"Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning" - The weirdest and best film in the series.

*This article contains SPOILERS.

I always wondered what one of the truly great, original directors would do with a Van Damme movie. Sure, he’s worked with some renowned action directors here and there, but what would Kubrick have done with a Van Damme movie? Of course that’s an impossibility, and it’s very unlikely that any director of Kubrick’s ilk (PTA, Scorsese, Aronofsky, etc.) will ever work with Van Damme. But that doesn’t mean a skilled imitation can’t happen; in fact, it already has. Writer-director John Hyams has made the closest thing we’ll likely ever get. His Day of Reckoning feels more like a unique director’s vision than any other Van Damme movie. The comparison that came to mind as I watched was Nicolas Winding Refn. The general look of the film, a mostly quiet protagonist, striking images of sex and ultraviolence, and the general mysteriousness of the film make it very much like Refn’s work. To be clear, I don’t think Hyams was copying Refn. I just thought of Refn as I watched it. Day of Reckoning is simply the product of Hyams being able to do whatever the fuck he wanted, and I am so glad he did.

Universal Soldier: Unleashed

The Universal Soldier series (the Van Damme entries) is truly strange. The first film is pure ‘90s action fun. The sequel attempted to recapture that feeling, but failed (at least commercially; I actually like it in a guilty pleasure kind of way). Then director John Hyams entered the picture and made Regeneration one of the most surprisingly awesome DTV movies of all time. That entry was much darker than the first two films, but Hyams was just getting started. Hyams wanted to do something special with the series, but he also did something very simple: take the idea of the UniSol program to its logical, violent, insane conclusion. Let me explain. 

I love the Universal Soldier series, but I always found it a bit lacking when it came to considering the ramifications of the program. For fuck’s sake, they are re-animating dead Vietnam soldiers as cyborg assassins! And it’s a fairly light-hearted series for the first two movies. This is some dark shit, and Day of Reckoning finally dives deep into the darkness. The UniSols of this film have survived too long, and they are all pretty much crazy. The scenes in the bunker are fairly disturbing. The UniSols just sit around, amped up and drunk, just wanting to kill something because they know nothing else. Andrew Scott and Luc Deveraux claim to be their liberators, but really they’re just masters of a different name. And when John takes over at the end, he’s still just using the UniSols to do his bidding. 

Only death can free these men, but they’ve already died, multiple times in many cases. The film ends with the revelation that John has created a clone to infiltrate the government agency that controls the program. Terrible things are going to happen because John, a government creation meant to stop the rogue UniSols, has chosen to believe the revenge narrative they created. It’s a vicious cycle that seemingly has no end, and that’s the point. Where else could this program go? I know this is covered to a degree in all these films, but this felt like the most realistic and fully formed exploration of the consequences of the program.

One of the main consequences of the program is violence. Of course, the entire series is violent, but only Day of Reckoning garnered an NC-17 because of it. This is because the use of guns is toned down...a bit. The gunplay is still there, and it’s gorier than ever. But the most brutal moments of the film don’t feature guns at all. One such moment involves a fight with baseball bats. In a generally great sequence, John realizes his abilities while fighting off a would-be UniSol assassin in a sporting goods store. After an awesome bat on bat fight, John gains the upper hand and eviscerates his attacker’s head with one swing. I don’t know what else to say except that it’s fucking awesome, and it’s the kind of thing I always wanted from this series. Because what’s the point of creating supersoldiers just to have them pull a trigger. Give those fuckers bats and machetes and let them go crazy.

And Day of Reckoning is truly crazy on many levels. The fact that many of the characters are either under mind control, can’t remember their past, or are flat out rage monsters creates an unnerving mood throughout. But the sound and visuals amp it up even further. The sequences in which Van Damme seems to be telepathically recruiting characters are particularly difficult to watch. The primary example of this is when the UniSol is recruited by Lundgren after the brothel massacre. The flashing lights and the chaotic score along with images of a bald Van Damme make it an extremely effective scene. It’s hardly something you would expect from this franchise.

