I know everybody liked Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning. I also know it's been out a while.
I loathed that movie. The reviewer linked above is good at finding things that aren't there, but "ineptly told" isn't the same thing as "dreamlike". I did see one internet comment that was like "this is like somebody remade Apocalypse Now and crossed it with Dollhouse and Total Recall and and and" and those things certainly all went into the stew, but so did a whole lot of not knowing how to tell a story. I will say that both Lundgren and Van Damme give really really really bizarre performances that I liked a lot, and some of the fights were...I dunno. Like the director and fight choreographer watched a lot of video games and wanted to recapitulate them. Here are a few claims the reviewer made.
This movie is a secret masterpiece.No.
Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is a movie Werner Herzog, David Lynch, and Shivers-era David Cronenberg might make
The actual director, John Hyams, has a distinctive voice and style.
Yes:
He and his cinematographer, Yaron Levy, create a nightmare-scape of blighted semisuburbia through which the hero drifts
No:
The compositions are beautiful.
...
The cheapness of the setsYes.
enhancesNo.
Interiors look like Gregory Crewdson photographs and exteriors look like William Egglestons.No.
No, and then again, no:
But the movie is more than just a feast for connoisseurs of composition and atmosphere.
No:
It both invites and supports a close reading.
No:
In Day of Reckoning, the history of the individual is a alterable commodity, subject to manipulation by both the state and those who oppose it.
Yes:
At the same time, John’s search for his family’s killers folds back on itself to become an investigation into his own identity
No:
and then a radical recalibration of his moral code;
No, and then again, no:
in addition to being a political parable, the story is a subtle and elegant portrait of a consciousness maturing from psychological childhood to adulthood.
Yes:
When he realizes his memories are untrustworthy, he faces a climactic choice
No, and then again, no:
about the most fundamental of human questions
No:
Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is the most exceptional movie of 2012
Yes:
he made a strange,
...
haunting, sometimes even beautiful odyssey
No.
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Our 234th post! 7/26 is Reviewiera's 7th anniversary!
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