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Bad Dads Film Review
Midweek Mention... Universal Soldier
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This week on Bad Dads Film Review, Dan, Sidey and Cris revisit Universal Soldier, the 1992 sci-fi action thriller from Roland Emmerich starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren as Vietnam soldiers killed in action, frozen, revived and turned into government-controlled super-commandos. Naturally, nothing about that plan goes wrong apart from absolutely everything.
The episode opens with the realisation that the podcast has not covered nearly enough Van Damme, despite some hazy memories around Bloodsport, Kickboxer and the sacred word “Kumite”. From there the dads head into the film’s Vietnam prologue, where Luc Deveraux discovers that Dolph Lundgren’s Sergeant Andrew Scott has gone completely bananas, started collecting ears and decided that everyone is a traitor. Luc refuses to execute civilians, Scott kills one with a grenade, and the two men finish the scene by shooting and stabbing each other to death.
Twenty-five years later, both men are back as Universal Soldiers: refrigerated black-ops zombie-cyborg-commandos who need cooling down, daily injections and convenient memory suppression. Their first big showcase comes during a hostage crisis at a dam, where they are dropped from absurd height, swim, climb, snipe and punch their way through the terrorists while the military tries very hard to keep the press away from the weird dead-men-with-cameras situation.
Unfortunately for the programme, a freshly unemployed reporter sneaks into the operation, sees more than she should, and ends up on the run with Luc after Dolph’s Scott starts remembering Vietnam and immediately chooses murder. What follows is a wonderfully daft road-chase movie in which Luc removes a tracker, discovers nudity-based comedy, learns that food tastes good, orders nearly everything in a diner, drinks heroic amounts of Pepsi, beats up a chef for expecting payment and slowly becomes more human while the military and a rapidly unraveling Dolph hunt him down.
The dads also get into the supermarket/freezer sequence, Dolph’s speeches about traitors, the prison-van chase, grenades being thrown back through windows, Luc returning home to Louisiana, Dr Gregor’s extremely generous pseudoscience and the final barn fight in the rain. It is classic Van Damme business: spinning kicks, split kicks, slow motion, a syringe of Mega Juice and a massive agricultural machine waiting patiently to mince the villain at exactly the right moment.
There is room for plenty of action-movie nostalgia as well. Cris remembers the film as part of a shared VHS diet alongside Kickboxer, Bloodsport, Double Impact, Commando and Total Recall, including wonderfully flat Romanian dubbing. Dan talks about Van Damme and Dolph being near the peak of their powers, while Sidey admits he skipped the film back in the day because it looked like a poor man’s RoboCop, only to discover it is much more enjoyable than expected.
The verdict is positive. Universal Soldier may be silly, sweaty and scientifically indefensible, but it is also fast, funny, practical, quotable and powered by two properly iconic action bodies. Sidey lands on a strong recommend, with the caveat that he is not quite ready to go spelunking through all the lower-budget sequels.
We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at baddadsjsy@gmail.com or on our website baddadsfilm.com.
Until next time, we remain...
Bad Dads
We haven't done that many Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. Not as many as we should have done.
SPEAKER_00Considering how great of an actor he's.
SPEAKER_01Perhaps we should complete the full set.
SPEAKER_02Well, who knows, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean we did Bloodsport Boxer or Bloodsport? Bloodsport, was it? One with a Kumate. Kumate. Kum I think Bloodsport.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that might have been the only one the only other one we've done.
SPEAKER_02This is just such a legend, and we're obviously doing Universal Soldier this week.
SPEAKER_01My notes have this down genre-wise as a techno thriller.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sci-fi techno thriller. We're taking it back to 92 here. And it goes back even further than that with the beginning of the film.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_02There's a few flashbacks through the film, isn't there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a lot of flashing. Yeah, he's there's well, there's someone running through the jungle at the beginning.
SPEAKER_02That's right, there's some terrified.
SPEAKER_01Dead. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00There's just terrified man.
SPEAKER_01People are are scared and like just running away and being killed instantly. Apart from Jean Claude, who's just walking. Sort of holding it together, but is sort of when he's walking around discovering some bodies and they don't have ears attached.
