SOLDIER (1998)
Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 4.0) ******************************** Key to rating system: 2.0 stars - Debatable 2.5 stars - Some people may like it 3.0 stars - I liked it 3.5 stars - I am biased in favor of the movie 4.0 stars - I felt the movie's impact personally or it stood out ********************************* A Movie Review by David Sunga
Directed by: Paul Anderson
Written by: David Webb Peoples
Ingredients: Robotic supersoldier, another planet
Starring: Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Connie Nielsen
Synopsis: >From birth, Sergeant Todd (Kurt Russell) and other babies are raised and brainwashed to be the perfect soldiers - - robotic in mentality; proficient in combat; unable to speak unless spoken to; emotionally handicapped, and; unable to feel anything but fear and discipline. 40 years later, this line of soldiers is outdated and replaced by a new line of genetically engineered and brainwashed soldiers. Todd himself is junked, left for dead, and dumped on a garbage planet inhabited by shipwrecked humans. One day when the army reappears and attempts to exterminate the shipwrecked humans, Todd defend the humans against his former organization.
Opinion: Usually in flicks where the main character is not human enough to carry the film, the side characters take up the slack and supply a lot of drama and dialogue so that audiences don't get bored. Either that or the action content is brought way up to compensate for no personality. (Think of ET or THE TERMINATOR). SOLDIER probably won't satisfyingly hold the attention span of most action-oriented audiences because there are long periods of time where the emotionally handicapped Todd (Kurt Russell) sits silently without saying anything at all, and the audience is left to twiddle its thumbs. SOLDIER's focus is perhaps too much on the silent Todd, but he doesn't say enough to make it interesting. The second flaw is that there isn't really any believable reason for the army to go to Todd's planet and attempt to exterminate the human shipwreck survivors, other than to force a predictable movie ending.
A last minute showdown isn't enough. SOLDIER's futuristic and other-worldly setting might be good enough for a science fiction novel, but SOLDIER needs to increase its action content, creepy crawly creature content, or side character involvement throughout the entire film in order to attract mainstream theater goers.
Reviewed by David Sunga November 6, 1998
Copyright © 1998 by David Sunga This review and others like it can be found at THE CRITIC ZOO: http://www.criticzoo.com email: zookeeper@criticzoo.com
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