Theme: Military

GoldenEye (1995) – Pierce Brosnan and Gottfried John

I believe Pierce Brosnan makes a relatively bland & robotic Bond compared to the three greats before him; and this, probably by no mere coincidence, is exemplified in the first minute of this movie, when he does the “turn left and shoot” pose. Sean Connery holds his spare hand out to the side as a counter-balancing hand, a bit like would be done in fencing but with his hand facing down as if holding a pad for a boxer to throw an uppercut at, kind of like a surfer’s balancing pose; Roger Moore holds his gun with both hands; Timothy Dalton lets his spare hand hang to his side, with a realistic balance of tension & relaxation; then Pierce Brosnan leaves his spare hand down, similar to Dalton but more floppy, and his whole body flops round at the same time, very nonchalantly like a careless lifeless teenager or a synthetic dummy, or someone who has never trained any kind of martial art before but wants to portray dominant tactical movement nonetheless. The way he pulls the door open 25 minutes in, is no different. It’s like he’s huffing & puffing while trying to act slick, when really he’s all floppy and the door is the dominant entity between the two of them! Having said that, as bland and uncoordinated a Bond as he may be, the fact his movies are much more highly funded than his outstanding predecessors’ movies were, kind of brings his movies up to the same level as most of those Bond movies before him. The fight scene at 25 minutes in, for example, when James gets through the door on the boat he’s sneaked on, is all flashy camera switching. There’s no genuine martial arts acumen or even athletic acumen on display, but good cinematography has ways of compensating for this, and the tempo and general vibe of that fight scene was not bad to be honest.

Backtracking now – the opening scenes at the very start of this movie are a bit ‘Mission Impossible esque’ with jumping down cliffs and entering rooms through ceilings.

In the first 5 minutes we’re introduced to one of the other main characters – agent 006 played by Sean Bean. I’m usually a fan of his but I’m not a fan of his demeanour in this movie – he hasn’t reached his prime as an actor yet, and he’s got a rather repulsive smug look on his face in this movie in my opinion. Either the role doesn’t suit him, or it came too early in his career for us to really see the best of him. Anyway, he’s one of the main supporting actors in this movie.

Another of the main supporting actors we meet in the first 10 minutes is Gottfried John who is best known for his performance as the main villain in this movie – General Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov, who is also head of the Russian Space Division but turns on his own countrymen and goes rogue.

After we get a ridiculously unrealistic mid-air recovery of a nosediving passengerless plane to end the opening scenes, this leads into the theme tune by a croaky voiced Tina Turner in her mid 50s. It’s a funky tune but it’s not got quite the same kick as the best Bond theme tunes, for my taste. Another singer could have sang the same lyrics to the same tune and yet done it much better than Tina, I think.

One of the main Bond girl from this movie is Xenia Onatopp, who is played quite well by Dutch actress Famke Janssen (she also played Liam Neeson’s wife in the Taken movie series, and Phoenix in the early X-Men movies of 2000, 2003 and 2006) and now she plays the main female baddie in GoldenEye – she’s General Ourumov’s sidekick, who together with him, steals a state-of-the-art EMP-proof helicopter from a miliary demo after killing and impersonating an admiral then a couple of pilots. She also makes orgasmic noises after shooting & killing people.

Before the end of the first half hour, we meet the second of the main women in this movie, Natalya Fyodorovna Simonova, who is played by Polish actress Izabella Scorupco – she’s not a bad actress and is quite pretty too – definitely above average for a Bond girl but not on a par with the best of them for my taste. She’s a non corrupt programmer at a Russian top secret base that Ourumov & Onatopp shoot up. To their surprise, she manages to survive, then gets caught, escapes, gets caught again, and befriends James Bond who she’s being held prisoner with around half way through the movie. When we first meet her, we also met her colleague, a Russian programmer & hacker called Boris Grishenko (played alright by Scottish actor Alan Cumming, the main baddie in Spy Kids) and he is working with Ourumov & Onatopp.

The script & screenplay get pretty intense & captivating as Bond & Simonova are questioned by Defense Minister Dimitri Mishkin (played pretty well by Tchéky Karyo, who also plays corrupt Inspector Jean-Pierre Richard, the main antagonist in Kiss Of The Dragon, a Jet Li classic). Simonova then points the finger at General Ourumov who then walks in, acts suspicious, tried & fails to argue, then kills the minister and tries to kill Bond & Simonova but they manage to escape. Simonova soon gets caught again, but Bond makes his way out in a tank.