SPEAKER_00I'm pretty sure at the beginning the guy says Lieutenant lost it, or the lieutenant lost it, or something like that. He's gone Colonel Kurtz. Yeah, but but you don't know exactly what happened, and then he finds the body.
SPEAKER_02They're running through what is effectively a garden centre. The budget, I wasn't buying plants, I wasn't getting full full on nonviolence. No, the the huts were were kind of put together in a lunch hour or so, but and then there was just like flames around to make it all seem a little chaotic and apocalyptic.
SPEAKER_01And there we see Dolph Lundgren who's looking at two via Well no, we see the ears getting sewn into a into a net into some sort of trophy necklace thing first. And then it it becomes clear that it's Dolph. Yeah. And he's got two other villagers captive, and he's gone completely bananas. Yeah. They're all traitors. Everyone's a traitor, it seems, he in his eyes. And he basically gives an order to Van Damme to execute these two.
SPEAKER_02They say they're they're innocent. This village has been kind of cleared and he won't have it. Van Damme says, No, they're all traitors, they're all kind of stabbing you in the back, and then he executes the guy there. He shoots them through the yeah, straight through the forehead. Van Dam then kind of kicks him and backs him with the butt of his his rifle.
SPEAKER_01They have a fight where he's basically knocks him down and then tries to run off with her. He s he slips and he shouts to her. Doesn't he? No, he should shoot him. Shoots him in the back of the leg, no? Sergeant Andrew Scott shoots him in the leg, and as he's down on the floor, he screams at her to run. And we just see the grenade. Scott just loves the grenade at her and it kills her. And he's no. So they have a f uh the final fight. And they turn around and shoot each other. Facts back, they faced each other.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. And and you think, God, that's that's the start of it. And I didn't remember this. I'd seen this film before. This is my first time. Oh really? Oh, I've seen it before. Don't worry about that. No, I'd I'd seen this before, but a long time ago, and I didn't remember this beginning bit. Anyway, we cut to present day. And the next time we see both these soldiers, they're being carted out of a military kind of unit, and we're in the future where they've made these cyborgs of Well no, it says present day.
SPEAKER_00There's no future, it just says present day. Yeah, well the future from you know some of the things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they've they've been on ice for Twenty years. Twenty odd years, yeah. Now they've got some sort of shit plastic borg-looking just a camera, really, and a microphone. And there was something to do with freezing blood. He had been shot by Long Dolph, and then at this while he'd been shot, he bayoneted Dolph and twisted the rifle, and they were both clearly dead. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And yet, no, they've been brought back. And we do hear that actually as they're clearing up the village and zipping up the back of both these We gotta go blah. Yeah, but he sa he says this didn't happen. You know, these guys are gonna be MIA mission missing in action, and that's why their their families never get told, and they're just kind of both in this program then, which is just using their bodies because they're obviously not gonna have any real human thoughts anymore. They're simply robots, and we think we think. Oh, so we think. I mean, what could go wrong? There's a situation on a dam. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it was Hoover Dam? I think it was the same dam.
SPEAKER_02No, it couldn't have been the same.
SPEAKER_00Was it? Yeah, it wasn't banded. Yeah, I guess it must have been Hoover Dam. Hoover Dam, it looks like it.
SPEAKER_01I've never been there myself, but you know I was wondering if it was going to be another inanimate object that's appeared in multiple. It must have appeared in multiple rooms. I was wondering if it was the same one from Goldeneye, but that's not. That's in the Yeah, it's somewhere else born. Yes, there's a load of dead people, and then we see another couple of people get executed hostages. Yeah. And some generic bad guys. Terrorists have got a shitload of people from the facility held captive, and they want their comrades to be released from some prison or other. But it's a great excuse to wheel out our new unisoles and see what they're made of. And they have got some pretty like slick moves. One of them, I think it might even be Van Damme, who goes climbs up the back of the Well no, the first things first, they drop them 1.4 miles uh.
