member of the 'internet movie critics association' <a href= " http : //www . geocities . com/hollywood/studio/5713/index . html " >http : //www . geocities . com/hollywood/studio/5713/index . html</a> i'll make a prediction right now . kurt russell , whom i admire as an actor in a lot of movies , will win the razzie award for worst actor of 1998 in 'soldier' . i read somewhere that russell utters a total of only 68 words in the entire film and to me he spends the rest of the movie looking like a mindless version of frankenstein's monster , one of the living dead and a cyborg all rolled into one . russell gave an excellent performance in 1979's 'elvis' , a television classic that brought him an emmy nomination as best actor . some of his best work can be found in movies such as 'breakdown' , 'unlawful entry' , 'backdraft' and 'tequila sunrise' . but as an action hero ? russell is too talented for that . his portrayal of the ordinary guy in a lot of films makes his presence work but 'soldier' is junk . an unsavory mix of several science fiction films scaled down into one mess . beginning in 1996 , russell is taken from the maternity ward of the hospital he's born at by a secret military attaché that trains him from the cradle to be an unbeatable , unstoppable and pure fighting machine . we see his progression as a soldier at various ages until his training ends at the beginning of manhood when he turns 17 . several more years pass and russell is now around 40 and a new breed of soldier is created and their colonel ( jason issacs ) is arrogantly pleased that his men , he feels , are superior to the men lead by a rather sedate captain ( gary busey ) who is russell's commanding officer . issacs challenges busey to select his best men to take down his most effective new breed of soldier ( jason scott lee ) . russell is one of the men selected and during the hand to hand combat exercise , russell is presumed dead along with a couple of other men but not before he can take out one of the new soldier's eye and scar part of his face . the bodies of the now " obsolete " soldiers are disposed of on a desolate planet but russell turns out not to be dead and upon landing with a large batch of space junk , meets the inhabitants of the desolate waste planet and tries to lead them in the oncoming invasion to be carried out by the deranged colonel responsible for his current fate . the people are taken a back to russell's deadly form of fighting power since their way of life is relatively peaceful and the climax is pay back and revenge in a most ordinary way . director paul anderson ( 'event horizon' ) has made an real turkey of a movie that cries out as the definition of 'empty' if you were to look it up in the dictionary . the film's obligatory violence is meaningless and to a larger extent , no focus is given to create any interesting characters as a contrast to russell's character . what made 1984's 'the terminator' work was the fact that the characters portrayed by linda hamilton and michael biehn were truly human and were a good character contrast to arnold's mechanical elements . trashy and exploiting , 'soldier' will have you asking " what's the point ? " when you leave the theatre . not bad for the testosterone crowd but for the rest of us , this film is an example of too much money spent on a film that's been done a million times before . 
