Too much of everything

Overrated

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

And then there was Dolph. Again. Seems like he was in every other movie for awhile there.As per yuse, dude sucks everyone around him into a mass of antimatter (!) due to the gravitational force he exerts (!!) based on scientific findings that dictate that Dolph himself is a casual loop. What's that?Dolph is created. Thus, Dolph exists and grows stronger. Thus, Dolph keeps doing that. Thus the creation of Dolph results from that.Dolph is Universal, much like the title of this film, which is THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE and yeah, I've seen Spider-Man and BOTH Weekends at Bernie's so deal. 100/10

Roland Emmerich turns out decent work when he starts with a decent idea. And this movie is based on an extremely cool idea: a secret government project to use the reanimated corpses of dead soldiers as 'UniSols'. They're like killer combat zombies equipped to receive commands remotely, impervious to pain, quick to heal, and pretty much unstoppable although they tend to overheat if they stay active for too long. There isn't a huge amount of action in the film, but in between scenes we get to see a lot of Lundgren's bad guy one-liners and attitude. Van Damme doesn't have many fights either until the end, when he goes up against the Lundgren character.This is a fun, violent movie, with both stars hamming it up, Van Damme the more stoic of the two. I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more marital arts in the film. Oh, there are a couple of kicks thrown but no real Karate fighting. Though Van Damme was well known for busting' moves by 1992, Dolph had only recently started illustrating his abilities in that department, particularly with the previous year's "Showdown in Little Tokyo", co-starring Brandon Lee. The action is not bad, otherwise, with plenty of stuff blowing' up and dudes being thrown through windows n' stuff. Overall, it has good action, a few cheesy moments but also a few memorable catch phrases (some of which I can't repeat here).Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

With Independence Day: Resurgence coming out today let's go back at time a bit when Roland Emmerich directed a pretty good action movie called Universal Soldier starring Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. Now is this movie dumb and over the top? Yes a lot it's a mix of action man and Terminator but only lower in good acting or good writing. Lundgren for some reason is obsessed with ears in this movie a lot and Van Damme wants to eat the whole restaurant. But the movie has some great action sequences, fight scenes and overall it's a very good 90's movie just except a cheesy 90's movie and you will love it. Universal Soldier gets an A+

'Shared universes' are kind of in vogue these days, largely thanks to Marvel's superheroes movies. However, if one film was supposedly happening in the same world as another back in the early nineties, I'd wager that 'Universal Soldier' would be happening while the Terminator and John Connor busted Sarah out of that mental institution.Yes, both films are made by the same production company and some of the same producers are behind the two of them, however Universal Solider will never quite be remembered as fondly as Arnie's second cyborg outing. T2 had bigger stars, better effects and a deeper plot, but there's no denying that the two films share the same 'vibe.' Van-Damme plays a Vietnam soldier, killed in action during the war, and then resurrected by a black-ops military agency as a 'super soldier,' used for thwarting terrorists. Yes, feel free to ignore what happened to Van-Damme's corpse during the twenty-five or so years between death and revival. This would be all well and good if it wasn't for the fact that the same unit also revived Van-Damme's borderline psychotic commanding officer, played (amazingly!) by Dolph Lundgren. Now, these two bad boys had a history of animosity between the pair of them when they were alive, so old grievances are soon revived along with the soldiers' bodies and the two go head to head.And it's great fun – violent, action-packed, big, dumb, stupid fun. And it knows it. Like T2, there's actually some nice moments of humour which are never overused and do help to lighten the mood and give it a 'comic-book feel.' Both lead actors have been criticised over the years of being little more than muscle men with no real acting ability. However, in my opinion, both shine here. Van-Damme is the good guy, but never boring due to his naïve personality. He can't really remember what he was and what he's here for and has a childlike quality in the new world he's found himself in. Lundgren is just psychotic. In know this is just a loud, over-the-top sci-fi film, but, in terms of lunatic badguys, he's right up there with them.Maybe Universal Solider is mainly for guys, especially those who (now) enjoy The Expendables-type movies which bask in the glories of the silly old action films of yesteryear. It's not T2, but it's a nice little comedian piece to it.