Subject: Review: Soldier (1998)1

From: Scott Renshaw <[email-masked]>
Date: 23 Oct 1998 04:09:26 GMT

SOLDIER
(Warner Bros.)
Starring:  Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Connie Nielsen, Jason Isaacs,
Gary Busey, Sean Pertwee.
Screenplay:  David Webb Peoples.
Producer:  Jerry Weintraub.
Director:  Paul Anderson.
MPAA Rating:  R (violence, profanity, adult themes)
Running Time:  96 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

     David Webb Peoples has contributed to some of the most compelling
screenplays of recent years.  He fashioned haunting visions of the future
in the seminal science fiction film BLADE RUNNER and the psychologically
gripping 12 MONKEYS; he has deconstructed the mythology of heroic violence
in UNFORGIVEN.  Peoples has shown a facility for turning genre films into
films of ideas.  The specific ideas with which he has concerned himself
held out the hope that SOLDIER might be something more than this week's
disposable bit of whoop-it-up mayhem.

     Instead, SOLDIER shows what happens when the writer of BLADE RUNNER
and UNFORGIVEN meets the director of MORTAL KOMBAT and EVENT HORIZON:  the
director wins, and we lose.  Peoples's script sends us to a near-future
where government soldiers are trained from birth for no other purpose but
battle.  One of these soldiers is Todd 3465 (Kurt Russell), a scarred
veteran of multiple wars who has served as the perfect warrior -- no
family, no emotional connections of any kind, no reluctance to obey any
order, no mercy.  Unfortunately, he is rendered obsolete when an even more
perfect, genetically-enhanced breed of soldier becomes the new standard.
Left for dead after a display of prowess by new soldier Caine 607 (Jason
Scott Lee), Todd is tossed on the scrap-heap of waste disposal planet
Arcadia 234, where he tries to fit into a society of marooned humans
understandably wary of this new arrival.

     I suspect that Peoples's original script focused on how the
functionally anti-social Todd begins to explore human interaction for
the first time.  He recuperates in the home of a kindly man named Mace
(Sean Pertwee), begins feeling desire for Mace's wife Sandra (Connie
Nielsen), and bonds with their son Nathan the only way he knows how.
The prologue depicting Todd's relentless training is an effective
set-up for a story about the psychology of warfare, the challenges of
re-adjusting to civilian life, and whether or not it's actually better
to create a cold killing machine to survive the horrors of war.

     That's not the story director Paul Anderson insists on telling.
Though in his production notes Anderson describes the story as "SHANE in
outer space," he actually makes it much more like RAMBO in outer space.
When the new-breed soldiers arrive on Arcadia for a training exercise led
by the heartless Col. Mekum (Jason Isaacs, wearing a thin moustache so we
_know_ he's dastardly), Todd straps on the artillery, slaps on the
camouflage paint and sets out to tear the new soldiers some new orifices.
The final half-hour generally finds Todd picking off his faceless
adversaries like red-shirts in a "Star Trek" episode, occasionally
interrupted by immense explosions and flying bodies.  All this naturally
leads to a climactic mano-a-mano between Todd and Caine in which the
hulking one-eyed terminator becomes evil personified.  Never mind that
Caine is a programmed soldier just like Todd himself, and that it would be
much more interesting to sympathize with him than to cheer his inevitable
defeat mindlessly.

     There's nothing inherently wrong with black hat/white hat action
adventures where we watch a bit of carnage and root for good to triumph
over evil.  The problem is that Anderson pretends SOLDIER is more than
that, offering scenes of Todd perplexed by a tear rolling down his face,
or recoiling at displays of kindness.  Moments that might have been
genuinely affecting instead inspire derisive laughter, because Anderson is
far more interested in visceral response than in emotional response.
Ironically, he spends most of the film reveling in dehumanizing violence
instead of showing how dehumanizing violence created his protagonist.  I
can't believe that's the story David Webb Peoples wanted to tell, which is
what makes SOLDIER more disappointing than it might otherwise be.  He
turned over a smart idea to a director determined to make a dumb movie.

     On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 soldier's stories:  4.

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