# Soldier (1998)

### reviewed by
Craig Roush

    SOLDIER

    * 1/2 (out of 4) - a below average movie

Release Date: October 23, 1998 Starring: Kurt Russell, Jason Scott Lee, Connie Nielsen, Sean Pertwee, Michael Chiklis, Gary Busey, Jason Isaacs Directed by: Paul Anderson Distributed by: Warner Brothers MPAA Rating: R (strong violence, brief language) URL: http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio/reviews/1998/soldier.htm

For those interested in the true spirit of moviemaking - or what's left of it in mainstream Hollywood - movie which are star vehicles are terrible things. As a rule, the ignore general principles of cinema because they are not made to advance the media but rather to advance the career of a particular actor. An actor might be chosen on the up-and-up, to give him exposure; or he might be chosen on the way down to hand him a paycheck. Generally, though, the actor doesn't matter, and SOLDIER, the latest from the beleaguered Warner Brothers, exemplifies this: the picture lacks pizazz.

The star for the vehicle in this case is Kurt Russell, otherwise known as the man of thirty words or less. Russell plays Todd, a human trained from birth in the ways of waging war and becoming emotionally distanced from the carnage he has wrought. The movie lets us see this degenerate process, but by the time the real plot starts, we're into Todd's later years. He's about to be replaced by a new breed of soldiers, ones who, instead of being trained *from* birth, are genetically selected *before* birth. The pride of this class - Caine 607 (Jason Scott Lee) - will be our villain, and you know he's the villain because he has a staring contest with our hero near the movie's start.

Between the two leads, less than a full typed page of dialogue is spoken, and it's possible to imagine a script which is ninety percent stage direction. Director Paul Anderson, who helmed last year's icy thriller, EVENT HORIZON, doesn't show any inventiveness here and instead is content to let the actions play out on screen ad nauseam. Todd, upon being replaced, is left to die on a garbage planet; but in order to stretch the running time out, the villains return to the garbage planet on a "routine patrol" and set the stage for the final firefight. Events are predictable from the time that the setups are made, and neither Anderson nor scriptwriter David Peoples attempts to show any creativeness here.

The most annoying plot facet is the reason that the whole of the movie comes to be: Todd fails to show physical superiority against Caine - in fact, not even Todd and two of his companions can best the baddie - but near the end of the movie he shows remarkable prowess with automatic weaponry. It's not as though Todd undergoes any significant character changes throughout the plot of the story, and so the plot has a very canned feeling about it. The best route through this disaster is to take it lighthearted in spirit, and treat it as a parody of typical action fare, like UNIVERSAL SOLDIER. A strict interpretation, however, reveals an unmistakeable and unforgiveable lack of style, class, or substance; and by next year, a large percentage of the people who have seen this will have taped it off of network television.

    --
    Craig Roush
    kinnopio@execpc.com
    --
    Kinnopio's Movie Reviews
    http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio

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