#20 — Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
This is an ongoing, illustrated countdown of my 49 1/2 most essential action movies, which doesn’t mean they are the best (but in most cases, yes), but a selection of some that I think you must see. Last week I talked about a bittersweet sendoff for a gang of criminals — Johnnie To’s “Exiled”.
When I talked about Royal Warriors, I mentioned how there are some movies on this list that I look forward to writing about more than others. They are all special, as all of your 49 and 1/2 most essential action children would be (there are many great, but non-essential action children out there as well, no offense to them, keep working hard), but the fact is this is one of my better kids. Day of Reckoning gets to stay up late and play video games. I’ll take it out for some Popeyes and a milkshake. My Unisol is an honor student and gets free pizza.
I said quite a bit about Day of Reckoning’s predecessor, Regeneration — another terrific kid that I give special treatment to. That movie is one of the best DTV action films ever made, AND YET this one seems to one-up it. John Hyams continues his extreme home makeover by further expanding the lore of the Unisol program. This movie is more ambitious than almost any mainstream action film in its theme, plotting, and action. I’m also going to get into spoilers, so if you’re worried about that, I suggest you do what you know must be done.
This is the first Scott Adkins (!) appearance on the countdown, and I think he’s the perfect upgrade. I first saw him in 2009’s Ninja, and have been a fan ever since. My favorite anonymous, archival appearance of him comes from the Jet Li film Unleashed, where he plays a pit fighter and looks like a post-apocalyptic Ben Stiller, so he’s been around a while — slowly renovating the DTV action house that Statham left behind to do Hot Wheels movies.
The first notable thing about Hyams’ direction of the series is that Luc Deveraux (JCVD) is immediately pitted against Adkins as an elusive boogeyman leading a Unisol revolt. So when he ran off into the horizon at the end of Regeneration, I guess he wasn’t thinking about retirement. Had the series ended there, it could have been assumed that he went to a cabin to live as a hermit — passing the days as a woodworker, carving little John Rambos and dreaming of electric sheep. But that didn’t happen. Maybe he found Andrew Scott’s YouTube channel and became radicalized. Perhaps we will find out more about this later.
After the inciting, uh, altercation that opens the movie, we spend a lot of time with Adkins’ character, John Reckoning — who I have named that because he was brutally beaten and his family murdered by Deveraux, and naturally he is quite upset. What follows is, surprisingly, a noir-ish, almost David Lynchian investigation into who he is (he lost his memories) and who is responsible for wrecking his life. The classic players of past Unisol films are back in different roles, and this is possibly the best collection of talent the series has ever had. Dolph Lundgren is a radical mouth-piece for an underground army, and Van Damme is their leader — dressed in military fatigues and black and white face paint. Andrei Arlovski, the new big bad of the previous film, is now a mind controlled drone.
Wait a minute, time out. Didn’t some of these guys die last time? Yeah, well as the ending of Regeneration revealed, the cloning has really advanced(it’s a shame we don’t get to see Mike Pyle return as Captain Burke, that guy ruled). Guys are also regenerating limbs, and suffering from PTSD-like effects of being a zombie soldier — there’s even some sort of hostel where some of them hang out to unwind by doing stuff like nailing wooden boards to their arm. It’s not a feel-good movie. Hyams continues to expand the scope of the narrative while building up confrontations that alter everything we thought about the story.
One of pleasures of this entry is watching the protagonist slowly realize that he’s not a regular guy, and embrace it in some dangerous ways. The brawl in the sporting goods store takes a sudden turn when Arlovski throws a bowling ball at John Reckoning, and he shatters it with a punch. The ambient/electronic score gives off a simmering drone. HE’S BEGINNING TO BELIEVE. It’s one of the closest things to a traditional, crowd-pleasing Movie Moment, but also a little scary. Instead of a replicant discovering a sense of humanity, this Unisol is discovering the convenience of being able to shatter someone’s head with a baseball bat, and spectators look on in horror.
I love the unabashed riffing on Heart of Darkness. What a power move, watching Apocalypse Now and saying, “yeah, I’m gonna make the action version of that with my sequel to Universal Soldier, starring Yuri Boyka”. The broad-strokes approach to some of its themes isn’t nearly as sophisticated as Apocalypse Now or Blade Runner. But that fact that it swings for the fences with it in this arena is amazing. All the performers are game. Adkins provides what you’d expect on the action front (in spite of dealing with injuries while filming), but it’s also one of his best acting performances. Van Damme is channeling Brando in his own unique way, and Dolph might be my favorite part of the movie.
Everything Lundgren says is gold. He looks enormous and scary, but also cartoonish — like an anime villain or video game character in live action. He’s introduced as a large pair of shoulders filling the screen in neon lighting. Later, he gives speeches in full military garb in a way that is appropriately broad. As a walking, talking recruitment poster for the Unisol rebel army, he says things like “Your MIIIIIND is not your OOOOOWN” or “Hello, soldier” with full war paint on his face. He’s become the mascot of the franchise.
There are multiple rug pulls in the third act, and they are good. After meeting one of his disillusioned clones who’s been working with Deveraux, John Reckoning realizes he’s reckoned wrong — we’ll have to change his name to plain old John. All the this time we thought the title was about him, but it’s about THE SYSTEM. The real reckoning was Deveraux and his followers striking back against the government program that birthed their cursed existence. Van Damme is the Luke Skywalker of Colonel Kurtz’s, and we, the audience, are now that poor guy in Scanners that got a really bad headache. Movies are so great sometimes.
This leads to implanted memories being severed, emotional trauma leading to a rampage against the rebels (there’s layers of rebellion here), a changing of the guard, and finally a teasing of the dramatic conclusion to the Unisol saga we will never see — Plain John and his army of Scott Adkins against the government.
I think this is one of the best action-horror offerings ever made, and this was the perfect series to take that genre blending approach. The switcheroo at the end is so brilliant. Van Damme is presented as a villain, but he’s actually a tragic Ellen Ripley type trapped in a nightmare.
“There is no end”
Deveraux can no longer see a path to victory that doesn’t include his sacrifice. Like Ripley, continually waking up from cryo-sleep into a new hell, he is being resurrected into a new body searching for peace and finding only death. Maybe he’s letting The Company win, out of exhaustion, OR he could be thinking “this guy might be better than me, perhaps he can figure things out and finish the fight”. He’s looking for a sign of hope before he checks out, and he may have found it in John.
Too bad Hyams didn’t get a sequel and we’ll never know if Luc’s hunch was correct. It’s hard to find a fourth entry in a franchise diverge from so many norms, and excel on almost every front. That it reaches just beyond its grasp is a mark of excellence. Scott Adkins succeeded where many other action stars failed; he helped make the greatest DTV action film ever made.
I know, I’ve been making these declarative statements up and down, but we have to give an award out from time to time — if only to keep the other action kids honest. I am officially crowning Day of Reckoning.
