Soldado Universal 3

Where to begin. The story is fine, the acting is pure, even when Luc is supposed to be human he is worse than Star Trek DATA, and it this really Universal Soler III or IIb? As you can tell, this spinoff of the series is messed up. The acting would be solved if they had meant money on Van Damme (to go with Gary Busey, Burt Renolds, and a Bill clinton voice impersonator). Unfortunately they dont, and this "high tech" looking TV-seried (parts one and two) finds the need to recreate the end of Universal Solder I and then erroniously place the date as 1998 not 1992. Berronlia and West are merely Canadian versions of the Universal Soldier I characters and it shows. Like other movies (aka The Jessee Ventura story) the Canadians come off as fake and crude (especially in the Canadian business scene). Anyway not to bash on Canadians as the movie does have one of the funniest lines I can remember.

Burt Reynolds: "General Clancy, I need a favor."

Clancy: "Whats that sir?"

Reynolds: "I need you to die. Don't Worry its only temporary."

Hopefully this teo part blip and Burt Reynolds fakish Scotch Irish accent are only temporary.

With this third installment in the "Universal Soldier" franchise, the series just plummets even deeper into a dark place. But I am getting ahead of myself here.

First of all, let me just say that now in 2021 it is actually the first time that I sit down to watch the 1998 direct to video third movie in the "Universal Soldier" series. And I watched it right after having watched part 2, also for the first time. So I can't really say that I was having much hopes for this particular movie. But still, I hadn't seen it before, so I watched it.

And while "Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business" is a continuation of where part II left off, then the storyline told in this third movie was just a step back; a step in the wrong direction. The storyline didn't have the same appeal or impact as the storyline had in part II, needless to say that both these sequels are not up to par with the original Van Damme and Lundgren movie. Writer Peter M. Lenkov just didn't manage to come up with something that even could match the less than mediocre foray that was part II.

"Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business" continues in the spirit of part II, for sure. But take Gary Busey out of the equation and you're stuck with an even smaller cast of actors and actresses that had a chance to pull on the reigns of this horse. While Burt Reynolds is an adequate actor, he just was wrongly cast for a movie such as this.

The action sequences in "Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business" feel somewhat awkward and staged, often coming off as being randomly placed into the movie.

This was not the brightest of moments in the franchise's run, not even by a long shot. And while I did manage to sit through the entire movie, I can in all honesty say that this is not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time.

I am rating director Jeff Woolnough's "Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business" a three out of ten stars.

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.

I will say this film was a bit better than Brothers In Arms, but not much better. I mean, there is a bit more action in this one and there are a couple of interesting plot points, but overall, still not very good and still very generic feeling. Which of course makes sense, you take away the star from the first film and replace them with a guy that looks nothing like the original guy, sounds nothing like him and acts nothing like him of course it is going to come off as a cheap knockoff.

The story to its credit picks up where the second left off. I mean, I have seen sequels that seem to completely ignore its predecessor before. Big budget films like Ghost Rider and smaller films like Max Havoc have done this. Well, GR 44 and reporter go to a building that is hijacked by a group having nothing to do with the Unisol program. GR 44 takes care of this and then finds out his parents are dead while the one scientist from the previous film raises a clone and Burt Reynolds still uses a horrible Irish accent. All this leads to a pointless reunion and a very inconclusive and tepid resolution that leaves things even more unfinished!

The star from the last movie is back and he is totally bland yet again. Being around people has not helped at all! The reporter girl is not much better and Burt is bad too. Makes me wish they had brought Busey back as he may be crazy, but he adds some flair and emotion!

So, if you wish to see how this thing progresses and hope for a resolution, I would warn you that there is no resolution. I am pretty sure this is the last one of these and yet they left things wide open for another sequel. Never assume you are going to have a sequel unless you are already filming the thing, nothing worse than an open ended movie.

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.