The Living Daylights (1987) – Timothy Dalton and Maryam d’Abo

This movie opens with a great scene where a bunch of 00 agents pit themselves against the SAS in a mock raid of Gibraltr, which is defended by the SAS who are waiting on high alert and armed with paintball guns. Unfortunately a real enemy agent infiltrates the exercise and kills one of the 00 agents. Naturally, James Bond (played excellently by Timothy Dalton, in his first of two outings as James Bond) clocks on to this and goes after him, leaving the SAS quite confused. This set of scenes ends with James funnily landing on a boat occupied by a woman who’s on the phone saying she longs to find a ‘real man’.

This leads into the theme tune by A-ha, which is one of the best Bond theme tunes of all time.

The script unravels quite intruigingly and concisely from here on, as Bond manages to extract a defected Russian general from enemy soil, and in the course of this, non-lethally takes out an enemy sniper (played quite well by the beautiful Maryam d’Abo) after seeing she wasn’t really a trained sniper – something fishy’s going on and James intends to get to the bottom of it without shooting any seemingly innocent women in the process. Props to the writers, directors and editors, and of course actors – especially Dalton for carrying the vibe of the movie with his energy and seriousness, plus the odd dose of humour.

Good to see Miss Moneypenny is replaced by a younger woman at long last. This time she’s played by Caroline Bliss, who is in her mid 20s here. She does a fair job – nothing special but not terrible or inappropriate either. Up until this point, Moneypenny was played in all the Bond movies through the Connery and Moore eras by Lois Maxwell, who was alright when she debuted with Dr No in 1962 (in her mid 30s) – her chemistry with Bond was believable there – but when she’s still around in A View To A Kill in 1985 (in her late 50s) she seems long past her sell-by date, especially when she’s supposedly being romantic with James Bond. So it’s great to see her finally replaced – this was long overdue, I suggest.

This movie features one of the most iconic baddies in the entire Bond saga – the understated KGB agent called Necros (played very well by Andreas Wisniewski) who initially poses as a milkman after killing the real milkman, and manages to infiltrate an MI6 base to extract the defected general back to Russia. His role is continuous throughout this movie, as the main muscle on the baddies’ side. He’s a bit like John Wyman’s character Erich Kriegler, the young blonde KGB agent in For Your Eyes Only (1981), crossed with Ivan Drago from Rocky IV (played by Dolph Lundgren, who also appeared for a second in the previous Bond movie, A View To A Kill, which came out just a few months prior to Rocky IV, which itself premiered on Bruce Lee’s birthday, Nov 27, 1985).

40 minutes in, we become properly introduced to the lead female in this movie, called Kara Milovy, played quite well by half-Georgian actress Maryam d’Abo who is up there among the best Bond girls of all time. She had great chemistry with Dalton both on and off-screen. Although I’ve found no reports of them officially dating, they were occasionally pictured together in the late 80s and into the 90s. Anyway, back to the movie. So, James has a good chat with Kara to make sure she’s innocent, then helps her to shrug off her KGB tail. Shortly before this, we were also introduced to a nice Bond car – something completely missing from the last Bond movie (A View To A Kill, 1985). This time it’s an Aston Martin equipped with laser beams, missiles and bulletproof glass, as well as skis and tyre spikes for moving over snow & ice, plus a rocket-powered turbo booster. But the car eventually crashes and this leads into one of the most iconic Bond movie scenes of all time, where Timothy Dalton and Maryam d’Abo (as James Bond and Kara Milovy) slide down a snowy mountainside using an opened cello case as a twin bobsled and the cello itself as a steering rudder. They slide all the way down to the country’s border and beyond, where the militia that was shooting at them stops giving chase.

This movie gets a little slower and less exciting for around quarter an hour, towards the middle of the movie, as we learn a bit more about the baddies and their complex relationships and agendas, as well as what Bond’s strategy is. These scenes can get a bit boring for those who have seen this movie many times before, and this brings down my overall rating of this movie from what could have been Pretty Good, down to Decent which is still the highest rating I’ve given to any Bond movie – just one step better than the best Bond movies by Connery and Moore. After quarter an hour of less thrilling scenes in the middle of the movie, it soon sharpens up and becomes quite spicy when James’s colleague is killed and he regains vigour for his mission, then smells another rat and pretends to kill someone in the hopes that everyone will now show their cards.

