Some of you out there in internet-land may be too young to remember this but there was a hot minute there where the prospect of a new Paul W.S. Anderson movie was something to be excited for. I can remember it well, his appropriately hyperactive Mortal Kombat adaptation was one of the few video game movies that wasn’t an incoherent mess and even though his slick, Shining-in-space flick, Event Horizon had failed to set the box office alight, it still a slick and grisly treasure that hinted at great things to come.
That thing was supposed to be Soldier, a sci-fi action movie that starred Kurt Russell and featured a script by David Peoples – the guy who co-wrote undisputed classic Blade Runner – that promised visceral, brutal action tempered with legitimate heart as the movie claimed to explore themes of humanity versus the mindless, military complex. However, all Soldier proved to be was the beginning of a near-unbroken spiral in quality in the director’s work as the hefty production failed to nail any of the targets the filmmakers had set themselves.
A brand spanking new military training programme established in 1996 sees orphaned babies ruthlessly groomed, trained and conditioned from infancy to become the kind of wartime operative that would make other, so-called, ultimate soldiers ho weak at the knees. As the years and decades pass, top of the class is the steely-eyed Todd 3465 and by the time we get to the year 2036, he is an impossibly hardened veteran of countless wars fought both on earth and space.
However, every dog, no matter how grizzled, has his day and the arrival of the smug, Errol Flynn ‘stashed Colonal Mekum who now is planning to introduced a new breed of tightly wound killing machine in the form genetically engineered combatants that make up in strength and speed for what they lack in emotions.
In an effort to test these new soldiers, Todd finds out the hard way how hard they hit, but after being believed dead after a battle to the death with the improved Caine 607, he finds himself dumped on waste disposal planet Arcadia 234 with no purpose for his very existence. However, also dwelling on this god forsaken rock is a colony who has made it their home after crash landing there three years earlier. Taken in by kindly scavenger Mace, his wife Sandra and their mute child, Nathan, Todd struggles with civilian life like a chimp trying to do a tax return, but after ome too many combat flashbacks make the colony afraid of him, his new life of piece seems at risk.
However, ironically putting the war back into his confused life is Mekum, who unknowingly targets the colonists as perfect test subjects to unleash his super-soldiers on, but unbeknownst to him, Todd is about to show him that fancy genetics may be no match for actually having something to fight for.
Much like the stoic, lead character of Todd, there’s something that certainly exists within the barrel-chested torso of Soldier, but it simply can’t break through that stone-faced exterior to be anything more than a mindless weapon of masterbation when it comes to sweaty browed war porn. Peoples’ script seems to be going for a space-age First Blood as it attempts to articulate mumbled allegories about veterans being abandoned from a life of unending war only to struggle deprogramming themselves when having to tackle a life of peace. However, either due to some brutal over-editing, or the fact that Anderson simply isn’t equipped to handle the drama, Soldier ends up being more a space-age Rambo III that constantly muddies its confused message by being unable to resist glorifying the violence tendencies it’s supposed to be condemning.
Maybe matters wouldn’t have been so tedious if lead Kurt Russell hadn’t been miscast in a role that requires him to only utter 104 words during the entire film. Don’t get me wrong, Russell is a fucking great actor who is armed with charisma to spare, but when that charisma is contained in the acting equivalent of dealing it in concrete and dropping it in the North Sea, then you’ve missed a trick. Simply put, you just don’t cast Jack Burton to play the Terminator. Maybe there was a bunch of scenes that spelt out Todd’s emotional journey, but the restrictive, ninety minute running time simply has no patience for soul searching and the character’s inner turmoil and longing is only carried over by Todd staring a little too long at Sandra’s boobs – as a result the movie crucially ends up being emptier than Todd’s contribution to the movie’s quotes section on IMDb.
The longer the film goes, the more it make it harder to like. Maybe Todd’s journey would have been easier to support of the script didn’t bend over backwards to have our hero make the moves on the wife of the man who saved him mere minutes after he dies, or even if he managed to save more than a handful of people in the explosion happy climax, Soldier ultimately is a movie that cares more about cool action shots than the emotions sandwiched between the booms.
There is literally no chemistry from the cast at all with actors such as a bland Connie Nielsen, a wasted Jason Scott Lee, a bored Gary Busey and Anderson regulars Sean Pertwee and Jason Issacs simply going through the motions while Anderson impatiently shuffles toward the next firefight.
To give the man his flowers, he certainly knows how to shoot gunfire in slo-mo and Russell looks suitably jacked as a character who amusingly is named for the cartoon Fox the actor voice in Disney’s The Fox & The Hound – but it doesn’t doesn’t excite in the way that the director thinks it does and even that slick style he brought to Event Horizon fails to soften the blow.
In the years since, the sole thing Soldier has become remembered for is that its continuously (and rather irritatingly) hailed as a sort of pseudo sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner thanks to a name check of a couple of battles mentioned in Roy Batty’s iconic death speech and a trashed Spinner spotted in one scene. However, despite Peoples’ insistence, Soldier is lacking so much in the quality department it’s no more connected to Blade Runner than 1968, Frank Sinatra starrer, The Detective is to fucking Die Hard (if you know, you know).
As monotonous, bland and lifeless as its lead character, the script writes emotional checks its director simply just can’t cash and as a result, Soldier is begging for a dishonorable discharge.
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