SPEAKER_00They've got time time it, yeah. And uh the the guy's like, you drop them one point four miles and gonna swim in the that's swim, yeah. In and uh the guy's like, oh yeah, it took them four minutes. Four minutes like, oh yeah, they're they're four seconds too long or late. Yeah, something like that. You know they're behind screen. Crocodile doesn't swim that fast, but okay.
SPEAKER_02They do a bit of snipering, they do a bit of like close combat executing. The TV cameras have come, and one girl who's getting just uh just in the smoking, yeah. Loads of smoking in reference in this film. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um sponsors, but this is on this movie was sponsored by Big Cigarette and Pepsi, because there was a there was yeah, loads of it everywhere. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you well they she comes in and does her a piece to camera saying, you know, the terrorists are here. She gets fired at that point. Yeah, she gives it a big one, the guy's like, listen, fuck off. We don't need you. But I always do the great pieces. But so she's looking for a job as this situation comes to an end and they've successfully got the hostages back. And one guy got one guy got shot, didn't he? And then he wakes up again and just kind of.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, because there's three guys in the corridor, and there's one guy with a bomb in a suitcase, and then there's Van Damme and Bolt Mongro. So they draw off the two guys and the guy with the bomb, they the the enormous fucking soldier guy, I mean he's fucking huge. They shoot him like ten times and he's down, and he's got his little God yeah, like a camera, but in a in a trolley thing, yeah. And as they walk past him thinking he's dead, he comes back to life again and executes the one with the suitcase and they kill the other two, and you're like, fuck, so even when they can get shot and they can still they can still function, they can still go.
SPEAKER_02And it's a it's a perfect demonstration of the universal soldier, and they don't want to give anything away to the press, so they just kind of go through and say that there'll be a briefing later. Oh no, we need something now. No, sorry. So she We've got a rogue reporter now. We've got a rogue reporter looking for a story to get her job back, and she manages to chat to Ralph, is it, the assistant, the cameraman, and he's like, Oh, she goes, I've got an idea. Oh, I hate it when you say that, like it's gonna be the trouble you get me into. So they bust in. Gas, I think his name is. And they bust into the the plain, the secret kind of lair of the military base. And Well, we get to see what their maintenance required on a universal soldier.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because they're over a heat deep. They run high and they have a little wrist, like a maybe a Casio, little thermometer thing that tells them when they need to cool the fuck down. And they effectively, again, like the Borg, have to sort of plug themselves into a like a cryo chamber thing to reduce their temperature, and they get a daily injection for some reason through a really complicated.
SPEAKER_00Which you have to say, this is the first time when we meet the Universal Soldiers, and when Van Damme's character sees the Asians in the prisoners, has a flashback about the two prisoners that uh Lieutenant Scott shot. So he's got that and then he freezes. He looks at Scott as well. He looks at Scott, he and and Scott kind of looks at him, but he doesn't say anything, so it's see off F2, please respond.
SPEAKER_02You gotta respond.
SPEAKER_00There's already a little bit of tension because we don't know what happens. Yeah, they're gonna find it.
SPEAKER_02Are you sure that's safe?
SPEAKER_00The liquid semen. Yeah, we will just give him in the back of the head.
SPEAKER_02Back back of the neck, not the right.
SPEAKER_00That's like a daily memory wipe, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely nothing ethically wrong with And then that we get the reporter that sneaks in because she's not happy to just take photos from the distance. Obviously, her and her skirt, her short mini skirt, has to go in and she sees the Universal Soldier that got shot put on ice in a box outside of the And saying, Oh, no casualties, huh?
SPEAKER_02Because they've denied there's any casualties. And then he sort of gets up, she can see his wounds are healing, and uh he opens his eyes. At this point, all chaos, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00They've recognized that she's there, she's taking photos, get her, and then we get the chase where she runs with the cameraman.
SPEAKER_02And they get about Yeah, they get about, I don't know, 200 metres before his bad driving puts him in a room. Put them in a bush, yeah. They were never gonna get out of there at all. It was just crazy. And Universal Soldier then just guns down the the the camera.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, Dolph Lundgren just decides to execute the cameraman.
