblings/movies/brave_new_world.html Gattaca movie review http://www.ram.org/ramblings/movies/gattaca.html Saving Private Ryan movie review http://www.ram.org/ramblings/movies/saving_private_ryan.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- email@urls || http://www.ram.org || http://www.twisted-helices.com/th Movie ram-blings: http://www.ram.org/ramblings/movies.html