Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business (1999)

If you haven't read my Universal Soldiers II post yet, that one gives the back story about how we got here with me reviewing these two films. It's not like it's a very interesting story, but that's it. Considering I don't want to repeat myself, I thought I'd talk about something else in this opening paragraph. I think I'm going to get sushi with my friends tomorrow night, and I may fork over the cash to get some sea urchin. I feel like I can get myself to like it, but I don't know. Does anyone else who gets sushi like the sea urchin? I've never done it with soy sauce and wasabi before, so I'll try that tomorrow and get back to you on how it was in the comments section.

Universal Soldier III picks up where part 2 leaves off. Matt Battaglia and Chandra West are still on the run from the law and still trying to expose the UniSol project, which is now helmed by Burt Reynolds after Gary Busey died and passed the baddie baton to him. Reynolds has some new tricks up his sleeve. First, he has his crack scientist creating a clone of Jeff Wincott. Neat. He also has this thing called "Sleepers", which are people who are technically UniSols but exist in society like regular people until called into action. With all this crap going on, can West and Battaglia survive?



This one is a little bit better, and little bit more fun, but still pretty wide of the mark. It's just one of those things that, as a two-part syndicated TV episode it wouldn't have been that bad, but as a movie, not enough happens. I can deal with only a couple fight scenes in a 42-minute TV show, but in a near 90 minute movie, it's kind of boring. Throw in the bad construct with Wincott as a clone. The whole idea is supposed to be that he's a clean slate-- because, as a clone, he'd be a whole new human being. For some reason though, even as a clone he still remembers the family he technically never knew. As silly as it sounds, it's also a waste of what could've been a cool element. The Sleepers thing is another one that I assume would've come into play much more on a TV show, but in the movie, it's just something that was poorly fleshed out. I guess the only thing I can say is, part III more than part II shows what might have been had the TV show been made, but still, the fact that it was supposed to be a TV show and not a movie remains a detriment.

You gotta like Burt Reynolds though as the baddie. I can't think of a better person for Busey to pass the baton to than him. He kind of does a Dr. Claw thing for most of the film, hanging out in a dark room, smoking a cigar and giving orders-- all he needed was the cat. Then he appears at the very end when Battaglia and West confront him. Imagine him as a baddie for the whole series? They could do like Suzanne Sommers on Three's Company when she was off the show but still under contract, so they had her character sent away, then she'd go in each week and talk to the other characters as she were on the telephone. They could just have Reynolds in an office smoking a cigar and giving orders each week, then maybe have him out and about for the season finale.



Chandra West showed up again in this one, though there was a lot more emotional bunk that didn't really work, and even she couldn't save it from sauteed in wrong sauce-dom. The one thing I like about these two sequels is that they're almost more about her character as the protagonist than Luc Devereaux, which is a cool change of pace. The problem is, though, that an action movie needs to be action driven, and she isn't doing the action, Battaglia is. Somehow the first Universal Soldier mitigated a UniSol Devereaux as the main character better than these two sequels, which really just relied on West for the film's personality. So maybe it wasn't so much as cool change of pace as much as it was laziness in the writing, and West made it seem like a change of pace with the way she carried it.

In my part 2 review I didn't mention Matt Battaglia at all, so I figured I'd do that here. First off, I didn't know that he was a former NFL player. He also has had a pretty prodigious TV acting career, which is probably why he was chosen for this role, considering this was meant to be a TV show. The third thing is that he was in both Showgirls and the Dolph Lundgren flick Joshua Tree, aka Army of One. As you may or may not know, that is the most popular Dolph post of all time, and it has nothing to do with Dolph Lundgren. I'm not going to say why it's the most popular post, only because if I do, those key words will turn up in more searches and send people here erroneously, and I don't want to do that.



Finally, I want to discuss Wincott's role. I have this rule when it comes to holding movies accountable for inconceivability called the Gilligan's Island Rule. It came from a stand-up comedian who talked about watching the Globe Trotters episode of Gilligan, and how, when one of the Globe Trotters was injured and Gilligan was subbed in, the comedian's friend said "yeah right, like they'd let Gilligan play," to which the comedian replied "wait, you've been good with all of this so far, but the idea of bringing Gilligan off the bench for the Globe Trotters was too inconceivable?" I thought about that as I was going to give this movie crap for not understanding how cloning works when Wincott suddenly remembers his family that really isn't his family, you know, like "okay Matt, you're good with bringing soldiers back from the dead, erasing their memories, and injecting them with stuff that makes them super strong, but Wincott remembering his family after he was cloned, that's what did it to you?" But then I remembered the movie itself saying "he's a clean slate." He's a clean slate... See, that's where I do draw the line, you can't break your own rules. Obviously the movie made Wincott's new incarnation too strong for Battaglia's character to take down, so they just added in that remembering his family thing to get them out of it. That I do have a problem with.

