!!WARNING! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!
Remember when Universal
Soldier kicked a shit ton of ass back in '92, Van Damme hadn't made
Hard Target and Dolph was coming off the universally dismissed Marvel
Comics adaptation of The Punisher and Showdown In Little Tokyo, These
two behemoths of action cinema would go head to head in a sci-fi
action flick that looked at re-animating dead soldiers for use in
hostile situations. The film was pretty fucking cool and Dolph proved
he had acting chops as the absolutely demented former 'Nam commando,
Andrew Scott and Jean Claude Showed us that his spinning back kick
was to become a universal sign for badassery as Luc Deveraux.
Obviously a sequel was on the cards but between the first and the
frankly fuckin' awful 1999 sequel, The Return, we had two unofficial
DTV flicks that barely made a blip on action fan's radars.
Well The Return came
out and basically the film made the first look like Citizen Kane, It
was that bad and under used it's secondary lead Michael Jai White. We
all thought the UniSol franchise was dead. Fast forward to the year
2009, it's been ten years, Dolph and Van Damme are older and stuck in
DTV land. A director known for his documentaries about UFC and Rodeo
riding is announced as the director of a new UniSol film. Ok how is a
Documentary filmmaker going to pull of an all out action film? Well
the Director is John Hyams, son of acclaimed Director and
Cinematographer Peter Hyams who had written and directed everything
from Capricorn 1, Outland and 2010: The Year We Made Contact. Peter
Hyams had worked with Van Damme twice during the 90s on the awesome
Sudden Death and Time Cop, so John Hymas must have picked up
something from his old man. Well it seem he picked up a hell of a
lot, Universal Soldier: Regeneration came out and showed that despite
a low budget, a truly effective action film can be made and can be
made professionally.
Fast forward to 2012
and the announcement of Day OF Reckoning, once again directed by John
Hyams who also took a screen-writing credit. Time to get excited
because not only are both Van Damme and Dolph are back but are joined
again by Andrei Arlovski from Regeneration and new kid on the block
Scott Adkins who here takes the lead and this film belongs to Adkins
from minute one.
Adkins plays John who
wakes up one night to discover a gang of masked men have broken into
his house. They execute his family and of the men reveals himself to
Luc Deveraux who beats John half to death. Cut to a few months later
and John is let out hospital with only one thing on his mind, find
Deveraux and take revenge for the death of his family. Meanwhile,
Deveraux has turned into colonel Kurtz and is recruiting UniSol'
still under orders from the U.S governenment and freeing them of
their control to join his army. As John gets closer and closer to
Deveraux, his journey unravels as he learns not just about himself
but about the UniSol's and Deveraux's reason for freeing the UniSols.
It won't win any awards
for plot as it's your pretty standard revenge movie plot but what Day
Of Reckoning does is take a familiar narrative and inject it with
everything from implanted memories, government conspiracies and
clones to show viewers that Day Of Reckoning is more than a beat up
and that action films can be intelligent. This take on the genre may
alienate a lot of fans because it does take it's time to get going.
For me this was not the case, I was fully aware that DOR was going to
be significantly different to the ones that came before. DOR starts
out more like a horror film than a straight up action fest and I
think Hyams took a risk doing this because it shouldn't really work,
but it does. Also some of stylistic choices made production wise are
very different to the previous films as this one looks more stylish
and borrows from the styles of everyone from Kubrick, Carpenter,
Michael Critchton's Coma and to a degree the SAW films. It's far from
being a scary film but that element of horror is always in the
background. The film plays out almost like it's a dream, the
visuals, the action, the style of shooting, they all have a dreamlike
quality to them but for me this just enhanced the viewing experience.
This was unlike any action film i'd ever seen.
But you don't want to
know about the visuals and the atmosphere, you want to know about the
action, and the action of Day Of Reckoning is FUCKIN' INSANE!!. The
first action scene is a scene in which Magnus (Arlovski) is hunting a
group of UniSols. He enters a brothel armed with a shotgun and
proceeds to make his way along a corridor blasting and blowing the
shit out of the group of UniSol's until he comes face to face with
Dolph's Lundgren who 'free's' him. The second again involves Arlovski
only this time he's up against Adkins. This action scene starts with
a well shot and choreographed car chase that ends with a brutal as
hell one on one beat down in a sporting goods store that utilizes
everything from baseball bats, bowling balls, weights, kicks and
fists. It's around three minutes in length but is one of the
highlights of the film and just shows off the precision and skill
that Arlovski and especially Adkins have as martial artists. Then we
get to the finale of the film which is just pure awesomeness in a
can. We follow Adkins as he tears his way through all the rogue
UniSol's that have gathered in Deveraux's wilderness hide out.
Remember that scene in Hard Boiled where Chow and Tony take on a
hospital full of gangsters in one long continuous take?...that is
what the finale is like, Hyams uses long takes to show the carnage
that Adkins is providing and it's not only incredible to see but to
see the work put in and choreography that Adkins is doing just goes
to show that this man need more movies. He has a knife battle with
Dolph and finally goes one on one with Van Damme in an incredibly
brutal machete battle that is only going to see one man come out
alive. Hyams, his Cinematographer Yaron Levy and the stunt/fight
co-ordinator Larnell Stovel (Undisputed 3) have created some of the
best fight scenes this side of the incredible The Raid which
co-incidentally Stovel is working on the sequel to.
The cast give their all
although Dolph and Van Damme are pretty much limited to cameo
appearances but still, their presence is great and Van Damme's Col.
Kurtz impression is quite impressive. Arlovski, tough and silent
through-out the film, cast a commanding figure in his role as Magnus.
The hulking Russian reminded me of Robert Patrick in Terminator 2 as
his character is unstoppable in his mission but Adkins is the man of
the movie, not only are his fight skills insanely awesome but his
performance as John is emotional, child-like and determined. I've
seen a lot of Adkins work from Undisputed 2 & 3, The Shepherd and
Ninja and this is by far his best performance, it takes the horrible
taste of Assassination Games out of my mouth. I think with a few more
acting lessons, Adkins could join mainstream action stars like Jason
Statham as a headliner. This man needs more roles ASAP.
So for me, who went in
to Day Of Reckoning, open minded and expecting something a little
different, I must say that this film really blew me away. The acting,
intelligent script and full on violent action scenes made the viewing
of DOR an absolute treat. Others may find it a little to slow to get
going and may not like the horror element to the film, but please
watch this with an open mind and watch as a director takes a
franchise out of one box and plops it right into a bigger box with
enough room left to add more UniSol adventures. A stunning
achievement in action cinema and along with The Raid, one of the best
action films of the year. I hope Hyams continues this path with this
franchise because i'm itching to see where this series goes next and
as long as Adkins is involved you can count me in.
It was good to Jean back on screen!!.. Pretty good movie, good action, good play.. Go for it, it is good one-time watch
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