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Released by: Sony
Released on: 2/2/2010
Director: John Hyams
Cast: Andrei Arlovski, Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme
Year: 2009
The Movie:
The third film in the (hopefully ongoing) Universal Soldier franchise puts the first film's stars, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, back into the roles they made famous after Lundgren backed out of the second film in the series, Universal Soldier: The Return.
When the movie begins, a group of terrorists have stolen some high tech top-secret technology and created a Universal Soldier of their own. Say what? A Universal Soldier, for those not familiar with the two movies that came before this one, is a genetically enhanced dude who can be programmable to become the ultimate and virtually unstoppable killing machine that every military organization would love to have. With their "UniSol" (UFC star Andrei "The Pit Bull" Arlovski), dubbed NGU, ready for action, the terrorists take control over Chernobyl, the infamous nuclear reactor that was the scene of a horrible accident years back, and threaten to use the reactor to unleash a horrible nuclear menace across Europe.
With such a massive crisis looming large, it stands to reason that there's only one man in the entire world capable of saving that day. Enter Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme), a UniSol who has been out of commission for God only knows how long. Now he's been turned back on and retrained so that he can go in and take out the terrorist UniSol and prevent a nuclear disaster. In order to do that, however, he's going to have to wage a one man war against a veritable army of bad guys, and two formidable UniSol's - that's right, two. On top of the new model that the terrorists have created, there's the formidable presence of Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren), Deveraux's archenemy from the first film in the series. He's been upgraded and reprogrammed and will in all likelihood give Deveraux the fight of his artificial life.
Sounds like a pretty good B-grade action film, right? And it is, but be aware going into this that despite their top billing Van Damme and Lundgren really only have supporting roles here. Most of the screen time goes to Arlovski, who does fine with the material and who lends a pretty intimidating screen presence to the picture that works in its favor, but hey, he's not Dolph, and he's not Jean-Claude. That said, John Hyams has done a pretty kick ass job of giving this franchise a well deserved shot in the arm. This third film is the real deal, a lean, mean movie that delivers plenty of action that compliments a genuinely interesting storyline instead of overshadowing it. By establishing a viable threat (don't think nuclear threats are a problem? Watch the news, punk!), one which continues to make international headlines thanks to the rather insane actions of the Iranian government, we're actually given a semi-topical movie that ranks up the tension and provides a really solid ninety minutes worth of entertainment.
Also impressive here are the action scenes themselves. While the film was shot digitally, the effects work are almost all done in camera. In a day and age where so many action films rely so heavily on so much CGI to take the place of stuntmen and pyrotechnics, Universal Soldier Regeneration is a refreshing throwback in that it feels like a movie and not like a video game.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Universal Soldier: Regeneration debuts on Blu-ray in a 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen 1080p AVC encoded presentation. Detail levels look reasonably strong, especially during facial close ups, but the colors aren't quite as eye popping as you might think as the film is pretty dark from a visual perspective. There aren't any noticeable problems with edge enhancement to complain about nor are there any problems with mpeg compression to note though some aliasing pops up now and again. The film was shot digitally so don't expect any print damage or grain, but do keep in mind that the look of the film is supposed to be on the grim side and that this transfer replicates that.
A DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track is provided in English and English SDH only. The action scenes in particular demonstrate some nice channel separation and the levels are nicely balanced here. Bass response is pretty strong and the score is spread out nicely across the entire playing field. Dialogue stays clean and clear throughout the movie and there are no problems with hiss or distortion to report. That said, the track doesn't have quite as much punch as other more recent action movies have had on Blu-ray. It's a fine mix and there aren't any problems with it, but in one or two scenes the bass response and gunshots don't quite kick as hard as you might want them to. This isn't a constant though, generally there's some good rumble here and lots of aggressive channel separation. Otherwise, there's some great surround activity here and everything sounds nice and well balanced.
First up is a really strong commentary track with director John Hyams and star Dolph Lundgren. The pair talk about following up the first two movies with this third chapter, what they were going for in terms of tone, how they tried not to use CGI and what it was like working with Van Damme and Ostrovsky. It's a jovial and interesting track that doesn't seem to take anything too seriously but which never ventures so far into in-joke territory that it alienates the listener. Generally, this is a really engaging and interesting discussion about the franchise and this latest entry in it, and it should be of interest to fans.
From there, check out a featurette called Behind The Lines (18:44). Van Damme and Lundgren each chime in here, as do a few of the fight choreographers and stunt men involved in the production as we get a fairly detailed look behind the scenes of the making of the movie. Rounding out the extras are trailers for a few other Sony releases (but no trailer for the feature itself, tsk tsk), menus and chapter stops. The disc is also Blu-ray Live enabled allowing you to go online and score more content if you so choose. All of the extras on this disc are in high definition.
Overall:
While the movie really should have given Van Damme and Lundgren more screen time, it's still a pretty entertaining mix of action and science fiction and a big step up from the second film in terms of pacing, storyline and just general overall quality. Sony's disc looks about as good as it probably should and sounds even better and throws a really compelling commentary and a strong making of feature into the mix, making this an easy recommendation for fans of the series or its principal cast members.