That was an enormous paragraph, so I'll wrap this up quick. Not as bad as part II, but still not great; no longer on Watch Instantly, probably not worth your time. I'd stay away.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0186655/

Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms (1998)

I'm not sure why, but these two Universal Soldier made for The Movie Channel sequels are some of the most requested at the DTVC. I'd always kind of just stuck them aside, figuring I'd get to them eventually. Unfortunately, Netflix decided they were going to put my feet to the fire by letting me know that they were taking both movies off of Watch Instantly, and I knew I'd never bother getting them any other way if I didn't see them on Watch Instantly, so here we are, finally making them happen, starting with part 2.

Universal Soldier 2 picks up where part 1 left off, with Matt Bataglia as Luc Devereaux and Chandra West as Veronica the reporter. Gary Busey, who runs the UniSol program, is taking it private, hoping to sell the soldiers to the highest bidder. He's able to get Bataglia back by some homing device, but when Chandra West goes in after him, she saves his brother, played by Jeff Wincott, instead. Now the two brothers have to take Busey down before the UniSol technology winds up in the wrong hands.



I guess this was like a couple of episodes for a proposed TV show mushed together, a case of someone trying to make lemonade out of some lemons. Unfortunately we all ended up with burning eyes from the citric acid squirted into them that was this movie. There is virtually no action until the end. Even if it's two episodes of a TV show, episode one would've sucked for that alone. There's only so much "Luc Devereaux trying to be human" we can endure before we need it broken up with something else. Then you have a totally wasted Jeff Wincott, a sick martial artist who spends most of the movie strapped to a chair. Then you have to buy Matt Bataglia as the hero, which maybe you can do with more action, but the way this went like a human interest piece-- let's just say the whole thing was sautéed in wrong sauce.

I've read somewhere that Van Damme joked about how all his movies spawned sequels that starred actors other than him. Bloodsport had Daniel Bernhardt, Kickboxer had Sasha Mitchell; but what makes these two TV sequels to Universal Soldier different is that Matt Bataglia plays the actual character Van Damme played in the original. Something about that had to have upset Van Damme, because he felt the need to right the wrongs of these movies by rebooting them the same year the second one came out. Also, Van Damme was losing his box office relevance, so maybe he thought he could recapture that by reclaiming one of his more notable characters. Either way, all three movies turned out bad, and it was probably good that Van Damme took ten years before he revisited it. It would've been cool though to see what, if done well, a Universal Soldier syndicated TV show would've looked like. Put it on the Action Pack with Hercules.



Gary Busey as the main baddie is pretty sweet, but we expect that going in. Are there better ways to get your Busey fix? No doubt. But how many times have we seen Busey's name on the marquee only to find it's a bait-and-switch? Exactly, so at least here we know he's holding it down. I also really liked Chandra West as Ally Walker's character from the first one. Had this been turned into a TV show, it would've been her more than anyone else that people would've tuned into on a weekly basis, because she anchored any scene she was in with her wit and assertiveness-- let's just say Matt Bataglia would've looked a lot worse without her guiding him through their scenes.

I can only imagine Jeff Wincott signed on for this hoping he'd have regular work on a TV show, because this wasn't a good look for him. That's too bad, considering his character covered some uncharted Universal Soldier territory-- a UniSol that hadn't had his memory wiped, and was just dropped into the modern world after having been frozen since the late 50s. Why they didn't explore that more is beyond me. That would've made for much more effective padding. Also, Wincott could carry that kind of thing better. How can you not see Wincott as a hard-nosed soldier from the 50s interacting with late-90s America? Apparently the people who made it couldn't see that.



Finally, I want to talk about something that really irked me. (And no, I'm not talking about that tiny dude they tried to throw on us as Dolph Lundgren.) Near the end, West and Battaglia need to get their hands on transportation, so they steal the camper from a honeymooning couple while they're at a rest stop. Of course, the thing gets shot up and destroyed. What a shitty thing to do. Those are our heroes? Ruining a couple's honeymoon? Who writes crap like that? The bad guys are supposed to steal a honeymooning couple's camper, not the good guys.

