Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning (2012) might be a sequel but it’s also a resetting. Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren are the game pieces but the board has changed (even Andrei Arlovski from the previous sequel is another refashioned game piece). After making an impressively gritty, muscular action film out of a DTV franchise sequel in Universal Soldier: Regeneration, director John Hyams returns to push things even further. With a slighter bigger budget, shooting in the United States rather than Bulgaria, and with martial artist/action star Scott Adkins in the lead, Day Of Reckoning is a highly visual mindfuck with elements of psychological horror. Clearly indebted to the aesthetics of Gaspar Noe, Nicolas Winding Refn, David Lynch and more, the film opens with POV subjectivity of Adkins waking up to find his wife and daughter executed by Van Damme’s Luc Deveraux – you might think, “Wait, is he a bad guy now?” With that lingering question in the audience’s minds, we follow Adkins as he puts together the pieces Bourne Identity style while experiencing flashbacks and dreams, and seizure-inducing strobe lighting. Deveraux is out there in an underground bunker with an army of UniSols – biologically enhanced soldiers who are freed from their mind-control by the US government. What follows is immersively stylish with its use of subjective cinematography, neon-enhanced lighting, and ultra violence in the fight choreography and action sequences. It’s a visceral experience that has some disturbing moments. Adkins has a Statham-esque intensity and is muscular and fast in the fighting scenes. Van Damme and Lundgren almost have extended cameos but each has impact; Lundgren in his gregarious personality and physicality, while Van Damme, sporting a bald look, comes off like Colonel Kurtz with a penchant for high kicks (the death’s head make-up at the end is very striking). While I think I might prefer Regeneration for having the weary Van Damme in the lead, this is the superior film in its slowly ratched intensity and Blade Runner levels of cinematically dissecting memory and identity as strong themes. Available to rent or buy on iTunes or Googleplay. Recommended.
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