The action heats up nicely again, around 40 minutes before the end, as James and Kara make their escape from a Russian airbase in Afghanistan, making friends with a powerful local Afghani resistance leader in the process after setting him free the day before his execution were due. The Afghani resistance leader was called Kamran Shah, and he was played quite well by Art Malik.

The ending is quite strong – it stays quite interesting and has a decent tempo. There’s good musical effects during the fight scenes towards the end too. Although it can still get a little tedious for people who have seen this movie many times before. The suspenseful scene with Bond and Necros hanging onto the ropes out the back of the plane while the bomb is counting down, near the end of this movie, drags on just a little too long for my liking, as someone who’s seen this movie many times before and remains thoroughly entertained by much of it. The entire fight scene on between Bond and Necros while the plane was in the air, only lasted a few minutes, but I would have liked it to be more concise and less prolongingly suspenseful still, personally. After that, when Bond dropped the bomb on the Russians crossing the bridge, to put an end to them chasing his new Mujahideen friends, that was a very nice touch. Props to the writers and the whole team for that level of clever detail. The plane losing fuel after that, and the escape plan in the jeep, was a nice twist too, keeping us on our toes, in a good way. After this, the very ending stays quite concise, with decent action and good humour.

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.

Universal Soldier: The Return (1999) – Van Damme, Goldberg and Michael Jai White

This movie offers a novel twist on the already creative concept established in the original, while also featuring strong new co-stars in Bill Goldberg and Michael Jai White. This is actually the fourth movie in the Universal Soldier franchise, but the second & third did not feature Jean-Claude Van Damme or anyone else of note (the main protagonist in both was Matt Battaglia) so you’ll be forgiven for watching the first movie then jumping straight to this one – the fourth.

We don’t see enough of wrestling superstar Goldberg in this kind fast action movie – he makes a very convincing tough guy. Plus, this is easily one of Michael Jai White’s better performances – the robotic superiority-complex role matches his real life demeanour.

Overall I rate this a Decent movie – it’s a bit less of a revelation than the original but still quite creative with a fresh new concept, and features multiple action superstars, but on the downside the plot is a bit one dimensional – the script could have easily been developed more to make it an even better movie. There are multiple females in this movie, including a reporter and a fellow UNISOL, but none of them are particularly worth mentioning – they all deliver bland performances.

Fun fact: this was actually Van Damme’s last widely-released-in-cinemas English-language movie until 2 and a half decades later, when he released Darkness Of Man in 2024 (excluding movies where he wasn’t the main star, such as The Expendables 2 in 2012). Maybe he wasn’t totally playing ball with Hollywood’s sickest shenanigans, but they eventually rewarded him for keeping quiet during the deceptions of the 2020 era? Or maybe his movies had only a small niche audience? The fact that Inferno (1999) had only a limited cinematic released is odd, and the fact that The Order (2001) went direct to video is outrageous.

Further Sequels

If you enjoyed the original Universal Soldier movie from 1992, as well as this one – Universal Soldier: The Return – from 1999, which is the second one starring Van Damme; then you’ll be pleased to know there are a couple more decent Universal Soldier movies to enjoy after this one.

Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009) rekindles the rivalry between Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, then they both come back again for Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012) with the addition of Scott Adkins as the main protagonist in the final movie. Both of these movies from 2009 & 2012 also make a significant role for Andrei Arlovski, the former UFC heavyweight champion who still holds the record for the most wins in UFC heavyweight history to this day.

Soldier (1998) – Kurt Russell and Jason Scott Lee

Soldier (1998) starring Kurt Russell

Not to be confused with the Indian film of the same name, from the same year. Soldier (1998) is one of Kurt Russell’s best action hero movies. It’s beautifully composed and has a very original concept. It also has a great soundtrack by Loreena McKennitt (Night Ride Across the Caucasus).

This movie follows the story of a cold-hearted team of soldiers whose leader is played by Kurt Russell – the strongest and fastest of them all. After many successful campaigns, he eventually gets made obsolete as a new breed of soldiers are introduced, who are stronger and faster than the old ones. The leader of the new soldiers is played by Jason Scott Lee (from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, which is not an accurate depiction of Bruce Lee’s life story but is a decent movie nevertheless).