I could go on, but I better wrap this up here. This is a painfest, mostly because nothing happens. We see too much of Battaglia riding on a train or Wincott strapped to a chair than we do good solid action. And as a story, this didn't cut it to be able to manage that long with nothing happening. Maybe I should've held out longer on these.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0186654/

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007)

This was supposed to be the box office bomb from two Fridays ago, but between being sick and my trip to visit friends in Mass, I fell a little behind. It worked out, though, because I was able to watch this with my buddy and his wife, and she's a huge Lord of the Rings fan, which gave me a better context to put the movie in. I'm not sure if you noticed, but I'm not huge on the fantasy genre, though I hear the chicks dress pretty hot at the conventions.

In the Name of the King is an Uwe Boll film with Jason Statham as Farmer, a dude whose wife is captured and son and in-laws are killed by gross demon characters controlled by Ray Liotta. His king, Burt Reynolds, wants to conscript him, his brother in-law, and Ron Perlman, but they'll have none of it, and want to take on Liotta's army on their own. What they don't know is Liotta is working with Reynolds' conniving nephew, the always annoying Matthew Lillard, and is seducing the king's magus' daughter (John Rhys-Davies and Leelee Sobieski respectively). The kingdom's only hope lies in the hands of this Farmer and his magical boomerang.



This was a pretty fun deal. It sucked that it was two-and-a-half hours long, that was the biggest complaint-- and obviously no one is meant to take it all that seriously-- but for me and my buddy, it was a pretty solid nonstop laugh fest. Statham was great as a fighter named farmer. Who comes up with that? It's great. Even better, he was raised from a boy by Ron Perlman. Of course he would be. And who else would you want as your king? Or your evil sorcerer? Again, the story was a little long, but it was much easier to take than a Lord of the Rings or Dungeon and Dragons movie. Fantasy has a certain place in the movie industry: done by German directors making the crappiest big budget movies possible to take advantage of a German tax loophole for film makers.

That's right, according to his Wikipedia entry, Uwe Boll has gotten funding for movies like this ($60 million budget) by using a German tax loophole that, until it was amended in 2005, allowed investors to write off 100% of funding for a movie, and also to write off fees associated with borrowing additional money for it. So despite the fact that this movie made about $10 million worldwide, his investors were able to get a good chunk of that money lost back. It kind of sucks that Germany's no longer subsidizing Uwe Boll's ridiculous video game movies. The result was the much less fun DTV BloodRayne 2, which I reviewed back in 2007 I believe.



This is the third Jason Statham film we've done at the DTVC. I think out of all the new crop of action stars, he's the best bet to carry the torch. My friend and I were looking at how long gone are the days of Terminator 2 and True Lies. The question is, what's next? I think Statham's newer, slimmed down, more sophisticated version is probably the best option. I do like Vin Diesel, despite what most of my friends think, but he allowed Paul Walker to outcool him in Fast and Furious, and that should never happen. Throw in that Crank: High Voltage was pretty cool, and I think it's unanimous that Statham is our current biggest action star, and he was as fun to watch in this as he was in anything else.

This is also the second movie we've reviewed with Statham and Liotta (Revolver). At one point I quoted the beginning of Goodfellas, and my friend was like "Oh my God, don't remind me he did such a good movie." I've found the best thing to do when faced with a Ray Liotta sighting in a bad movie is to sing "Rah-Rah-Rah-Ray Liotta" to the tune of The Knack's "My Sherona." What was great about him was he didn't try to affect an English accent for the role. Good for him.



Most people know that I'm pretty tough on The Lord of the Rings movies, books, etc. I guess I just don't get it. I don't get talking trees, and I don't get how talking trees are any different from Painkiller Jane in this movie leading a clan of swinging tree women with magical vines. I understand that Tolken begot a fair amount of fantasy stuff that came after, but I guess the question is, why does that matter? The Middle Ages sucked ass-- it's a historical fact. Why would anyone want to glorify that? I get it Tolken, you were upset that the lower classes in England were being elevated by social reforms, and you thought it would bring about the downfall of civilization, and you longed for the times when everyone knew their place and did what they were born to do. I guess I'm just too American, and I think by virtue of my being born poor I'm good for more than just neck tattoos and bunch of kids born to a bunch of different moms. Maybe it's just me.

