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Universal Soldier: The Return & Second in Command (Blu-ray)

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    Ian Jane
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  • Universal Soldier: The Return & Second in Command (Blu-ray)



    Released by: Mill Creek Entertainment
    Released on: May 14, 2013.
    Director: Mic Rodgers/Simon Fellows
    Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Kiana Tom, Bill Goldberg, Julie Cox, Alan McKenna
    Year: 1999/2006
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Movies:

    Two action films featuring JVCD on one double feature!

    Universal Soldier: The Return:

    A few years have passed since the events in the first Universal Soldier film came to an end. The story catches up with Luc Devereux (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who now works as government agency technical expert. Along with his lady partner Maggie (Kiana Tom), the pair have undergone rigorous combat training together to make sure that they're still at the top of their game, as they're the pair who are going to be responsible for tweaking the government's top secret UniSol program. The purpose of revamping the program? They want to make a more advanced breed of soldier - stronger, better, smarter, faster.

    The results of the program are evident immediately. The new breed of UniSol subjects are not only more physically advanced than those that came prior, but they're also connected to one another though a massive artificial intelligence network known as SETH (which stands for Self-Evolving Thought Helix). Unfortunately, the government has run out of funding for the project and needs to shut it down. When SETH learns of this development, it goes rogue and sends out all of the new Universal Soldiers to stop the shut down and kill anyone who gets in its way. The leader of the UniSols is Romeo (Bill Goldberg), a massive hulking man machine, who is seemingly impossible to stop. Only one man can stop SETH and his army before it's too late, and that's Luc, who is the only one who knows the code that can deactivate SETH and shut down the program. SETH has a few more tricks up his sleeve, however, when he teams up with a human computer hacker who goes by the name of Squid (Brent Hinkley). Squid allows SETH to take on a humanoid form (played by Michael Jai White) and head after Luc himself. Meanwhile, Luc has to deal with a nosey reporter named Erin Young (Heidi Schanz) who wants to 'get the scoop' and the overly ambitious General Radford (Daniel von Bargen) who wants to completely eliminate all of the UniSol's as soon as possible.

    What Luc doesn't count on, however, is how cunning SETH really is. When SETH kidnaps Luc's teenage daughter Hillary (Karis Paige Bryant), he leaves Luc no choice but to take him down once and for all.

    Directed by Mic Rogers and co-written by William Malone and John Fasano (the director of the immortally awesome Rock N Roll Nightmare), Universal Soldier: The Return takes the cool concept of the original 1992 Dean Devlin/Roland Emmerich film and milks it for all it's worth. The film is entertaining enough if you can get past all of the bad science and horrible computer logic required to suspend your disbelief, but it lacks the potency of the Van Damme-Lundgren team that made the first in the series so much ultra-violent fun. That said, Michael Jai White makes for a decent enough foe for Van Damme's Devereux, and Goldberg is pretty impressive in his role as the ultra-macho killing machine that is Romeo. Hinkley tends to overdo it a bit as Squid and the hacking scenes are completely ridiculous by today's standards, but the movie is what it is, an incredibly ridiculous follow up to an already ridiculous, albeit very fun, premise.

    The hand to hand combat scenes are handled well here, showing off some impressive fight choreography. The shoot outs lack the tension and excitement that they should have had to really successfully pull us in to the picture, and at times you'll feel like there's too much exposition and not action. A lot of the film is characters running around various labs avoiding conflict rather than reveling in it or embracing it. If the movie is going to go for a dumbed down script, as this one does, it should at least deliver some quality thrills, chills and spills at a good pace to make up for it and hold our attention and Universal Soldier: The Return doesn't quite get there. It has moments that impressive and the finale is fun but these moments don't add up to enough of a whole to really make for an essential watch and the picture is a mediocre effort because of it. It's well shot and hammy enough to make for an okay time killer, but little more than that and odds are pretty good that if you haven't seen the first film, you'll be left scratching your head a few times. There's little here to make this picture stand out and as such, you're not going to find yourself pining away for it time and again.

