January is a thematic wasteland – it’s not a time for summer blockbusters, sun-kissed Westerns, or autumnal horror movies, so I found myself thinking; let’s have a Van Damme month, why the hell not? In retrospect, I’m ambivalent about my choice, because although Universal Soldier is an enjoyable and competently made early 90s sci-fi action movie in the same vein as Terminator or Predator, it’s ultimately a bit of a missed opportunity, considering how interesting the premise is.
That premise is as follows; a shadowy covert operation has been spiriting away the corpses of US military personnel killed in Vietnam, and then genetically reengineering and reanimating them as super soldiers for deployment in high-risk operations. In the film’s opening scene, two of these prospective Frankenstein’s monsters – Luc Deveraux (Van Damme) and Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren) – come face to face in the jungles of Vietnam, ultimately killing each other when Deveraux takes exception to the clearly psychotic Scott’s wanton execution of civilians and unfortunate predilection for wearing their severed ears as a necklace. The cadavers of these two very different officers are shipped off to the Universal Soldier program and, at first, all seems well, as the indestructible zombie squadron proves its worth by efficiently despatching a group of terrorists at a power station. Unfortunately for the program’s bigwigs, however, both Deveraux and Scott slowly begin to remember who they are, and their feud reignites – with predictably explosive results.
At first glance, then, there’s abundant promise here – it’s Van Damme and Lundgren, two of the most bankable action stars of the 1980s, enacting a compelling sci-fi storyline, one pregnant with psychological and ethical questions about trauma, historical guilt, and how memories make us who we are. Most intriguingly of all, the director’s chair is occupied by a fresh-faced Roland Emmerich, who was destined to take the reins on gazillion dollar-grossing behemoths such as Independence Day and Godzilla. From these foundations, it would have required a monumental shitting of the bed for Universal Soldier to have been a disaster or even a bad movie, and it most certainly avoids these fates.
And yet, for my money, the overall result is a bit flat. Sadly, Van Damme’s performance is one of the film’s most significant weak spots – the wide-eyed, slightly boyish innocence and earnestness that he brought to Bloodsport and Kickboxer cannot be readily transferred to the role of Deveraux, and he never convinces as a cold-blooded, superhuman assassin struggling to reconnect with his lost humanity. Much of the heavy lifting is valiantly performed by Ally Walker, a relatively unknown actress who plays Veronica Roberts, a recently fired news reporter hoping to get her job back by exposing the Universal Soldier program. But her portrayal of an exasperated, cynical careerist who gradually develops feelings for the deadpan Deveraux doesn’t quite land, partly due to her own limitations, and partly due to Van Damme’s. Indeed, the entire film is marked by a curious lack of charisma from its leads, although Lundgren stands out as the maniacal Sergeant Scott.
What’s more, considering Emmerich’s pedigree, the action sequences are strangely unimpactful, the overall direction curiously uninspired. The influence of the Terminator movies looms large in, for example, the shootout at the motel, or the (nominal) final confrontation between Deveraux and Scott atop careening trucks in the desert, but these scenes are nowhere near as captivating as comparable moments in the hands of James Cameron. Maybe Emmerich was still wet behind the ears and finding his feet, although come to think of it, I can’t say that any of Independence Day, Godzilla, or Stargate are among my favourite action movies, which is perhaps instructive.
Overall, Universal Soldier is worth seeing for its thought-provoking premise, and especially the notion that historical crimes and trauma will surely erupt into the present with renewed violence unless they are properly dealt with and atoned for. As the reanimated Scott becomes increasingly trigger happy, Woodward, the lead scientist on the Universal Soldier project, insists to his indifferent military superiors that it isn’t possible to simply “cover up” Scott’s atrocities without taking “moral responsibility” for them – that they cannot simply be “wound down”, in the words of Richard Nixon, who not coincidentally appears here as a spectral visage on a television set talking about the legacy of Vietnam.
I suppose, too, that the confrontation between the unavoidably sympathetic, but in my opinion miscast, Van Damme and the thrillingly malevolent Lundgren is engaging enough to justify a viewing. In the end, though, everyone knows that Universal Soldier is a bargain basement version of The Terminator, but in the hands of a different director and with a rejigged cast, it could have been more.
Overall Rating: * * *