All right, now that I'm safely off my soapbox, I'll wrap this review up. Rent it. You'll love it. The length is the only real issue, so just be ready to have a bunch of friends and your A material, and you should be fine.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460780/

The Librarians aka Strike Force (2003)

There's a weird story surrounding this film. I looked Daniel Bernhardt up on imdb, and saw a movie called The Librarians listed that also starred Burt Reynolds. According to Amazon, it wasn't available to buy. Anyway, so I'm waiting for word about that one, and in that time, I find a movie at my local record store called Strike Force, which listed William Forsythe, Erika Eleniak, and our hero, Daniel Bernhardt. I bought it along with the Rothrock classic Outside the Law, watched and reviewed that one, and Strike Force was lost in the shuffle. So I find Strike Force while digging up Dolph Lundgren's Cover Up, and figure I'll give it a shot. That's when I type it into imdb's database, and it comes up The Librarians. Crazy how the world of DTV movies works, huh? (Is that the longest opening paragraph to a post ever?)

The Librarians has Forsythe heading a mercenary team, including Bernhardt, that specializes in rescuing kidnapped peoples. They're hired by an old friend to find his grand daughter. She's been kidnapped by a dude who's into all kinds of bad stuff, including white slavery. Erika Eleniak is after this dude as well, because he captured her sister. Forsythe and his crew really have their work cut out for them dealing with this guy-- at least that's what the movie tells us, but they seem to make it look easy.



This is pretty funny. It's not awesome, at any point. I got the sense that Forsythe was tired of playing bad guys, so he made this movie with a buddy of his so he could play the good guy for once. Not only that, but I think he hates punk kids. The evil white slavery et al gang he fights call themselves the Techno Kids. This is pretty much Forsythe's personal applause movie. Is it as bad as any of Kevin Costner's (For the Love of the Game, for instance), probably not. The action's pretty good, but disappears quite a bit in favor of silly conversations where women remark on how "smooth" Forsythe is, or where Forsythe tells us why what he's doing means so much to him, which is really annoying. Of course, we also get to see Forsythe's perma-scowl the whole time, so it's funny.

I think more than anything, Forsythe was in over his head here, and though it comes off as ridiculous, it actually could've been more enjoyable in parts. Bernhardt fights Matthias Hues in one scene, and that should've been hot. Instead it was a series of silly images of Bernhardt doing roundhouses at nothing and Hues flying backward. Yes, it was great to make fun of, but I was also disappointed that I was promised a fight between two great DTV action stars, and got a bunch of crap. That's the problem with these kinds of things: is it worth renting this to make fun of, when it's so bad?



I probably should've reviewed this on Monday, because that was Daniel Bernhardt's 44th birthday. Well, I'm sorry. Happy belated birthday, Danny. This is his ninth film here at the DTVC, which is more than some Hall of Famers (Cynthia Rothrock, for instance). He'll be tied with C. Thomas Howell for most among non HOFers. What scares me about Bernhardt is that he's following Howell's path. In Howell's case, he's made enough films to be considered, it's just a matter of if they're good enough or not, and a lot of them aren't. Bernhardt doesn't have the resume, but his recent spate of films hasn't done him any favors either. This movie makes it three posts in a row where Bernhardt wasn't the main star of the film. That's even worse when you consider those three are the three newest films of his we've reviewed. According to imdb, he hasn't been top billed since 2004's Nature Unleashed: Tornado. He has a new film that hasn't been released yet, called Ultimate Champion, where his name is right under UFC star Stephan Bonner's. We'll see what happens there, but it's not looking good for the Poor Man's Van Damme.

This is the second film we've done with the great Burt Reynolds, the other being the Albert Pyun mess Crazy Six. I looked him up on imdb, and saw he was in a movie called In the Name of the King. Remember that one? Jason Statham, in the theaters about two years ago? Wow, I never actually saw it, but it looked hilarious, and I saw that it only made about $5 mill in the box office. Maybe I should do a week of movies that should've been DTV, but weren't. So far I got that one and Basic Instinct 2. Can anyone think of any others?



I want to devote a paragraph to this guy. Ed Lauter. He was also in two other recently reviewed movies: The Sweeper and Mercenary. A That Guy if there ever was one, he's usually cast as a detective or government agent of some sort. Often, he's not a good guy, so if you see him, he's probably up to now good. Considering he's shown up so much recently I needed to give him some love, so this is for you Ed Lauter, you're one of the good ones.