    Second In Command:

    The small Eastern European country of 'Moldavia' has recently seen some political unrest - a new prime minister has been elected by a landslide victory but there is still a faction out there that wants to take him down and gain control of the country for themselves. In order to do this, they place a sniper in such a position that when he opens fire on a crowd outside the palace, it looks like the prime minister's guards did the shooting. Of course, this makes things look really bad and a riot breaks out. Good thing for the prime minister then that an American Marine named Sam Keenan has just shown up at the American Embassy. He and a few of the Marines now under his control break the prime minister out of his office and bring him to the embassy where they hole up and try to figure out just what on Earth is going on.

    Once Keenan has the prime minister safely stashed away, he and his soldiers do a bit of investigating and find out that there's actually a militia group behind the planning of the riots and the murder of an innocent civilian. They've also taken a few hostages, including Keenan's girlfriend - an English reporter, to ensure that they Americans are willing to negotiate. Adding to that is the fact that this militia group has ties to the military and has called in a few favors and as such, are in process of having the embassy surrounded. Keenan and company have called in for reinforcements but Washington says it'll be a good six hours before they arrive, meaning that he and his dozen or so Marines are going to have to work together to fend off the advancing enemy and protect the prime minister from those who would see him dead.

    Sound kind of familiar in the plot department? It should, because Second In Command is very much like The Alamo except with Van Damme in the lead instead of John Wayne, and an Eastern European setting instead of a Texan one… and with more tanks and helicopters. You know what, though? Originality aside, it works and it works well. Second In Command starts off pretty quickly and it builds very nicely right up until the ending. It's predictable and we more or less know how it's going to finish but it is still a lot of fun getting there thanks to some very solid direction, strong action set pieces, and some genuinely cool screen presence courtesy of the Muscles from Brussels himself.

    Say what you will about Jean Claude, the man has made many a bad film, but age has been unusually kind to him in that now that he's a little older, he's got this sort of weathered look to him that works well in the roles he has recently been choosing. Check out Ringo Lam's In Hell or the more recent Wake Of Death for performances similar to the one he delivers here, that of the more world weary and down to earth hero rather than the untouchable kickboxer type he's handled in the past. These parts are definitely a step in the right direction for him, proving that, while he'll probably never be Orson Welles or Humphrey Bogart, the guy isn't a half bad actor when he gets parts that play to his strengths, such as the part he has in Second In Command.

    But how does the action stand up? Let's face it, that's the real reason anyone is going to be checking this one out, right? Well, thankfully the action scenes are strong. There's surprisingly little martial arts action here and most of the excitement comes from the gun play or from the well-built scenes of tension that occur before said gun play, but there are a couple of moments where JC snaps a few bones. Lots of shoot outs, sniper scenes, and explosions courtesy of air attack vehicles and hand held rocket launchers bring a whole lot of boom to the movie and there's certainly no shortage of onscreen violence and carnage. Thankfully, underneath all of that is a surprisingly good action thriller.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Both movies are presented in AVC encoded 1.85.1 widescreen in 1080p high definition and overall things look okay here. The transfer for Universal Soldier: The Return looks pretty much the same as the standalone release that came out through Sony back in 2009 - which is fine, as that was a good transfer that showed good detail and was free of any notable problems. The transfer for Second In Command, making it's Blu-ray debut with this release, is on par and it offers a nice upgrade over Sony's 2006 DVD release. Detail is stronger, skin looks more natural, texture is improved and color reproduction is more natural and maybe a little bit bolder - but the image is a bit on the noisy side, it's not quite as crisp looking or as sharp looking as the first feature. Some mild compression artifacts are noticeable on both movies.

    As far as the audio options go, English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mixes are supplied for each film. Universal Soldier: The Return also includes French and Spanish language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound tracks while Second In Command has an optional Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound track. Optional subtitles are provided for both movies in English, French and Spanish. As to the quality of the mixes, the action scenes in particular demonstrate some strong channel separation and the levels are nicely balanced here. Bass response is pretty strong and the scores are spread out nicely across the entire playing field in both movies. Dialogue stays clean and clear throughout the films and there are no problems with hiss or distortion to report. Overall, there is some great surround activity here and everything sounds as active, aggressive and well balanced as you'd hope.

    Outside of a basic menu offering movie selection, there are no extra features on this disc at all.

    The Final Word:

    If you're a Van Damme fan interested in making the upgrade to high def on these titles, you can't go wrong here. The quality is solid, the movies are entertaining enough (if far from classic JCVD material) and Mill Creek offers up this barebones disc at a more than reasonable price.
    Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
































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