Kurt Russell. Reportedly the last thing Walt Disney wrote down before he passed away. Why? I’ll… tell you in a minute. Soldier is a sci fi/military action film starring Kurt as a sergeant, trained from birth to me a military killing machine, who finds out he is now obsolete. The film is extremely interesting for two reasons: Kurt Russell, and a couple of nods to Blade Runner, placing the film in the same universe.
Soldier is a fairly common actioner, but Russell elevates the material to better than, as he often does. Could you imagine films like Escape from NY, Big Trouble in Little China, or The Thing without Russell’s presence? Abysmal. It started in 1969 when Disney hired Russell for a trilogy concerning the always-in-financial-trouble Medfield College.
In “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes” Russell plays the underachieving Dexter Riley, who gets zapped with all the knowledge in the school’s computer, wins the College Knowledge program, and saves the day with the prize money. In “Now You See Him, Now You Don’t” Dexter Riley accidentally invents invisibility spray, winning a grant and saving the day again. Rinse and repeat with “The Strongest Man in the World” where Dexter accidentally invents a strength formula, that accidentally gets dumped in a cereal. He saves the day with a payoff from the cereal company that sponsors him in a weightlifting competition after he wins.
Formula stuff, except that it’s Kurt Russell. He has been called the best actor that hasn’t won an academy award, and it’s true. Soldier feels like the Terminator or Robocop in it’s atmosphere and pacing, and maybe a little like Blade Runner. The nods I mentioned earlier are easy to miss. When Sergeant Todd is dropped on the garbage planet (he’s obsolete, remember?), we see a Spinner (Rick Deckard’s flying car) in the trash heap. We also see, in the digital readout of Sergeant Todd’s missions, conflicts referenced by Roy Batty in his final Blade Runner soliloquy.
Russell genuinely elevates the material, even though he only says 104 words in the whole film. His expressions are full of phlegmatic pragmatism, along with flashes of confusion, angst, realization and a smidge of compassion. He pulls it off just like he did in Backdraft, Tombstone (where he was again exceptional) and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 as Ego the Living Planet. I nearly missed Sean Pertwee in this film, even though he was listed in the credits. He's so young here. I didn't connect the dots that he and Alfred from the Gotham TV series were the same guy until much later. It was his first American film.
IMDB gives Soldier a 6.0/10. The Running Man (Schwarzenegger) got 6.6/10. Robocop got 7.6/10. Terminator got 8.1/10. Soldier is better than Running Man, and not quite Robocop. My son Luke says 7.0 is the threshold for good movies. I would agree. For Russell, for the Blade Runner Easter Eggs (when it wasn’t a thing) and for Luke, Soldier gets a 7.0/10.
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