Movies: Soldier

Kurt Russell is usually one of the bright spots in a B-movie (he was pretty much the only good thing in "Death Proof"), but even he can't save "Soldier," a stinker of a sci-fi movie directed by Paul W.S. Anderson:



Russell plays Todd, an elite soldier trained from birth to be an emotionless killing machine. When Todd and his comrades are replaced by newer, genetically-engineered super soldiers, Todd is marooned on a remote world. By a strange, almost arbitrary sequence of events, Todd finds himself defending a colony of refugees from his old employers in brutal but predictable fashion.

The big problem with "Soldier" is that Russell doesn't ever get the chance to do anything interesting with his performance. To put it in perspective, Arnold Schwarzengger had more lines in the first Terminator movie than Russell does here. It's pretty hard to root for your protagonist when he doesn't have any personality whatsoever, not even the silent machismo of other silver screen tough guys.

There's also the matter of Anderson's direction, which is at its usual scattershot worst. It's almost like the man takes bits at random from a junk drawer and hopes they all combine into something watchable. Random insert of a Loreena McKennitt song from "The Book of Secrets" during a montage? Check. Pointless climactic fistfight with Jason Scott Lee? Check.

To sum up, "Soldier" is a perfectly forgettable sci-fi B-movie. That took $75 million to make. Ouch.

Rating: 3/10