“They’re too stupid to bring back to life.”

Justin’s rating: Plod, plod, plod your film down the street

Justin’s review: Part of the attraction of plowing through the entire Universal Soldier series is that this franchise took some strange twists and turns over the years. The original 1992 film was a solid $120 million success, but oddly enough, Hollywood didn’t jump on a sequel right away. Rather, Carolco eventually sold the rights to Canadian studio Skyvision in the mid-90s. Skyvision then quickly churned out two made-for-TV sequels for Showtime that were sort of intended to be pilots for a potential series (which never happened, obviously).

In Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms, all of our favorite characters — they ARE your favorites, aren’t they? — from the first movie are back, only recast with cheaper Canadian equivalents. JCVD’s Luc Deveraux is now played by Matt Battaglia, a former linebacker; Lundgren’s Andrew Scott (who ended up shredded to pieces at the end of the first movie) is now handled by Andrew Jackson of my favorite 1988 summer flick State Park, and Chandra West (Puppet Master 4 and 5) slipped into the shoes of reporter Veronica Roberts. Also, Gary Busey and Burt Reynolds are here because someone told them that there was a free craft services buffet.

For what it’s worth, Universal Soldier II does pick right up from the ending of the first movie — including recreating the final fight with the new actors. So now I’ve seen a guy chipped up in a combine twice this week, which is all sorts of healthy for my brain.

Monotonous zombie soldier Luc and his weirdly attached girlfriend Veronica are still on the lam as the government tries to track them down with a new team “recruited” (lethally) by Gary Busey. I mean, when you need some dead soldiers to reanimate, it only makes sense to gun down a few new ones instead of, say, going to a morgue or cemetery or something!

Luc is remote-controlled back to the UniSol complex and reintegrated into their ranks. Roberts follows and infiltrates the compound to discover that Luc’s brother Eric is on ice waiting for his own resurrection*. One shot of zombie juice and a rescue later, and Veronica gets her own private zombie army going.

There’s also this subplot where Luc embarks on the dumbest quest to learn what it is to be more human all while being more wooden than the Trojan Horse. He kisses, he chews gum, he plays with a teddy bear, and none of it is compelling.

You can tell that this was a TV movie, mostly for all of the out-of-nowhere licensed song montages that give the actors time to preen and walk in slow-motion. You can also tell because there’s precious little action in this action movie. That’s the biggest party foul, because it doesn’t leave us with much to watch. Actors slowly walking through sets? More montages? Techies holding meetings in their super-truck? A pool game? Burt Reynolds lurking in the shadows as the mastermind behind the program?

Yawn.

It’s not like the first movie was wall-to-wall fights, but there were at least a few decent set pieces to keep us entertained. This sequel hopes that you’re far more interested in the whole “conspiracy” angle. Are you? I thought not.

Josh warned me that this would be a disappointing slog to endure, and he was right. If I was a kid in the ’90s who was a huge fan of the first film, then maybe, maybe I would’ve eagerly eaten this up. But now we’ve got plenty of choices, even within this series, and I can say with first-hand experience that this would be nobody’s pick, ever.

*Now I get the subtitle! So very clever there, writers.

Josh’s review: Robocop, Highlander, and The Beastmaster all have something in common, which is that they spawned a continuation via television series or miniseries. It appears that Universal Soldier was on the same track in 1998. I think it speaks to the quality of this sequel and the next, which were filmed at the same time, that a series never happened. That is a damn shame. In the hands of a more creative team with more talent and money, we could have been treated to a great science fiction series.

Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms picks up immediately after the first movie. Actually, it picks up about five minutes before the last movie ends. I’m assuming they either didn’t have the rights to use footage from the original or they didn’t trust the audience to make the jump to new actors for all the characters. Here, they treat us to an Unsolved Mysteries dramatization of the final fight between Luc Devreaux, now played by ex-football player Matt Battaglia, and Adam Scott, played by Andrew Jackson.

The UniSol project is being managed by a shadow group run by The Mentor, who is either The Deputy Director of the CIA or just using the office. The Mentor gives his orders to his second-in-command Otto Mazur. These characters are played by Burt Reynolds and Gary Busey, which leads me to ask: How many drug habits did this movie help to support? Otto helps lead the group into reacquiring Devreaux, who conveniently has a second tracker in the other leg. Reporter Veronica Roberts, now played by Chandra West, enacts a rescue mission and discovers Luc’s brother Eric in suspended cryo-freeze. They escape and are again chased by the Universal Soldiers and their puppet masters.

You can tell right away this movie is on the low side, budget wise (just over $5 million). The credits are cheap, and the quality of just about everything from sets to costumes to music is just public access rough. Touching on the music, it’s all over the place. There are several moments when the movie turns into an alt-rock music video. These moments completely took me out of the story, though I admit the tether was very much frayed from jump. When there isn’t an Alanis Morissette knock-off playing, there are presets on a ’90s Casio keyboard guiding the story. The music cues are often coupled with slow-motion shots. In my estimation, half of the movie is in slow motion, including 100% of the fight scenes. Slow-mo is not the way to make fight sequences more kinetic.

Matt Battaglia and his perpetual selfie duck lips is a few steps down from Jean Claude Van Damme, but Chandra West is a step up from Ally Walker, in my opinion. This Veronica is a scrappy go-getter who actually has something to do in this movie. She is the only reason Luc isn’t blasting innocent people in a war-torn country. Throughout the film, she is coming up with plans, shadowing kidnappers, breaking into secret military installations, etc. Another person who (somehow) shines is Jeff Wincott, who plays Eric. He is infinitely more charismatic than Battaglia, and I wish he was the main character. Unfortunately, Gary Busey literally adds nothing to this movie other than a name on the box. The most I got from him is a couple chuckles.

Going into this, I assumed this was going to be an action movie. I was wrong. There are few action scenes and those do nothing more than put on display the lack of fighting skill the actors possess. Sadly, this addition to the Universal Soldier universe offers nothing new or fun for fans of the original and does nothing to add to the lore of the world in which it is set.

Intermission!

• There is a Rifftrax version of this movie, which might be the only legitimate reason to see it.
• The ending of the first movie… recreated with this movie’s actors! Think anybody will notice?
• Everyone slow-mo moving, zoom cuts, and weird pop music songs
• Gary Busey likes to gun people down
• Zombie kisses are weird
• This series REALLY likes showing people naked man butts
• A nationwide manhunt for reporter who allegedly killed a single guy?
• “Cool! Are you a rap singer?”
• “Must-see TV heh heh.”
• The body parts freezer — with another montage pop song!
• William Stryker, nice X-Men reference
• Don’t tell a Vietnam soldier that we lost the war but “won a few since then”
• “Take your pants off” didn’t she remove the tracking chip in the last film?
• Doing a news report on car thieves back in the day means that you can now carjack RVs from hippies
• Also, this RV is the most conspicuous vehicle to steal and drive around
• “You should change. You look like a GI Joe from hell.”
• A you-know-that-guy appearance with Julian Richings as the guitar player. Richings shows up in bit parts all over the place in movies such as Cube, Mimic, and Wrong Turn
• So many marriage puns
• You can’t resurrect a guy with a knock-knock joke
• Wait, wasn’t his parents house in Louisiana? Why are we tracking him in Wyoming?
• “Kill the girl, save the hardware.”
• Buns Count: 3 Scenes