Subject: Review: Soldier (1998)

From: "Steve Rhodes" <[email-masked]>
Date: 28 Oct 1998 16:12:47 GMT

SOLDIER
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****):  * 1/2

For those of you who've always thought that Arnold Schwarzenegger was
too emotional in THE TERMINATOR series, Kurt Russell, as Sargent Todd in
SOLDIER, is so unemotive that he gives a whole new meaning to the word
acting.  With all the charisma and liveliness of a tree, he gives a
wooden performance as a wooden character.  Where's the art in that?

Director Paul Anderson, whose last movie, EVENT HORIZON, deservedly made
many of 1997's worst of the year lists, is back with another space
movie.  Borrowing many of the scenes from STAR WARS and the look from
BLADE RUNNER, he paints the now popular bleak vision of the future.
(Has anyone ever thought that the future might be better?)  With so few
science fiction movies being made every year, Paul Anderson's bad ones
are in danger of polluting the market for other would be science fiction
filmmakers.

The story opens in the present as babies, including Todd, are chosen to
be raised in the army in ways that would make the Hitler youth camps
look like knitting societies by comparison.  In a cold, steel gray
environment, they are trained to watch violence without flinching.  The
young boys are made to watch as wild boars fight dogs to the death.  The
movie contains realistic scenes of 8-year-old boys beating each other to
a pulp as the blood spurts from their battered bodies.  (The adults
treat each other worse in one of the goriest films of the year.
Eyeballs are almost ripped out of their sockets, limbs snapped, bodies
mutilated and so forth, ad nauseam.)

The body of the film happens in the year 2036, when new models are
replacing Todd and his generation of soldiers.  Todd still has rippling
muscles, but his haggard face, full of visible battle scars, shows he's
past his prime.

The new model of fighter, typified by Jason Scott Lee as Caine, can run
faster and fight harder than the veterans.  The only characteristic they
share is that all soldiers have their first (and only) name, rank,
serial number and blood type tattooed prominently on their cheeks.
Director Anderson has no concept of subtlety.

Todd loses out in a fight to the (almost) death with Caine so he is
banished as waste material to a desolate planet.  Think there might be a
rematch?  You are way ahead of the story.  Actually you could easily
complete the predictable screenplay.

Once on the planet, Todd finds that there is what looks like an old
hippie commune there.  They've been hoping for years to be rescued.

Todd, acting like a robot, has two modes -- staring and fighting.  In
the first, his brain seems to be in an idle loop.  In the second, he's a
mean killing machine who is smarter, if not faster and stronger, than
the new edition soldiers.

Todd spends a lot of time getting beaten-up and generally abused, but he
manages to keep on going.  In our audience, one of the few big laughs
came from some young kids, who were inappropriately at an R rated movie
with their father.  After one of Todd's big falls, one kid yelled out,
"He got a big owie!"  Ah, too bad writer David Webb Peoples couldn't
have come up with some funny lines like that to insert into the leaden
script.  Only Gary Busey, as the head of the old soldiers, gets any
decent lines.  His folksy wisdom from his "old daddy" provides a few
lines of much-needed humor.

"You must feel something?" the woman whom Todd comes to stay with asks
of him.  Although Todd, in one of the few times he speaks during the
movie, comes up with a reply, the real answer is that he doesn't feel,
not in any normal sense.  He's a human being whose life has been
programmed since birth.   He doesn't feel; he just moves along on
autopilot.

If SOLDIER had been rewritten as a parody, it might have had some hope.
Or, if the lead had been given some complexity and a touch of humanity,
that might have helped.  What we are offered instead is a movie in which
we have to watch soldiers who kill men, women, and children with no more
compassion than we'd reserve for an ordinary housefly.  If the story had
something to say, we might forgive its needless gore, but it doesn't.
SOLDIER has the depth of a television-wrestling match, but without the
comedy.

SOLDIER runs 1:40.  It is rated R for strong violence and profanity and
would be acceptable for older teenagers.

Email: [email-masked]
Web: www.InternetReviews.com