Now obsolete, we see the leader of the old soldiers left for dead on a garbage dump planet where no people are thought to live. But he soon gets taken in by a community of locals, and we see him gain a heart and eventually help these people to defeat all the new soldiers when they eventually come to wipe out the people on this planet.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) – Harrison Ford and Sean Connery

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) is a bad third movie in the series – it’s about equal to the second one (Temple Of Doom, 1984) and has a lot less of the weird occult stuff although there is a strong religious angle to this one.

This time, Harrison Ford (who plays Indiana Jones as well as usual) is joined by Sean Connery (who plays his father) for a good chunk of the movie. Both their performances seem a bit laboured, not as crystal clear as they are when they’re performing at their best, but they still both put in decent work here.

Considering it’s the third of 5 movies in the saga, they’ve done a good job in maintaining a fairly decent standard although the original is probably still the best movie of them all since Harrison Ford is a bit younger there and his age is clearly catching up with him now. This time the movie is set in the WW2 era and is largely based in Germany, while featuring plenty of military personnel with credible accents, mannerisms and uniforms, etc.

This is more of an evolving adventure movie rather than a martial arts movie per say, and is more of a team endeavour than a single action hero job compared to most action hero movies featured on this site, but there’s plenty of fast action scenes including fighting with fists, whips, guns, tanks, planes, etc as you would expect from any Indiana Jones movie.

As with the other Indiana Jones movies so far, there’s a lack of potent female input, although Alison Doody does a fair job as the lead female with minimal screen time. She’s plays Elsa Schneider who keeps jumping back & forth from supporting Indy and his father, to double crossing them, to supporting them again. She’s probably still the third main character in this movie. She’s not unattractive, she’s just a bit basic and isn’t given a substantial role either.

Other supporting cast members do a fairly good job as usual in this series. They include River Phoenix in his late teens, who plays a younger version of Indiana at the start of the movie – he died of an overdose just four years after this movie was released, at the age of only 23. John Rhys-Davies also performs well as Sallah, Indy’s accomplice in the desert.

Some of the best parts of this movie include when Indy bumps into Adolf himself – great comedy there; plus when Indy and his father get on a German zeppelin airship – another outstanding comedy moment there; and when Indy finally meets the immortal guardian of the Holy Grail – that was a cool moment too.

Another nice touch to this movie was its scene in the ancient city of Petra, in Jordan. This place, according to some people (such as Dan Gibson, who has an interesting YouTube channel) was the true home of the religious prophets Ibrahim (Abraham) and Muhammad, and is allegedly still the direction that all the world’s oldest masjid prayer walls point to today. Can anyone prove him wrong? He seems to welcome the challenge.

Lionheart (1990) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

Lionheart is a fun concept for first time watching, and for infrequent rewatching, but if you see it too often this movie becomes simplistic and drags on a bit – especially the fight scene at the end, and the sobbing scene that follows it – so leave it a good few years between each viewing.

This movie was also released under the names AWOL: Absent Without Leave (in the UK) and Wrong Bet (in Australia & Oceania).

Cast

Van Damme is his usual self – good acting and exhibiting his trademark moves. But we don’t see any fun training scenes or learning scenes, he just begins as a decent fighter fleeing the French Foreign Legion to see his dying brother, then fighting to earn money to help his brother’s widow & child.

Decent supporting actors include Harrison Page who does a good job as Van Damme’s hustling manager from the streets, who was the organiser of his first paid fight and climbed the ladder with him. Deborah Rennard also did well as the higher level fight manager who has a crush on Van Damme’s character; and Brian Thomson did alright as her head of security. Ashley Johnson also did alright as Van Damme’s brother’s widow. There were no really bad performances – the whole cast was of a decent standard. Vojislav Govedaricaty was also very convincing as the legionnaire sergeant who followed Van Damme to America in order to escort him back home; and Michel Qissi (born Mohammed Qissi) played the sergeant’s accomplice, also tasked with bringing Van Damme back.

