# Soldier (1998)

### reviewed by
Richard Scheib

    SOLDIER

USA. 1998. Director - Paul Anderson, Screenplay - David Webb Peoples, Producer - Jerry Weintraub, Photography - David Tattersall, Music - Joel McNeely, Visual Effects Supervisor - Ed Jones, Visual Effects - Matte World Digital (Supervisor - Craig Barron) & Rhythm and Hues (Supervisor - Jon Lesser), Miniatures - Cinema Producer Services (Supervisor - Mike Boyd), Digital Effects - Rainmaker Digital Pictures (Supervisor - Doug Tubach), Special Effects Supervisor - Clay Pinney, Makeup Effects Supervisor - Steve La Porte, Production Design - David L. Snyder. Production Company - Warners/Morgan Creek/Impact Pictures/JW (Jerry Weintraub) Productions. Kurt Russell (Todd), Sean Pertwee (Mace), Connie Nielsen (Sarah), Jason Isaacs (Colonel Mekum), Gary Busey (Captain Church), Jason Scott Lee (Caine 607), Michael Chiklis (Jimmy)

Plot: In the year 2036 Todd is a solider who has been programmed from birth as an emotionless killing machine. But then the ruthless Colonel Mekum introduces a new and superior breed of genetically-engineered soldier designed to replace the other soldiers. Todd is defeated up against Mekum's top soldier, Caine 607, and, left for dead, is dumped on the garbage world of Arcadia 234. But Todd there survives and is granted refuge by a group of survivors from a crashed spaceship who have built their own peaceful community. However his emotionless and violent reactions have him barred from the community. But as Mekum's forces move in and start exterminating the community, perceiving it as a military threat, Todd becomes their unexpected saviour.

'Soldier' came with enormous promise - there were many that hailed it as a film that had the potential to become a genre landmark. It had a script from David Webb Peoples who had written such genre classics as 'Blade Runner' (1982) and 'Twelve Monkeys' (1995), as well as having won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for the stunning anti-Western 'Unforgiven' (1992). The advance word on the film was good - Kurt Russell was so enamoured with the script that he changed his schedule on other films so that he could star. And one can see much has been placed into the production - the film is clearly made on an A-budget.

Which all adds up to make 'Soldier' seem even more of a disappointment. What held the potential to be a landmark genre film turns out a surprisingly ordinary variant on the cliched humanization of the inhuman soldier/android theme tried and familiar from the likes of Harlan Ellison's script for 'The Outer Limits' (1963) also entitled 'Soldier' and films like 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day' (1991), 'Universal Solider' (1992) and 'Solo' (1996). Indeed the story arc that 'Soldier' carves is so identical to 'Solo' - programmed soldier/android gets free from military control, discovers a human side amid a group of simple but honest villagers and stands up in armed conflict against his military programmers and, at the climax, in hand-to-hand combat with his intended successor - that one is tempted to cry plagiarism. There are also times where it is just shabbily written - Jason Isaacs' colonel is single-dimensional and cliched, we never get to learn what drives his ruthlessness, and his decision to cleanse the garbage world is very poorly motivated.

The film proves a competent-enough run through of all the cliches and had it been made on a much smaller, more intimate scale one suspects it might have been a considerably more likeable film. It's just on the A-budget it is made on, its cliches collapse into over-inflated pretension. The scenes among the people on the garbage world are so pumped up with patently artificial emotive cues - the honest and earnest simplicity of the communal lifestyle, ragged but plaintive orphans, the woman shot in warm and sensual silhouettes, even for God's sake the pseudo-Celtic wailings of Loreena McKennit on the soundtrack - that it collapses into a forcedness that verges on the absurd. It all mounts to an efficiently large scale but unmemorable action climax. Director Paul Anderson (no relation to 'Boogie Nights' director Paul Thomas Anderson) is clearly shaping up as a regular genre contributor - he debuted with the unpretentiously enjoyable 'Mortal Kombat' in 1995 and made 1997's 'Event Horizon', where his directorial style triumphed despite one of the most brainless scripts of any sf film in recent years. But, as 'Event Horizon' and this show, Anderson has a good deal of talent but clearly little discernment when it comes to scripts.

The film is almost saved by Kurt Russell's performance. Or more ironically and accurately, his lack of a performance. The very blankness of Russell's battle-scarred face, the subtly-made up sunkenness of his eyes, the blank minimalism of the dialogue he gets, creates a character that fascinates in its hollowness. All the emotion comes to be in the smallest movements of the eyes.

    Copyright Richard Scheib 1998

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