Not what it could have been.

When I hear the name of Paul W.S. Anderson, I usually think of ruined, big budget concepts. Foremost among them is Alien vs. Predator (AVP), a film idea rife with potential. Instead of an intense yet entertaining old school flick, we got a bomb with characters we hardly cared about and the unforgivable act of introducing "Bullet-Time" facehuggers to cinema, among other things. Event Horizon also comes to mind, because it started off with some rather intriguing sci-fi ideas, but soon devolved into another run-of-the-mill "We've found another portal to Hell" flick, albeit with good special effects. The only movie of his that I really enjoyed was Mortal Kombat, an adaptation of the popular video game. It was faithful to its sources, and it had a number of enthusiastic performances. Yet, it refused to take itself seriously, which somehow made it all the more fun. When I rented his 1998 film, Soldier, I remembered hearing both good and bad about it. Since I wasn't buying it, I decided to simply go in and make my own judgment. Once the movie was over, I came away with an overwhelming feeling of...disappointment.

Plot: Todd (Kurt Russel- Escape from New York, Tombstone) is a part of a group of soldiers trained from birth to be the perfect warriors. His team has waged many battles throughout the galaxy, and they usually emerged victorious. It's an ideal life for a born killer, but that is about to change. When a new batch of genetically altered soldiers is introduced as the next best thing, the old order is rendered obsolete. Todd himself is put out of commission when he and a couple of teammates attempt to incapacitate the deadliest of the new breed, Caine 607 (Jason Scott Lee- Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, The Jungle Book), as a test ordered by their superiors. As a result, Todd's body is placed on a garbage ship and dumped on an isolated planet. When he comes around, he finds a colony of scavengers, exiles from other worlds attempting to scrape a life out of the refuse they find. Needless to say, a culture clash ensues, but Todd is grudgingly allowed to live amongst them. He comes to care for these people and struggles to build a new life. But the ties to his past come calling in a brutal manner, and he is forced to take up the role he was born for...one more time.

Review: Soldier is a movie that could have been good, had certain modifications been made. Sure, the theme of warriors searching for their souls has been done a number of times, as shown in films such as First Blood (1982), Robocop (1987), and Dances with Wolves (1990). It is certainly a tried and true formula, and as such, Soldier could have succeeded as a minor addition to this niche of movies. In some respects, it does, but for the most part, it is an extremely predictable imitation of what came before.

The basic plot has some promise in and of itself, and it succeeds in allowing the audience to empathize with the character of Todd. This was due largely to Kurt Russel's role, which is the closest he'll get to playing a robot. It's not a bad thing, in that Todd's training left no place for emotion, and Russel's performance conveys this without falling into the category of wooden acting. All he knows how to do is to survive and kill, and it's a small wonder that he doesn't know how to respond when the scavengers treat him with kindness. With a minimum of dialog, Russel demonstrates a surprising range of emotions. His best moment is arguably when he tries to show a kid how to kill a snake, and in doing so, attempts to pass on a measure of what he learned through his training. In this small scene, he attempts to nonverbally teach the child that the only way to overcome a foe is by standing up to them and showing no mercy. It is a very good scene, and it further demonstrates that amidst the problems that Soldier has, Kurt Russel is not one of them.

The one other good performance comes from Gary Busey (The Buddy Holly Story, Lethal Weapon) as Church, the man in charge of Todd's cadre. If you are looking at the story from the perspective that Church is using his "boys" for combat missions of a questionable nature, and in doing so, is merely following orders, he's one of the many bad guys working under a fascist system. On the other hand, if you see him as one who takes pride in his work and cares about the soldiers under his command, he's actually a good guy who unfortunately works for those who only care about cold statistics. Church, via Busey, reminded me of an old car mechanic, one who is helpless to prevent the simple machines of the past from being pushed aside by the excessively electronic vehicles of the future. The same principle applies to his soldiers, and himself, to some extent. Even though it's difficult to label Church as truly good or evil, Busey makes him into an unexpectedly sympathetic character.

The plot development itself unfortunately does not work in the movie's favor at all. Even if this is not your kind of movie, odds are that you have seen one of the countless flicks that it drew its inspiration from. Take out the sci-fi aspect, and you have the same old story: Bad guy works for the system, system kicks him out. Through the kindness of strangers, bad guy learns the error of his ways, and has time to fall in love. The system forces its way back into his life, former bad guy goes postal and obliterates it, or at least its representatives. Thus a "profound" message is sent to the audience. It's a considerable letdown when a script this predictable was written by David Peoples, the man who wrote a little gem of a screenplay for Ridley Scott's Bladerunner.

If I come across as overly cynical, forgive me. It's just that so many movies have been made exactly like this, and aside from some minor tweaks, they tell the same story. It is true that some are tolerable and even decent, but these exceptions to the rule had the benefit of legitimate or enthusiastic performances. Soldier does not rank in this group, because the acting of all those involved (excluding Russel and Busey) were paycheck performances (ones that scream, "I am only in this atrocious movie for the paycheck, so I can pay my landlord in East Grivney"). Such a lack of enthusiasm serves to further impede a film that was already predictable to begin with.

To be honest, I found the set and ship designs to be far more interesting than the characters. Granted, I don't know how scientifically accurate the idea of garbage ships is, but this is a movie, and as far as fiction is concerned, it's a pretty cool idea. One of the most visually memorable sequences is when you see three or four of them floating along, dumping their loads onto the planet. Against a backdrop of a brownish-golden sky, it's actually a beautiful scene. Too bad the moment is ruined by Celtic music that is quite out of place. I like some Celtic music, but this was not one of those instances. If they'd had someone like Vangelis do the score for the scene (or for the movie) it would have been better. As for the colony design, it gives a new meaning to the words "trash town", but in a good way. A lot of the mismatched structures had a surreal, tangled beauty to them that reminded me of scenery from the Oddworld games.

As far as action goes, it's nothing to write home about.The establishing combat shots are rather pedestrian, especially in regards to the spacesuit fight (which looks rather cheap, but you can't win them all). There are two standouts, though. The chain fight with Caine 607 is pretty neat, as there was some good fight choreography involved. It also provides the viewer with a memorable example of improvised optical surgery. The prizewinner, however, is the final battle towards the end. Here, we actually get to see Todd in his element, as he goes in and out of cover, gruesomely disposing of the enemy one by one. There's also an impressive tank fight, and all this adds some much needed kick to a lackluster film. If there had only been a few more fights on this scale, we might have had a better flick.

Well, I have made my own judgment of Soldier, and I have concluded that it is one of the best examples of wasted potential I have seen. I cannot call it a "bad" film, but neither can I recommend it as a good one. As far as comparisons go to Paul Anderson's other conceptually ruined films, it's much better than AVP, but it lacks the overall intensity of Event Horizon. In terms of a recommendation in general, I'd say it's worth a rental for those who like Kurt Russel or undemanding sci-fi flicks, but not a purchase.