SPEAKER_01Just He seems like it didn't take much for him to go rogue.
SPEAKER_02No, no, he was he there was some wiring short in the first place, I think.
SPEAKER_00And Van Damme then grabs the gal and they There's the flashback again with the girl that was a prisoner. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And they head off and suddenly it's a a road movie. It's a chase movie, yeah. Yeah, they're they're on the run and they get away, and there's various scenes of them just narrowly escaping as Dolph goes more.
SPEAKER_00Pushes the car control. Yeah. He pushes the car. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01My favourite scene, I think, is the diner where he Well in the in the bathroom, in the restrooms. Well, just when he he's eating and then Oh right.
SPEAKER_00But when he's naked, then he's like, Oh, that was good on there.
SPEAKER_01So it's first, it's in the motel, isn't it? Where they where they first get caught and he's just stood in the Well it's a gas station.
SPEAKER_02He's got it at the gas station. Where does he get his ass out?
SPEAKER_01That's at the motel.
SPEAKER_02That's later, yeah. Yeah, so a gas station is hide the car around the back to, you know, take it off the road as they're looking for him, and he knows that they've probably got a a location device in him, and he strips down, doesn't he? And asks her to he says, Should that be there? Look for something hard, you know, a little bit innuendo there, and she finds like he cuts it out of his leg and gets her to pull out this big kind of black snakey track tracking device tracking device. And then they've spobo-trapped the the guy's business, the gas attendant.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. They hide the in the in the booths of the car covered in bags.
SPEAKER_02You never see that guy again. He the you know the guy who's off and they never see him again. They just goes up with the uh the rest of the the building, but when they go in there, Universal Soldiers who have tracked him and found their the the tracking device, they go in shooting, and it just sets off a load of booy traps and everything blows up, doesn't it? At this point, Dolph is seeing all these burnt char bodies and everything around, and he ends up going full rogue and shoots the the captain, doesn't he? The head of the the actual human guy, the head of the and the programme. The programme, yeah. And there's just a couple of scientists in in their kind of mobile scientific lab that that's in a truck that they're driving along. So now it becomes all about Dolph and he's just hunting them down, as you say, he goes into a a diner.
SPEAKER_01Where it's like a bear that's about to go hibernating, he ha he can just eat forever.
SPEAKER_02He just can't understand. Like he orders everything.
SPEAKER_00It feels like he's it looks like he's never had food. Yeah. Because the the the woman, the reporter, she's like, Oh, I need to make these phone calls because they steal all the paperwork with all the information, which is vital because we're gonna go to Dr. Gregor.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00And they sit in the diner and she orders the two specials, not really interested in the food. Yeah. And obviously he has a Pepsi. Yeah. And then a lot more Pepsi. There's like 20 cans of Pepsi. And then he just kind of starts eating and he realizes the taste of food. And mind you, this is just an on the side of the road American diner. Yeah, I don't think this is a it's a it's not a gastro pub. This is not yeah, this is not exactly.
SPEAKER_01And it's not until like the 20th plate of food where the waitress says, Have you got enough money to pay for all this? And he just looks at her like, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_02What? Yeah, like money's just a concept. Hank, get out of here, Hank, the huge kind of shit.
SPEAKER_01And I'm thinking, you can tell he's fucking jacked, right? He's there in a tank top.
SPEAKER_00Tank top, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Also, I was thinking, like, how is this like that guy has been cooking all the food, everybody else having a nice meal, and he you're gonna come out going, oh well done for beating everybody up? And like, he just all he wanted was getting paid for his work, like, you know, and and having the food. But no, he anybody or any of the customers that think no, that you're right, that that is out of order. I'm gonna come and you know, we you can't get away with that. He beats them up as well. He just goes absolutely.
SPEAKER_01He beats covered them up twice, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but Dolph at this stage, Dolph goes into a supermarket. Is this a little bit later on when he's he's taken over and he's there's one of them's just having chunks of meat? The steak, yeah. He's brought in a couple of his buddies and and taken them to the the cool them down to get some more universal soldiers regenerating their skin and everything. And and Dolph is actually in this scene, I think he's brilliant. He just goes around sort of owning the the the floor space and doing it a speech to the people and the soldiers and um cause more traitors, there's a group of people just watching just stunned looking at him and he's writing a grid of one guy, isn't he? He's going, it's like just say something.