And that’s precisely why it’s the best film in the series. Day of Reckoning is possibly the boldest sequel ever made. It’s a violent head trip, and it’s everything a Universal Soldier movie could and should be.

Universal Soldier: Apocalypse Now

While I found a lot of similarities to Refn’s work in Day of Reckoning, the most blatant homage is to Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Actually, Day of Reckoning is damn near a remake. The basic plot is a soldier (Scott Adkins) is sent by the government (in this case, though, he’s unaware of the government’s involvement until later) to take out a rogue superior (Van Damme) who has gone insane and started his own army. He eventually makes his way to Van Damme, even going down a river at one point. The ending is where it diverges a bit from Apocalypse Now, even though he still kills Van Damme with a machete much like how Brando dies in Apocalypse. The difference is that rather than simply leaving, he takes Van Damme’s place, albeit with a much smaller army (you know, because he killed almost all of them earlier). The fact that he kills many of them could be a reference to the note Brando leaves for Willard telling him to kill them all. Small differences aside, this is very clearly meant to be a tribute of sorts to Apocalypse Now. And this is a logical film to emulate as Van Damme and Lundgren's characters were originally soldiers in the Vietnam War, and Lundgren's character was kind of an amped-up Kurtz himself in the first film. 

Van Damme’s screen time and overall performance and appearance is further evidence of the connection. Van Damme is barely in this movie. He shows up in the beginning scene, but after that he is only seen in glimpses or very short scenes, which is how Kurtz is portrayed in Apocalypse, as he’s heard in an audio recording early on, then we just see pictures of him. Both Deveraux and Kurtz hang like specters over their films. They are mysterious, dangerous men that our protagonist must face. 

Van Damme’s screen time is almost identical to Brando’s, but so is his appearance. He has a shaved head, and he even paints his face later in the film (seemingly for no other reason than to further resemble Kurtz). Van Damme also matches Brando’s understated performance. He is mostly quiet, which makes for one of the most effective, and definitely eeriest roles of his career. This is not a knock against Van Damme, but I’ve always thought his presence was more powerful when he is more silent. This is why his darker, more villainous roles stand out because when he stands around stone-faced he looks creepy as hell. 

It’s easy to be disappointed by how little Van Damme is in this film, but when you understand the design of the story (and it’s homage to Apocalypse Now), it makes perfect sense. And it makes for a more potent performance from Van Damme. If he had been around every other scene just being brooding and evil, it would have become a bit tiresome by the end. Better to leave him the mystery that must be found rather than to pull the curtain back too soon. Screen time doesn’t matter when his presence can be felt throughout the film. It’s a unique and great performance from Van Damme in easily one of the most interesting films he’s ever been involved in. 

Why Do I Own This?

It’s a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. In fact, I bought it twice, technically. It was cheaper to by a Regeneration / Day of Reckoning combo DVD than buying Regeneration by itself. But then I found out that the DVD version of Day of Reckoning was not the uncut, NC-17 version. So I had to buy the blu ray. I’m glad I did, though, because the extra brutality in the uncut version is worth it.

Random Thoughts

That murder at the beginning is definitely the darkest thing Van Damme has ever filmed.

The craziest little whorehouse in the fucking world…

This movie needs a seizure warning. Seriously. The flashing lights and whatnot are difficult to watch.

What a terrifying cult: a group of genetically enhanced super soldiers sitting around whiskey drunk all the time just waiting for an excuse to start beating the shit out of each other.

I watched this right after John Wick 3 (I definitely need to watch something with less death now), and the sequence when Adkins kills all the UniSols is just as good as a sequence in the Wick series. Obviously Wick is the more premiere series, especially since there are multiple impressive sequences throughout those films while this film just has the one, but it's still very impressive for any action film, much less a DTV one.

Lundgren gets two badass deaths in back-to-back movies. That's rare because when most characters die in a movie, they stay dead.

UniSols using baseball bats and machetes makes for much better (and exponentially more gruesome) action.