Star: Dolph Lundgren

A View To A Kill (1985) – Roger Moore and Christopher Walken

We already know Roger Moore‘s James Bond loves a good ski chase, especially in the opening scenes, and this movie is no different – the opening ski chase here is as good as any, and it leads into the theme tune by Duran Duran which itself is as good as any Bond theme tune ever made. With good humour too, Eon Productions seem intent on sending off Roger Moore with a bang, in his last outing as James Bond. Naturally, Roger Moore delivers an excellent performance as usual.

The main antagonist in this movie, Max Zorin, is played very well by a young Christopher Walken, and his main muscle assistant called May Day is played by quite weirdly by Grace Jones. They both make a strong appearance in the first half hour. Aside from Grace Jones (whose I assume is a woman but wouldn’t bank on it) who stays on Zorin’s side until near the end; the main female in this movie is Tanya Roberts who quite well plays Stacey Sutton – a woman who James befriends after witnessing her being paid off by Zorin and then bumping into her again later on.

Bond’s assistant, Sir Godfrey Tibbett, is played very well by Patrick Macnee (who famously played John Steed in the action-packed 60s TV series The Avengers).

There’s a strong equine theme in this movie, so horse breeders and horse-racing enthusiasts should enjoy it more than most.

The sharp eyed among us may notice Dolph Lundgren shows his face for a second, as a KGB agent, when General Gogov (played quite well by Walter Gotell) confronts Max Zorin about his supposed unauthorised killing of 007. Dolph became a household face when he appeared as the main antagonist in Rocky IV, which was released just 4 months after A View To A Kill’s release in 1985 – on Bruce Lee’s birthday in fact, Nov 27.

Towards the end of this movie, they’ve attempted to bring back the outstanding humour of Clifton James as Sheriff JW Pepper, from Roger Moore’s first two Bond movies (Life And Let Die, and The Man With The Golden Gun), this time in the form of a police captain played by Joe Flood. Joe does an alright job, but he’s no Clifton James. In fact, he’s relatively deadpan.

The ending gets a bit monotonous for those who have seen it several times before, but it’s still generally well made throughout. The quality of this movie is generally pretty good – not quite on a par with Roger Moore’s best Bond movies (Live And Let Die, and The Spy Who Loved Me) for my taste, but it’s roughly in the running for joint third place. With a slightly better lead female, and better comedy from the police captain or someone else, plus a nice Bond car (which is completely lacking in this movie), and with a more dynamic ending, and perhaps better use of Patrick Macnee (who got killed off too early for my liking), it could have been up there with the best Bond movies of all time. But as it stands, I rate it on a par with most movies from the Connery and Moore eras – I rated most of them just OK.

Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning (2012) – Scott Adkins

The last Universal Soldier movie had shades of B movie quality, but this one takes it to another level. It’s got really bad POV camerawork for a start – not a million miles from Scott Adkin’s barely-watchable zero-budget movie One More Shot.

While the last movie never caught fire but dwindled in an area that made us think it could be about to catch fire; this movie doesn’t even hit that spot – the whole thing is flat from start to finish, making it a chore to watch, and that’s saying something coming from someone who is such a fan of this genre that I made a website dedicated to it.

Some of the action scenes are so mixed up with CGI they look cartoony.

Some of the concepts are pretty cool, kind of like waking someone up in The Matrix, but when white noise is the favoured sound effect and flashing light is the favoured visual effect, it couldn’t have been executed much worse if they tried.

It gets a bit gruesome too, when explicitly chopping off bodyparts with an axe.

It gets slightly interesting around half way through, as Scott Adkins’ character starts digging into his past, trying to remember who he was, what he did, and who his family’s murderer is. But it’s still very cold and disjointed – I can’t rate it any higher than barely Watchable. It was really a chore to watch this far – I only did it for the benefit of this review.
Scott Adkins’ first serious fight scene, a little over an hour into this movie – after the car chase – started off boring, but it soon got tasty when it became apparent that Adkins’s character is a far superior fighter to the most modern UNISOL – the main antagonist – from the previous movie, played by Andrei Arlovski. Does this mean Adkins is in fact the best of all the UNISOLs? Is he capable of beating the whole crew including Van Damme? Now it’s getting slightly interesting – just a shame we’re already an hour in and have had to endure a barely watchable movie up until this point. The back end of the movie is more comfortably Watchable, pushing on So-So, but still quite cold & gloomy.

Scott Adkins is the main character in this movie. He’s the main protagonist. After him, Jean-Claude Van Damme appears to be the main antagonist, for most of the movie, although he may actually be a good guy. He doesn’t get much screen time, but is still one of the main characters after Adkins. Andrei Arlovski also gets a fair amount of screen time as the main active handyman working for Van Damme. Dolph Lundgren also makes a few appearances – he appears to be second in command of the guys working in Van Damme’s crew of freed UNISOLs. You may have also noticed Roy Jones Jr – possibly the greatest boxer of all time (in the TV era, under Queensberry rules) – having a scrap with Andrei Arlovski in the UNISOL mess hall. After getting beaten up by Arlovski, then pummelled by the whole crew, Van Damme steps in and shoots him dead. Honestly, I thought I saw him, but then I thought that’s not possible – then I saw the rolling credits at the end and yes, it really was him. That’s probably the coolest thing about this movie.

In summary, I’m going to rate this movie Watchable, owing to its So-So second half. I’m being a bit generous with the rating here, because the first half is probably best described as Unwatchable, so it seems a bit unfair to the other movies rated Watchable which are a bit better than this one, and the other movies rated Unwatchable which are really no worse than this one, if focusing on the first hour. The second half is really its saving grace, and is my only excuse for rating this movie Watchable.

Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

The basic concept is a good one but the script and cinematography never catch fire, they seem a bit soul-less, a bit like a B movie. The UNISOLs are meant to be cold, not the whole movie.

This movie lacks any significant female role. It had potential for a bit of warmth with the introduction of a non-UNISOL soldier played very well by Mike Pyle, giving Andrei Arlovski‘s latest generation of UNISOL a run for his money. But just as Pyle was growing into his role he got killed off. Interesting plot twist at the very end though, as Pyle’s character appears to have been cloned to create a load of new UNISOLs – this whets the appetite for the fourth & final movie in the saga (Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning, 2012) which brings back Van Damme & Arlovski while also co-starring Scott Adkins, but unfortunately does not feature Pyle so the ending to Regeneration is a bit of phony cliffhanger.

Dolph Lundgren does well in his return to the Universal Soldier movie series, as of course does Jean-Claude Van Damme – the main star of every movie in the series except the last (Day Of Reckoning) where Adkins takes over as the main protagonist since Van Damme is getting quite old by this time (in his early 50s) while active soldiers in the real world are generally young (with elastic bodies and impressionable minds). It’s just a shame they’re working with a weak script and deadpan cinematography, so I can’t rate it higher than So-So even if the genre, stars and concept are all excellent.

Masters Of The Universe (1987) – Dolph Lundgren

Following the very popular cartoon series of the 80s, this action-packed movie sees Dolph Lundgren impersonate the legendary cartoon hero He-Man as he battles Skeletor and his minions, with the help of a few friends from his own world (Eternia) and from Earth after he opens a portal to Earth and has some funny interactions with the local police.

Masters Of The Universe is a light-hearted slightly childish action movie that still manages to mildly entertain a grown up action movie junkie four decades after its release. Especially watchable for those who grew up on He-Man cartoons, although it is somewhat underwhelming. Dolph puts in a bland but credible performance as He-Man. Frank Langella (with a mask) does a decent job as Skeletor. Courtney Cox is among the supporting cast members (she turned 23 just before this movie was released – this was 7 years before the Friends series began in 1994).

Financial issues

It doesn’t seem like a very high budget movie by today’s standards, but it’s not bad either. It had a budget of $22 million dollars at the time. Compare this to other movies of the same year: The Living Daylights (Timothy Dalton) had $40m; Beverly Hills Cop II (Eddie Murphy) had $27m; The Running Man (Arnie) had $27m; Over the Top (Stallone) $25m… But then Superman IV (Christopher Reeve) had only $17m; Police Academy 4 (Steve Guttenberg) had $17m; Predator (Arnie) had $15m; Lethal Weapon (Mel Gibson) had $15m; RoboCop (Peter Weller) had $14m… So by the standards of 1987 production budgets, Masters Of The Universe had a budget that was not massive but was still quite strong – the movie doesn’t quite do justice to the budget (some of the special effects, uniforms and man power were probably more costly than worthwhile – they have a cheap & cheesy feel by today’s standards but were probably very costly at the time), and it ran a deficit at the box office.

Cannon had a background in low to medium budget action movies starring the likes of Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson. They were new to making high budget movies and were struggling after Over The Top was a box office flop, so cuts were made everywhere on both Superman IV and Masters Of The Universe, and the sequel Masters Of The Universe 2 was abandoned along with a Spider Man movie, and sets & costumes of both were re-hashed into a new post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie called Cyborg (1989) starring Van Damme.

Masters Of The Universe director Gary Goddard revealed that staff were also threatening to stop working because they were not being paid on time, and while they were filming the final fight scene between He-Man and Skeletor the producers were literally pulling the plug while the cameras were still rolling. Goddard was forced to rewrite the ending to something much simpler than originally planned. Unsurprisingly, Dolph refused to come back for the sequel – surely a wise decision since the sequel was abandoned half way through.

Universal Soldier (1992) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

Universal Soldier

Van Damme stars in this movie, as a soldier brought back to life as a kind of Terminator 1 style cyborg, who then gets taken and kind of “woken up” by a journalist. Dolph Lundgren plays his main adversary – another member of the same cyborg squad, tasked with bringing Van Damme’s character back in, or killing him.

This movie has a very creative base storyline, with credible lead acting, and the odd awesome scene; but it gets a bit boring towards the end as the writers run out of creativity, which makes for less interesting re-watching.

Fortunately there’s at least one decent sequel to keep you entertained if you enjoyed this movie.

The whole saga, in summary

Safe to say, every movie in the Universal Soldier saga (excluding those that did not feature Van Damme) is about a couple of levels worse than the one before it.

The original was fresh & inspired – it had the potential to be one of the best movies ever made – but it dragged its heels towards the end, with an over extended fight scene that gets boring for rewatchers.

The second movie was also quite creative with the computer taking over, and had some great new cast members (especially Goldberg). Its script was quite one dimensional but it was still a decent movie, with decent cinematography and decent entertainment value throughout.

The third movie had a slightly interesting concept and featured some interesting new cast members, but was quite poorly made. Cold and soul-less, almost like a B movie. At times it seemed like it was about to catch fire but it never really did.

Then the fourth and final movie in the series took coldness & soullessness to a whole new level. It never really seemed like it was ever going to catch fire. It was really a chore to sit through the first hour – I think I must have tried to watch it a few times but switched off early every time – I only tolerated it once for the benefit of this review, so you don’t have to!