Soldier

In the spirit of David Webb Peoples’s economy of words with Kurt Russell’s part in Soldier, I’m going to write this review with less sentences than lines Russell had in Soldier. I’m attempting to write this review in less than 24 sentences.

Russell is Todd, a soldier raised from birth to kill and only kill. When Todd is deemed obsolete, he is dump onto a forsaken garbage planet and left to rot. Todd discovers a group of outcasts on the planet and begins to regain his humanity. Todd’s replacement soldiers come to the planet and try to kill everyone, but Todd saves the people.

Let’s just get the formalities out of the way: Soldier is one of the worst movies of 1998, ranking right up there with The Avengers and Knock Off.

Russell, who is supposed to be a trained killer, takes his part a little to seriously. His mute and bland performance – if it can even be called that – is one of the sore thumbs of this movie. The lines given to Russell by screenwriter Peoples consist mostly of “Sir!” or some other one-word phrase. When he’s not talking, he’s standing around looking like a dolt or shooting a gun killing people. Not an intensive part for the money that he was paid.

Soldier’s other sore thumb is director Paul (Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon) Anderson. Anderson should go back to directing music videos; he hasn’t made the transition to features films as well as some other music video to feature film directors. Anderson is not in the same league as David (Alien 3, Se7en, The Game) Fincher, Michael (Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon) Bay, or Alex (The Crow, Dark City) Proyas.

Soldier is a big ball of testosterone that has no story, no performances, and no real entertainment value. Of course, I could be wrong because the two guys sitting in front of me during the showing often threw up there hands during a killing and yelled things like “Yeeeah!” or “Alriiight!” or just grunted loudly.

The script by David Webb Peoples’s is thin, which is a shame since Peoples’s is the co-writer of sci-fi classic Blade Runner.

Women will fear this movie, especially if they’re going to be dragged to it on a date. Testosterone-laced and numb in the brain, Soldier is a bad movie. Skip Soldier and save yourself 90 minutes plus admission.

There! A whole review in 23 sentences!

Edited by Mark O’Hara.