Subject: Review: Solider (1998)

From: Matt Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Dec 1998 06:39:45 GMT

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 ([email-masked])
Reviewer for Cinematter: http://www.cinematter.com
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