SPEAKER_01He's holding him upside down when he cuts back to him. Yeah. He takes his belt.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, he likes your belt. Okay. And yeah, he's he's slowly getting his kind of you know, but he eventually first.
SPEAKER_01He catches up with him, doesn't he? Yeah. He gets some big fucking like 18-wheeler truck. Van Damme and her, I can't remember what they were driving. Oh no, they're they've been in caught, they're in a uh back of a sort of a correctional officer.
SPEAKER_02And there's a police escort with them because they've been captured and put in this Which was the a good scene when they were catching, because she was about to get on the bus, and we all knew she wasn't gonna get on the bus.
SPEAKER_01He's trying to fuck her off, right? It's not safe for you, you need to go.
SPEAKER_02He's after me, you go, and the bus pulls away, and she's still there at the bus stop, and he looks at her and she looks at him and goes, and then behind her there's like the entire police squad of about yeah, 30 states or something, all pointing their guns in cars and everything at him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so they get they get put handcuffed and put on this prison van, basically. On a long dusty road for the room, and then Vanf come fucking hoofing it down the road, a bit like Terminator terminate to go with the uh with the T 1000s in that big ring. And he's just fucking ramming things out of the way until he actually does them a solid and rams their wagot. Yeah, throwing grenades in there So Dolph Van Damme's trying to get through to the driver or do something, and she's chucking the grenades back out just in the nick of time. They're blowing up just as she's chucking them out of the window. And it culminates effectively with well, John Claude just like hoofs her out the window when they're doing about fucking 60 mile an hour. I'm thinking she'd probably be dead. We're gonna jump together.
SPEAKER_02We're gonna jump together to push each other up.
SPEAKER_01I mean then we're doing a fair look. And then I think he jumps out just in time, and that and Dov's wagon go over a sort of cliff.
SPEAKER_02And everything explodes into a thousand pieces, and you think, oh my god, it's over.
SPEAKER_01It is over, but there's still a bit of time scare. But probably only enough time for the happy ending of her taking John Claude back. His name's Luke, what's her funny name is Luke Devereux. Yeah. And he takes Luke's Luke, I'm gonna take you back back home. To Louisiana. Um which is gonna be a real headphone for his parents because he has an age.
SPEAKER_02And he remember he can't remember lots of things, but he remembers where he lives and and they find it after day four or something on the run, isn't it? Because it comes up with those time stamps every now and again.
SPEAKER_01It's supposed to be significant to us somehow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01All this is happening at incredible speed. And well we have we have also have we not met him yet, the the doctor who's behind.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they they did have a uh a confrontation where they do go to see the doctor that created the program. He comes up with some sort of pseudoscience about and he just says that oh yeah, we discovered a way to pr to regenerate tissue and we realise that if you put this serum in, we we can preserve the bodies and the mind or whatever.
SPEAKER_02It reminded me a little bit of you know, twins when Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito go to the doctors there to find what happened to them. It was like just finding that doctor who's turns around and remembers Frank Luke and remembers, you know, the the traumas and everything, and as you say, gives away some some pseudoscience about how it has all happened. But mum instantly recognises him, gives him a few.
SPEAKER_01Um I don't know what you were thinking, but I thought that their gaff was a little bit reminiscent of the Vietnamese village where it all went and fucking peeped on. You know, yeah, they might have the barnyard sort of vibe.
SPEAKER_02It's a really nice tale. Dolph is is dead, he's back at home. But wait, what's this? We never saw a dead body. No, Sergeant Andrew Scott is a universal soldier and he doesn't give up that easy. He has voided himself up even more with the muscle serum to enhance the power. To enhance his power. So now he is like a the ultimate universal soldier, and he has found where Luke lives as well.
