Luc Devreux and Andrew Scott are US soldiers who kill each other in Vietnam when Devreux interferes with Scott's slaughter of a friendly village. Listed as MIA, they are actually flash-frozen and shipped to a top-secret facility where a team of scientists led by Colonel Perry turn the two, along with other select specimens, into super-soldiers known as "UniSols." While helping foil a terrorist takeover of the giant McKinley Dam, Devreux starts having flashbacks to his former life, and makes a break from his colleagues. The increasingly human Devreux teams up with TV reporter Veronica Roberts, while they are chased across much of the Midwest by Scott, and also by Perry and the police, who capture them long enough for Scott to find them. After a chase, thinking that they killed Scott in a truck crash, Veronica takes Devreux home to his parents in Louisiana, only to have Scott catch up with them for a brutal confrontation. Private Luc Deveraux and his sadistic sergeant, Andrew Scott, got killed in Vietnam. The army uses their bodies for a secret project - reanimating dead soldiers as deadly obedient cyborgs. However, their memories come back too. "Universal Soldier" has the same impact and atmosphere as an army recruitment commercial. It's purely an army-based flick, only to add the same elements that could be found in George Lucas' subconscious! Van Damme and Lundgren play rival 'Nam vets that die during the war, only to be resurrected as cyborgs by the U.S. government. Later, their emotions left over by their previous lives come back to screw with their main frames. Van Damme runs off with a reporter, while Lundgren tracks them down. That's where the fun starts.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Van Damme is as athletic as ever, and still struggling with his English up to then! But I think Dolph is the one with the powerhouse performance here, again playing a villain just like in "Rocky 4." He's the one with the one-liners and acting style, while Van Damme gets crappy lines like the title I used for this summary and all he ever does is punch, kick, and headbutt! I feel extremely bad for Jean Claude, and I gotta give Dolph real credit!!<br/><br/><br/><br/>** 1/2 out of ***** It's quite underrated here and in general movie opinion. It's got all the excellent action requirements; off-your-seat fast-paced scenes, some blood, some humor and good screen-play. As far as the acting is; well it is quite poor. Van Damme is in it, so what do you expect? Besides that, Its got quite an intelligent script behind all the cameras, and they executed right in the movie. The average Van Damme fan will like this movie, as we get to again see his full-filled material arts and some of his un-funny, funny humor: if that makes any sense. In general it's an underrated action classic that began to set-foot in Van Damme's acting career. It's the kind of movie that crumbles into trash – non-recyclable – if you spend more than 10 minutes thinking about it. It's designed for dumb fun, and delivers some. [10 July 1992, p.D3]
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