Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Overlooked Movies: Soldier

This might be another of those movies that nobody likes but me.  As I recall, the reviews weren't good, but you put Kurt Russell in on a distant planet fighting genetically engineered soldiers, and I'm there.

Sgt. Todd 3465 (Russell) is quite a soldier himself, having been trained almost from birth to know nothing but military routine.  When the new genetically engineered troops come along, he's killed (they think) and dumped on a supposedly uninhabited garbage planet.  He's not dead, though, and he discovers survivors of a spaceship wreck living on the planet with no way of getting in touch with anyone and no hope of leaving. Todd has a tough time adjusting to their society and eventually is expelled because he's too dangerous.  For the first time, he experiences human emotions.

And, as I'm sure you guessed, it turns out that the people need him.  It's because the very group that "killed" him shows up.  Because nobody knows that the planet is inhabited, their commander decides to use the little colony as a training exercise.

Will Todd manage to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds and defeat the genetically engineered army?  I'm not telling.

The movie looks great, and Russell does a fine job of acting like the (almost) emotionless soldier.  He doesn't say much, but he fills the part perfectly.  There's lots of action.  Plus there's Gary Busey.  How can you go wrong?

9 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Wow I never even heard of it. I like Kurt Russell too.

Unknown said...

I liked this film but was not blown away by it, perhaps because I had fairly high expectations as it was a story taking place in the "Blade Runner" universe. I still recommend it to people, though I always give the caveat of it being "fun but dumb".

Jeff Meyerson said...

It has a 10% approval on Rotten Tomatoes and while it cost $60 million to make it only took in $15 million.

Somehow I missed it but if it came on cable I'd give it a try. Better Kurt had reprised Snake Plissken.

Jeff

Todd Mason said...

This one had a Very odd tv campaign.

Gerard said...

I liked the story concept of people born and bred to be soldiers and nothing else. It's a theme that was explored on the short lived TV show SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND. I listened to a STAR WARS novel a couple weeks ago that covered the same topic with Clone Troopers.

lastromantic49 said...

One of my favorites as well. Kurt Russell was perfect in it.

Texasreed said...

Good film. Not great, but entertaining genre trope handled fairly well. Showed up on Netflix streaming not too long ago.

TracyK said...

I never heard of this either, but I pretty much agree with your statement: "you put Kurt Russell in on a distant planet fighting genetically engineered soldiers, and I'm there." I did not know that he was in a recent movie called The Art of the Steal, and we hope to watch that soon too.

Unknown said...

I haven't seen The Art of the Steal, but I'm sure I will, eventually.