Subject: Review: Soldier (1998)

From: Arnold Kim <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Nov 1998 06:16:48 GMT

Soldier (1998)

Film review by Arnold Kim

"Soldier", by director Paul Anderson, is a film in which any presence of 
originality is fleeting.  The best moments of the film are in the opning 
scenes where Kurt Russel's character Todd is shown growing up under 
strict military supervision.  Brutality through the eyes of the innocent and 
stripped of it every single day growing up is something that has a lot of 
emotional potential power behind it, and the opening scenes tap into it a 
little.  

Then it goes nowhere with that idea.  There is perhaps one rather fleeting 
scene afterwards that deals with the potential trauma of this 
dehumanization, and the rest of the film is just some of the biggest action 
movie cliches I've ever seen.  The whole idea of the inhuman, soldier-type 
character gaining some degree of humanity by defending a potential female 
love interest and family from his evil counterpart out to kill her is done, 
and it's been done much better.  I was able to predict the plot of the 
_whole_ story, which wouldn't be so bad if other aspect of the film 
somewhat interesting.

Between the action sequences, it tries to deal with the aforementioned 
issues of humanity through the performance of Mr. Russel in the film and 
the tiny little window to his soul that is his eyes, since his dialog is 
extremely limited.  His performance in that way isn't all that bad, but 
certainly is not enough to carry this film.  Other performances in this film 
are really not worth much mention at all, and they generally are about as 
weak as their characters.

But enough of this stuff about plot and character, right?  Isn't the most 
important part of an action film, well, the action?  

Even in this aspect the film is a disappointment.  In Mortal Kombat (1995), 
Director Paul Anderson proved that truly engaging use and choreography 
of action in a film can override problems with plot and produce something 
entertaining.  However, he fails to repeat that in this film.  The combat 
scenes, particularly the big one at the end, is incredibly unimaginatve.  
Fighting and combat scenes are supposed to bring about thrills in this type 
of movie, a point which even an otherwise unimpressive film like Starship 
Troopers seemed to realize.   But instead of reaching for something truly 
interesting to end the film with, it goes for the old, shoot-em up, one guy 
vs. an army type of cinema that I thought died with the military action 
films of the 80s.  If the film went with some of the ideas it opened up with 
the introduction more seriously, it could have been a rather engaging 
science fiction film.  However, it utterly failed to go in any new directions 
after that, making the film a big disappointment.

My score(out of 10): 3

Arnold Kim
[email-masked]