If you can get this cheap, go for it. I found it on DVD for $3, and that may have actually been too much, but in NH we have no sales tax, so it was a solid $3. That's definitely the breaking point. At the very least, it's funny to watch Forsythe go through all the trouble just to make himself a good guy. We're sorry you make such a great bad guy, it's not our fault.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362820/

Crazy Six (1998)

I found this film looking up Albery Pyun on imdb. The mixture of Rob Lowe, Mario van Peebles, Burt Reynolds, and Ice-T seemed intriguing to me. After Ticker, which was another Pyun film that was something of an ensemble cast (featuring Steven Seagal, Dennis Hopper, and Tom Seizemore), I figured this one had a good chance of being entertaining.

Crazy Six is about Rob Lowe as the eponymous junkie conman living in Prague or something who gets involved with a hot Russian lounge singer right after he pulls off a bad job for Mario van Peebles that involves ripping off Ice-T. People kill other people, people double cross other people, Burt Reynolds plays a US cop living in Eastern Europe, and Rob Lowe gets the girl.

This was really bad. As bad as the name sounds. The beginning had this exposition that read like a post-apocalyptic thriller, only it was describing Eastern Europe post-communism. Not only that, but the titles and graphics in that beginning looked more like a low-budget state funded student film airing on the CBC. I won't lie, I can accept that kind of production if I'm watching Degrassi Junior High, but a film maker should have a different set of goals. Beyond that, the film had it's moments, with the hilarity of Lowe and Mario van Peebles' characters; but overall there was way too little action for this to be anything but boring.



Rob Lowe has been in the news recently for various indiscretions. This comes after he'd had a huge career comeback post The West Wing. Crazy Six was made before that comeback, when Lowe was still living down his first scandal. That doesn't mean he's a Dennis Hopper or Tom Seizemore-- someone that's a great actor who a Pyun can get on the cheap because of his problems in Hollywood. Lowe doesn't really bring it here. He looks as ridiculous as his name with his mullet and moustache, and his acting doesn't really elevate an otherwise silly character, rather relegates it to that head shaking level, where everytime we see him on screen, we just say "no".

I got a kick out of Ice-T. Pyun really wastes him, and I have to assume because he's a Pyun mainstay, he took this rather small, one-dimensional role, as a favor to his buddy. For the most part, Ice-T spends the films with a look on his face like he smells something funny. Then, at the very end, when he gets his one scene where he has some legitimate acting to do, he actually turns in the best performance other than Burt Reynolds. That one scene might be the coolest thing I've seen Ice-T do as far as acting goes after the Player Hater's Ball on The Chapelle Show.



Burt Reynolds made no sense in this, but he did a great job. Unlike Lowe, who couldn't transcend a poorly conceived character, Reynolds shined. He played a US cop working in Eastern Europe, for whatever reason. Do a lot of American cops work in Eastern Europe? What do the local cops in those countries think of this? Are we paying for these cops with government money? Either way, if this was the kind of stretch Pyun needed to make to get Reynolds in the film, I can't begrudge him that. He could've made him a Martian sent to Eastern Europe to protect Rob Lowe, and I would've been cool with it. In fact, I'd have liked it better.

Mario van Peebles plays a French ganglord, and he has the worst French accent ever. He's not speaking like someone who speaks English as a second language, but English with a little French mixed in and an occasional "th" replaced with a "d". At some points he loses the accent all together, like he stopped trying. Why he had the hubris to think he could pull this off is beyond me. But if he didn't, though, it wouldn't have been as funny or entertaining, so I guess I shouldn't be complaining too much.



One quick note. Two Pyun mainstays other than Ice-T feature in this. Norbert Weisser has done 16 films with Pyun, of which I've reviewed 5 (Captain America, Adrenalin: Fear the Rush, Ticker, Omega Doom, and now Crazy Six). Then there's Thom Mathews, who's done 11 films with Pyun, of which I've reviewed 3 (Mean Guns, Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor, and now Crazy Six-- though it's important to note he was also in the MST3K classic Alien From LA, which Pyun also directed.).

Overall, I'd avoid this. It's too boring: the action is too sparse, and the plot itself is too useless to invest anything in. That's too bad, because if you see this at your local rental store or on Netflix, you'll probably want to check it out, just based on the cast. You can watch it at your own peril, but I'm warning you, it's pretty rough.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118897/