Universal Soldier Regeneration

[George Bellefontaine]

The first Universal Soldier is a guilty pleasure of mine. In fact I like and have watched it enough to replace the dvd with a Blu-ray. I passed on his 1999 sequel but decided to give this latest one a watch and was pleasantly surprised. Though still on the cheesy side, it was better than I expected. A terrorist group in Russia have taken over Chernoble and threaten to unleash a radioactive cloud unless their demands are met. They also have the children of the Russian leader as their hostage. And they have a secret weapon in the form of Andrei The Pitbull Arlovski, a programmed and indestructible killing machine. The US is called on for help and an elite group of soldiers along with a handful of UniSols ( Universal Soldiers ) make an attempt to capture Chernoble and free the hostages. The attempt fails and the UniSols are destroyed by ol' Andrei. Now only one man ( UniSol ? ) is left who can do the job-- VanDamme. He will not only face Andrei, but his old nemisis Dolph Lundrigan, who has also be regenerated.

Though the jacket cover has VanDamme in the more prominent position, strangely he is only on screen for about 10 minutes in the first hour. However, the last 30 or so minutes is all VanDamme. Not much acting is called for, and maybe just as well as he doesn't look well and appears uncomfortable in the quieter, dramatic moments. Age ( he's only 50 ) has not been kind to him, probably due to drug and alcohol abuse. And though the ending opens the door for a sequel, I wonder if the poor fella will live long enough to make one.

Like I said, still a bit cheesy, but not a bad action film, especially the last half hour. Certianly worth a rental for fans of the series.

[Chris D]

Really? You think Van Damme does the drugs and such? He always struck me as such the pure, clean athlete, building his body. Who knows.

I too thought the original Universal Soldier had a bit of dumb fun to it.

[David Meek]

Me too, on the orginal Universal Soldier being a guilty pleasure. Guess I'll move this one up the Netflix queue a bit. I'll spin 'er while Jen has rotated back to Houston (not exactly her cup of tea).

Wikipedia had this to say about his uh, "health":

After the filming of the 1998 movie Knock Off, Van Damme was diagnosed with rapid cycling bipolar disorder after becoming suicidal and started treatment on the bi-polar medication sodium valproate to stabilize his mood.

In a 2009 interview in the British newspaper The Sun, promoting his film JCVD (of which Time magazine said "He deserves not a black belt, but an Oscar"), Van Damme indicated he experienced a period of homelessness "sleeping on the street and starving in L.A."

[George Bellefontaine]

Really? You think Van Damme does the drugs and such? He always struck me as such the pure, clean athlete, building his body. Who knows.

In the recent movie JCVD, where he plays himself, he stops somewhere during the film and goes into this long diatribe about how worthless a life he has led, his failed marriage and his drug abuse. When you look at his closeups in Universal Soldier Regeneration, his face shows a man who has probably been to hell and back.

[Chris D]

Yikes!