Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business

Quite perturbed by the damage done to his clandestine operation in the previous film, a high-ranking government official by the name of "Director Mentor" (Burt Reynolds) decides to use some of his reanimated soldiers to rid of both "Luc Devreaux" (Matt Battaglia) and the news reporter "Veronica" (Chandra West) once and for all. For his part, Luc wants revenge on those responsible for the killing of his brother "Eric Deveraux" (Jeff Wincott) and intends to see it through to the bitter end. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this made-for-television movie was initially filmed at the same time as its predecessor which saved both time and money in the process. Not a bad idea, really. Unfortunately, the writing clearly suffered as the script contained some rather basic dialogue which became quite obvious early on. Likewise, the overall plot was rather simple and generic as well. So much so, that not even someone as accomplished as Burt Reynolds could save it from its low-budget limitations. At least, that's how it seemed to me. Be that as it may, I don't consider this to be a good movie and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

(1998) Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business SCIENCE-FICTION ACTION DRAMA

Slightly better than the previous one called "Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms", but still quite awful, overall, because of the production budget and the fake looking action scenes. Matt Battaglia returns to the title role of "Universal Soldier" Luc Devereaux or GR44, and viewers get to find out what 'G. R.' stands for which are the initials of every 'Universal Soldier' cyborg ever created. They are really the initials of someone's name, who is the person who funded the cyborg program played by Burt Reynolds. And at the same time, both Luc and reporter Veronica Roberts (Chandra West) must find a way to expose this to the media. They are confronted by radical terrorists attempting to hijack a building, but after shot dead, they are later turned into Universal Soldier cyborgs as well. One of the major fights, which is kind of lame, consist of a major fight between brother to brother.

Unfinished Business indeed. As if you hadn't been bored to death already, here's another hour and a half to really knock you out.

In case there's anyone out there at all interested, this follows straight on from the 'cliffhanger' of no.2 "Brothers in Arms" (NOT "The Return"), following the exploits of poor old Luc what's-his-name and some woman as they get ever closer to uncovering the truth behind an illegal government conspiracy to sell undead soldiers to......snore.....snore.....snore.

I can't quite remember, but I think there might actually be an explosion in this film somewhere - just for all you high-octane action junkies out there. Oh and occasionally people fire big guns. Other highlights? The trailers and the end credits.

Yes, it's really THAT good.

If you can actually tolerate watching "Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business" all the way through, you find yourself much like Keanu Reeves in "The Matrix" with all you can say being, "whoa." This whole movie is just plain weird. The sheer fact that the producers made a cheesy spin off "Universal Soldier II" only to make a sequel-to-the-sequel "Universal Soldier III" tells you someone had too much fun with the storyline. Amazingly enough, despite the low budget nature of this film, the acting (while poor) and scenes are surprisingly better than "Universal Soldier: The Return" which says something about the quality of sequels. If you can't sleep at night, this is one of those movies you can watch to waste time.

This movie is a direct sequel to the second Universal Soldier movie, and makes no sense alone. Here, we get to know a bit more about things we were so extremely excited to know (yeah, right), for example who the leader of the bad guys is. The story becomes a bit more interesting than in the previous movie, and because of that I think it's a better one. The action is also better (although it still sucked). Battaglia does the same job all over again, Jeff Wincott should just forget that he ever took part in this, and Burt Reynolds (!!!, yes, Burt is in fact in this one. How low can you get) has just gone down the drain. This is not a great movie at all, but it can't be used as a torture device like it's prequel.