Universal Soldier Collection

Action

Science Fiction

Thriller

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning

Signature Pictures

Foresight Unlimited

Baumgarten Management and Productions (BMP)

Magnolia Pictures

Sony Pictures

United States of America

English

Jean-Claude Van Damme

Scott Adkins

Dolph Lundgren

Andrei Arlovski

Mariah Bonner

Audrey P. Scott

Rus Blackwell

James DuMont

Dane Rhodes

David Jensen

Kris Van Damme

Sigal Diamant

Juli Erickson

Andrew Sikking

Tony Jarreau

Craig Walker

Roy Jones Jr.

Susan Mansur

Sebastian James

Arnold Chon

Dennis Keiffer

Woon Young Park

Mike Wilson

John Hyams

Doug Magnuson

Moshe Diamant

Wil Hendricks

Michael Krassner

Brent Caballero

Jon Greenhalgh

Richard Rothstein

Christopher Leitch

Yaron Levy

Andrew Drazek

Nate Jones

Kim Martínez

Robin Vining

Jessica Williams

Jeremy Woolsey

Andrew W. Bofinger

David Atherton

Hannah Gates

Scott Wilder

Danny Epper

Dean Devlin

Chelsea Bruland

Nancy Young

Christine Craft Regusa

Chuck Picerni Jr.

Charlie Picerni

Andrea Young

Kat Percy

Mark Landon

Erin Foster

Steve J. Jones

Jonathan Shaffer

Nicholas Davidoff

Ari Robbins

Andy Steinman

Sean P. Fickert

Michael Chateauneuf

Mark Shane Davis

Cook Allender

Michael Nelson

Sean Paul Braud

Jeff Galpin

Andres Sepulveda

David Lee Valle

Mary Tallman

Jeremy Pleasant

Ievgen Kulieshov

Roman Bazyuchenko

Tarn Fox

Ilia Goncharov

Oleksandr Kucherov

Ilya Lindberg

D.J. Shea

Everett Byrom III

Megan Daly

Melissa Naccari Floyd

Kizzie Autumn Martin

Michael Baird

Shaun Brennan

Neil Fazzari

Abigail Savage

Tom Efinger

Paul Bercovitch

Allen Shapiro

Craig Baumgarten

Oleh Verenko

Yoram Barzilai

Lori Burchfield

Keith Collea

Stacy Frankel

Steven A. Frankel

James Gibb

James Portolese

Bobby Ranghelov

Katerina Slantcheva

Courtney Solomon

Gregory M. Walker

Mark Damon

Per Gunnar Jonsson

This movie was not really what I expected or at least not what I hoped it would be. Sure it is a decent enough action flick if you watch it as a stand-alone movie but it is also really different from the other Universal Soldier movies and I cannot say that I really liked the different track this movie took.

The good part is that there is no lack of action and it is indeed both brutal and quite gory action. Those parts of the movie are quite good and are what keeps me from giving the movie a real trash rating. However, the pace of the movie also drops into really slow scenes quite frequently. This could have been effective if there would have been some form of coherent plot to follow but there really isn’t. A lot of things just happen and the lead character goes to various places, does things, without any obvious reason or explanation.

Speaking of the plot, on some movie sites you can read a synopsis like this one:

"In a world without government, the surviving Unisols maintain order and choose the strongest of their ranks to rule, testing them in life-or-death combat."

Unfortunately this synopsis has also ended up on the French Amazon site where I bought the Blu-ray and it is total bullshit. It is not a world without government or any other doomsday world like what the French cover tries to imply. There is also not really any “testing” going on but more a spontaneous brawl ending up in a “unfortunate casualty'” among the rather emotionless uni-sols. This blatantly false advertising really annoys me.

Another thing that did not sit very well with me is that both Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme is not really main characters but rather obscure ones that kind of hide in the shadows until a show-down fight at the end. Not only that but Jean-Claude is more or less portrayed as a bad-guy throughout the movie. Not only as a bad-guy from the governments point of view but also from the viewers. It is kind of shown at the end that he is not but still…the entire movie is very dark and without hope.

As I said, the action scenes are really the only thing that saved this movie from a real trash rating. If you have not seen any of the other Universal Soldier movies previously you might give this one a higher rating though.

CinemaSerf

The handsome, but wooden as a board, Scott Adkins ("John") wakes from a coma after his wife and daughter are brutally murdered before his eyes in his kitchen! For some reason he was left alive, and he determines on vengeance against "Devereaux" (Jean-Claude Van Damme). He, meantime, is teaming up with "Scott" (Dolph Lundgren) and the pair are working to establish a new world order run by him and his fellow "UniSols" with only the strongest destined to survive and take on the government. "John" meantime is closing in on his protagonist, but as he does he begins to doubt what he believes. Is he being manipulated too? This moves along well with plenty of action and combat scenes but the characterisations are well past their use-by-dates now. Neither Lundgren nor Van Damme are anywhere near their best, the dialogue is clunky at best and Adkins, well his looks were all anyone could ever say he had enough of to merit on-screen time. The ending is predictable, though colourful, and as I finished this fourth outing I prayed that we won't have another. Repetitive and tired, sorry.

Official Trailer

Best Movies

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning

Cast & Crew

Videos

Cast

Jean-Claude Van Damme

Scott Adkins

Dolph Lundgren

Andrei Arlovski

Mariah Bonner

Audrey P. Scott

Rus Blackwell

James DuMont

Dane Rhodes

David Jensen

Box office

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