Good to see Michel Qissi get a role here, as he also played Tong Po, the main adversary in Kickboxer (1989) just one year prior to Lionheart, although he’s unrecognisable as the same person. He also had a minor role as a competitor in Bloodsport (1988) the year prior to that – again, that was a totally different look. It really looks like three different people. Michel also came back to play a minor role in Kickboxer: Vengeance (2016), which was the first official sequel to the original (the four Kickboxer movies in between were not affiliated with the original and did not feature Van Damme). Meanwhile, Michel Qissi’s real life brother, Abdul Qissi did quite well as the final boss adversary in Lionheart. Abdul later went on to play Khan, the final boss adversary in The Quest (1996), and he also had a minor role in The Order (2001).

Legionnaire (1998) – Jean-Claude Van Damme

This simple plotted war movie is an unexpected recipe for success, thanks to Van Damme plus a strong supporting cast, solid screenplay, and no nasty “proper gander”! Legionnaire is a genuinely balanced war movie that accurately portrays the injustice of the invasion & occupation of Arabia by the French foreign legion in the 1920s.

Van Damme is his usually self – impressive as always. Strong supporting cast members include Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Nicholas Farrell and Daniel Caltagirone who play Van Damme’s closest friends, as well as Steven Berkoff who plays the unfriendly Sergeant, and Jim Carter who plays the mafia boss trying to kill Van Damme.

The plot is a bit thin and dragged out to cover the movie, when really this movie could have easily been doubled in length then cut to be more concise. It could have had interesting plot developments following where it ended, and then could have been rounded off nicely – instead it feels a bit cut shot. It’s still an entertaining watch for someone who hasn’t seen it in several years – the screenplay is remarkably captivating for such a simple story – but given its drawbacks I wouldn’t recommend rewatching it until you’ve mostly forgotten it. For this reason I rate this movie as below average for a Van Damme movie, but not far off the average.

Again, credit to the directors & producers, and to Van Damme if he had a say, for presenting an honest & balanced perspective on war – a pleasant surprise that I totally did not expect but really ought to be the norm. Legionnaire was a mild box office success around the world, but USA cinemas didn’t to show it – maybe they feared it was too truthful & impactful, to the point it would deter American military recruitment and general public support for modern invasion & occupation campaigns.

Under Siege (1992) – Steven Seagal

Under Siege (1992) was the fifth movie in Steven Seagal‘s career, and in most objective movie buffs’ perspective, remained his biggest and best role of all.

This movie is generally very well made. It has good timing, good acting, good budget, good sets, good sound effects, good camera work… It’s a decent movie all round. The plot is a bit simplistic and this makes the movie a bit one dimensional but it’s generally well executed and is right up there as one of the best movies in Steven’s career, if not the very best – some people prefer Under Siege 2 although most believe the first was the better one, and some people prefer Glimmer Man, but Under Siege is still right up there in everyone’s eyes as one of the best if not the very best movie he’s ever made.

Cast includes Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey as the main baddies – they both do a decent job, if a little unpleasant but that’s probably the fault of the director more than the actors; and Erika Eleniak plays the lead female role – not very impressively in my humble opinion but I guess she’s just doing her job and is not there to act like a trained navy seal, she’s there to play the role of a bimbo and that’s exactly how she comes across so maybe she deserves credit in a way? Fortunately she doesn’t take up too much screen time, so it’s not a big problem. Many other supporting cast members put in strong performances – too many to mention right now.

All in all, I personally rate this movie as Seagal’s joint best performance – roughly equal to The Glimmer Man – on a par with most of Van Damme’s above-average movies like Inferno and Assassination Games. Under Siege is not just an OK movie, it’s better than OK, it’s rather decent. I wouldn’t go so far as to describe it as pretty good, but it’s only one level shy of that. It’s just a couple of levels shy of Very Good. Indeed, the entertainment value of Under Siege is solid and quite consistent. Any boring bits are rare and don’t last long. It’s a fairly strong product that was quite deserving of its sequel.

In its day, this movie was easily the best so far in Steven Seagal’s career. He later went on to make one or two more on a similar level, but this is a level he never significantly topped, if ever at all.

The best moment in this movie is probably when the bad guys, having just taken over the ship and locked away all but one of its crew members, get hold of the captain’s personnel files and realise the harmless Cook running loose (played by Seagal) is actually a former Navy SEAL.

Steven Seagal in Under Siege (1992)

Sequel

If you enjoyed Under Siege (1992) you should definitely check out its sequel Under Siege 2 (1995), which has a very similar style except in the sequel Seagal is re-taking control of a train instead of a ship.