Universal Soldiers

I am glad it was a free rental. I was half tempted to scratch the disc to spare the next poor sap 86 mins of his life. I mean seriously, this was crap. I have seen better film student films and much better (ok not MUCH better) films from indie filmmakers in Florida.

So I guess this film is Universal in one thing...it sucks!

I could just repeat most of what Alkaly from the UK said, but it was all so true. To rehash, the fairly average chicks in the movie didn't even get naked.

Oh and the second (the first would be the movie was filmed) most annoying thing was the soundtrack. It sounded like they used a digital answering machine to record the voices.

I shouldn't even waste more time writing a review of this movie, but it was that bad I had to clear my conscience and let people know.

If a negative vote would be possible, I surely would give one to this film. It's bad dialogue, bad acting and NO story at all. I'm not a big fan of Jean Claude Van Damme but I liked the first 'Universal Soldier' film. The second was OK. But this one is just horrible. It's not even useful as background noise while doing chores. I was waiting for nearly 15 Minutes for the story to begin. Then another Charakter showed up and the badness began. My first thought was 'who wrote this garbage?'. My second thought was 'I have to warn people not to watch this cr...p'. When I came to IMDb I saw that other people already did that, but I'm writing a commend anyway. Do yourself a favor and don't watch it (many other comments here already said that - listen to them). You would have more fun pulling your teeth.

This movies has them all: story line, drama, action, love, sex, special effects. No, I didn't lost my mind, I was just jocking it's a COMPLETE GARBAGE.

It goes around a failed experiment and that's about it with the story line. The characters are weak, but why do you need strong characters when everything is about shooting aimlessly and getting killed. Most of the actors I think were hired on "the cheapest we can get" premises.

You can watch this as an alternative to a Comedy or a Documentary. It is actually funny how bad the roles and the actors are, and you can consider it a case study about bad movies.

Well done Griff Furst, keep trying, by mistake you will eventually make something good.

You know, I wonder what this movie would have been like had I been able to hear what was going on half the time. Really, it sounded awful, absolutely awful. I couldn't hear half the dialog and even if I could it was overpowered by heavy nature sounds (including one particularly annoying seagull) and bad/inappropriate music.

That said, I thought the film looked pretty good. I was impressed by some genuinely cinematic moments. Take away about 80% of the jv "predator vision" and don't artificially speed up shots (especially during fight sequences) and this film could have looked great. I like the "Saving Private Ryan" bland colors and choppy images but dial the latter back especially during the exposition sequences; it's too much at the wrong times.

There was also some promising talent in front of the camera. Rick Malabri was quite photogenic though his character felt a bit one-sided and Kristen Quintrall was quite entertaining to watch though perhaps an errant boob falling free from her loose-fitting uniform whilst hanging from the rope snare would have enhanced the viewing experience. I would watch her work again...

All in all I think of this film more in terms of what it could have been rather than what it was. It was butchered by bad sound and what I'm sure must have been too much rush and poor creative decisions by some producer. I could feel the art trying to break through but being stifled by time and business constraints. If nothing else, I hope all involved learned from the experience. If the talent of a select few is ever fully realized, than we might come to expect better, even great, things from an otherwise dismal and confusing film-making model.

Maybe I need to re-order my bottom 5 Asylum movies, because Universal Soldiers is deserving of a spot there. You can really tell how low on budget the film was, the editing is the choppiest of any film I've seen in a while, while the scenery is dully lit and the effects are incredibly fake-looking, most of them don't even look like what they were meant to be. Even the props are bad, there was one that looked as though it was made of wood but seeing as the prop broke it could as well have been made of the cheapest plastic anybody could find. The music is repetitive, has no momentum whatsoever and actually feels dated, while the sound effects verge on bizarre, some even are repeated over and over again. The script is stilted and feels too talky often, while the story is so thin in structure and so ponderous in pace that you question whether there is one at all and when there is the all too few signs of one it's predictably done. The characters are annoying and are never developed, while the acting from everybody involved reads of everybody just improvising in a very bored way on screen. Overall, Universal Soldiers is an awful film that has no life to it. 1/10 Bethany Cox