Universal Soldier: Le combat absolu

Jean-Claude Van Damme has been in about a film a year for 15 years now, and has been the star performer in those films since 1985's No Retreat, No Surrender.

That's no mean achievement and shows that this action movie star has a market for his skills, as limited as they might be. The formula isn't Van Damme's alone but he's certainly the most prolific of the action movie stars.

Silvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzennegger, Steven Segal, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are the best known of the action stars but with the exception of Chan, Van Damme is the one who seems to be still most actively in the business. And these sorts of films are much less popular than they used to be.

Jean-Claude is a terrible actor and his film world is simplistic. One can only assume that his fans wish that the real world was like his.

The scenario almost invariably includes lots of hand to hand fighting, silly women and often children who need defending. The plots are stupid and concocted only to allow Jean-Claude to fight a lot and to show his sensitive side as he protects the women and/or children.

The mushy bits, accompanied by appropriate music, aren't ever romantic, Jean Claude could never manage that, but they serve to depict this action man as being a reluctant hero. He only beats people up, firstly because he can, but secondly because he has to.

His best film so far, of the ones I've seen, was the John Woo directed Hard Target (1993) which had many stylish touches, often in slow motion, which accentuated the admirable Van Damme gracefulness.

I think the worst was Double Impact which unfortunately doubled the torture - there were two characters in the film played by the Muscles From Brussels.

And the famous, universal, Van Damme bum shot, the scene where we get to see Jean-Claude's tastefully lit posterior, happens early on in Universal Soldier 2. So if you like you can leave early.

Universal Soldier follows the formula. Actually I think that his fans will like this one. There's plenty of kick boxing.

There are really only 3 reasons to watch this: Michael Jai White has some quality screen time; Kiana Tom is quite gorgeous except for her dismal second incarnation, and this film has the most hilariously gratuitous T & A sequence since Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder hid out in the poledancing club in Stir Crazy.

Actually I quite like Van Damme - he makes martial arts look attainable. You can go to your classes and think "I'll never be as good as Jet Li, the guy's superhuman. But I might just get as good as Van Damme someday."

i anticipated this movie like i wait for any new JCVD film. i love van damme and i think he has a lot of potential, give him a 100 million dollars film and a director like michael bay, and watch how he captures the screen and the whole holywood. Universal soldier II is a nice action film, but lacks a lot of basic A film characteristics. van damme shows some good fighting, but mic rodgers didnt shoot'em right. he needs to learn some stuff from john woo's & van damme's HARD TARGET, except of the scene when van damme fights S.E.T.H. this scene is the greatest scene in the film. it was also nice to see bil goldberg's humor as a big hard-ass unisol being kick-assed by van damme in various parts of the movie. i was sad as the plot took a turn when the main computer S.E.T.H took control over the facility and sent over the unisols to take over the world or whatever. i think it could have been better, if the scripters would have think twice. in conclusion, wait for video, but don't miss this film at all, after all, van damme is van damme.

This is a shocking 'B' grade action movie with lots of bad acting and dialogue. Van Damme does his usual best which aint much, Jai White is good as Seth but the scene stealer is the cheesy but lovable Bill Goldberg. This film is so ridiculously bad that it ends up being funny and quite enjoyable.

If you like cheesy low budget action flicks that doesn't take itself too seriously then this is worth a laugh or two! As a fan of the genre and the fact that i realise this isn't meant to be taken seriously, *** out of *****!

This movie wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. I'll say it's one of Van Damme's best films in years cause he hasn't done a good film in years. I won't call this a sequel either cause it had almost nothing to do with the first one, so u didn't have to see the first one to understand this one. This was just a basic action shot em up flick, very violent, a lot more action in this one than the first one, but US 1 seemed a little more interesting than this one. Goldberg was ok in this movie much better than I expected though, and Michael Jai White was actually very good, man he can fight, good moves. Luckily though I didn't waste my money on this movie cause me and my friend had passes so we got in free. Overall this movie was good to go see if u are a die hard Van Damme fan or Universal Soldier fan, however the ending stank, it was the worst part of the movie, other than that, it wasn't a bad flick.