Cheap Soldier (DVD) (Kurt Russell) (Paul W.S. Anderson) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Soldier

This is, on a very rewarding level, a tremendous action film. Russel's nemesis in the film, Sgt. Caine 607 (played by Jason Scott Lee) is an imposing presence, and the fight scenes between the two are excellent and convincing. The special effects and battle scenes are impressive as well, and really transport you to a harsh, bleak, metallic future.

On another level the film is about the discovery of emotion in the highly trained soldier as he tries to fit into a more normal society. Russel is simply outstanding in the roll, doing an incredible acting job. He speaks a total of about 20 words in the whole film, but his internal struggles are always clear and very moving.

This "learning human emotions" trick is one several science fiction films have attempted, and most are embarrassing and painful to watch, dripping with sugar and sap. "Soldier" excels in this department as Russel makes the shift from killing machine to feeling man in a subtle, believable way. The film is just very, very well done and well written. The acting is fine all the way around, and the dialogue is completely absent of those wince-producing moments films of this nature often have.

Over time, this has become one of my favorite movies. I have watched it several times with increased enjoyment each time. I have quoted dialogue from this movie on more than one occasion, particularly the moment when Sgt. Todd tries to express his feelings, and all he can verbalize is "fear . . . discipline."

This movie is carefully crafted, intelligent, and hugely entertaining from the opening credits onward.

Far better than you may have heard
Boy, I'm sure glad I watched this movie _before_ I found out I wasn't supposed to like it. I don't understand the disappointment; this is a well-made and satisfying movie.

I've said before that Kurt Russell is an extremely underrated actor, and he proves it again here. This is a demanding role.

Sgt. Todd is a genetically-engineered supersoldier, indoctrinated from birth as part of something called the 'Adam Project'. A seasoned combat veteran, Todd is a highly trained killing machine who has never known any other way of life.

Yet during the movie, we're supposed to gather that he's starting to feel some 'normal' human emotions and having trouble reconciling his past with his present. Somehow Todd has to put all this across to the audience with a bare minimum of dialogue and an absolutely flat-affect delivery -- rather like Arnold in the _Terminator_ films, with the difference that Todd is _not_ a cyborg or robot, but a human being with a deep inner life that he doesn't know how to express.

I don't know who could have played the part other than Russell. I can't think of another actor who could manage to convey so much with an expressionless face and _also_ be believable as a pumped-up supersoldier. (And Russell is seriously pumped up for this film.)

The story is well-crafted, too. Written by David Webb Peoples, one of the screenwriters on _Blade Runner_, this film is conceived as something of a sequel to that one and partakes of its darkness and moral ambiguity. But for all that, it zips along nicely under Paul Anderson's direction (despite some overuse of slo-mo).

Oh, there's some derivative stuff that we can charitably regard as 'homage' if we like. There's a very heavy nod toward _First Blood_ (and in general a strong evocation of the U.S.'s treatment of Vietnam veterans). And certainly this supersoldier thing has been done before (although _Universal Soldier_, _RoboCop_, and _The Six Million Dollar Man_ were cyborgs rather than genetically engineered Uebermenschen). That just means we're dealing with a very good B movie rather than something breathtakingly new.

Some viewers have suggested that Jason Scott Lee isn't very effectively used in this film. I disagree; I think he's downright fearsome in his single-minded lethality. (As you'll learn in the first few minutes of the film, he's one of a team of _super_-supersoldiers that are supposed to render Sgt. Todd and his guys obsolete.)

The SF backdrop is interesting and unforced although not terribly well fleshed out. All I can say without spoiling things is that there's a planet in the Arcadia sector that Earth is using as a junkyard, and that there's a human society living on it that nobody on Earth knows about.

The rest of the cast does well (including Michael Chiklis). Watch especially for a nice job by Gary Busey. You'll probably also like the Joel McNeely score, which doesn't break any new ground (and certainly doesn't hoist the film to the stratosphere as David Arnold's does _Stargate_) but nevertheless does its job adequately.

Oh -- and don't forget to be awed by the hauntingly gorgeous piece of music in Scene 11. It's 'Night Ride Across the Caucasus' by Loreena McKennitt and it's on her CD _The Book of Secrets_.

Stark and subtle tail
I loved this movie. This movie plot has been done before many, many times. Intimidating fighter is thrust into different culture and learns to value it and realizes what he has been missing all this time. What I liked about this movie is the programming the soldiers went through seemed realistic and very possible. I think most people that make movies with the same plot always make the mistake of have the main characters changing too much. This has always seemed unrealistic to me, and quite frankly a little insulting. This movie lets you see the changes in subtle little ways Kurt Russell acts. I would say subtle describes this whole movie. Instead of pounding points into the viewers face, it lets you make your own conclusions on how you would feel if you lived a similar life.