SPEAKER_01She's she's in the car about to fuck off, isn't she? That's right. And he's he grabs her and takes her hostage. Yeah. And we we're almost surely you if you know it was mentor as his, you would just execute her straight away.
SPEAKER_02And it really gets mum, yeah, mum and dad and dad as well, so they're all in there and it comes to the big fight in the barn.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02In the rain. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01He foolishly has an extra syringe of mega juice. Yeah. Or MAGA juice. Yeah, which he's going to, in the midst of the fight, lose that and Mr. Devereaux is going to inject him to the first. Yeah. He holds it up the empty syringe, like fuck you dickhead. And then he's a big thing.
SPEAKER_02And it kicks in straight away, takes no time at all to stuff. Yeah. It's it's like those those Lucas Aid tablets and things that you get, you know, for the glucose energy, they just straight away. Guess your first fast. Guess your first fast. And then we go on for this big you know, the it's typical Jean-Claude Van Damme stuff, there's spinning kicks, there's loads of spinning kicks. There's the split kicks where he's kicking to the head, and you know, you get to see him in perfect form, this slow-mo. There's this really spiky kind of machine, you know that's gonna be at some point the the garden machinery. Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, what what do they call that? It's um combine sort of combined harvester, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00It sort of spins and it's got spikes on it as well.
SPEAKER_02It spins and then it spits it all out. So the wood chipper, yeah. The wood chipper sort kind of element to it as well. And after a big fight in which she almost in the same as at the beginning is running away.
SPEAKER_01It's a carbon copy, yeah. The grenade, you lobs the grenade and you think no Van Damme's let you on the floor, exactly the same pose, exactly the same.
SPEAKER_02You're like history repeating itself.
SPEAKER_01Not this time in no way.
SPEAKER_02But it looks it looks pretty bad, and if it s served any purpose, it it meant that our hero just goes extra, extra tough and kicks. Even though he has kicked every you know, he's possibly killed a gas attendant and he's also He killed half a town and then the town. But no To be blamed because it's it's all part of the government programme that he never consented to be in. And he ends up on the Combine Harvester getting wood chips.
SPEAKER_01Well no, because they first of all, because they it's another like fake ending where he's impaled on the spikes. Yeah. And they're like, yes, fucking get in there, we killed him. And he he's there close enough that Dorsey able to grab him and he's like trying to pull his head down onto one of the spikes and he's trying to push him away. And they just switch on the combine. But they don't show you like him get mangled particularly.
SPEAKER_02But they do see. In not that many one-liners, there's a few. One of the best ones right at the end there when she goes, Where is he? And he goes, He's around. Because he's obviously been just spat everywhere. And he goes to his mum and he goes, Don't worry about us, son. We'll we're okay in talking about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely no PTSD. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02They're absolutely fine. No question about where the fuck your son's been for 25 years. Yeah. They've got to answer all these questions later. I had questions. Yeah, and and that's pretty much it. It's at the end of the day. That is it now, finally.
SPEAKER_01So it's a it's a government sort of black op well it's not it's not official government, is it? It's some sort of black ops Yeah completely off the books thing. But how could it ever be legit? Because they would you know, if you was the oh well we'll send in the the Unisoles, they'd be like that guy's been dead for like fucking ten years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well that's why they keep the press and everyone away, no? It's gotta come out at some point. Especially when they get mental like this.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah, well that's that's why these programmes never and to be honest, the people that were really pushing for it, they ended up dead as well, didn't they? The scientists.
SPEAKER_01I think everyone did the main doctor the the guy that they find did he die?
SPEAKER_02Everyone. Everyone they all die.
SPEAKER_01Only Dr. Gregor died. Oh, so he did make it.
SPEAKER_02So he was the one that was brought into you know, bringing people back and we realise if you freeze the blood and heat it up and something like that, then we can you know stabilize.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but Dolph does show up at his gaff as well when when they're there, no. Does he not kill him there? I'm pretty sure he does. He would have done. He killed everyone. Yeah, he killed everyone. I'm pretty sure he does.
SPEAKER_02This to be fair to Dolph, I think is one of his better films in in the sense that he has a few scenes and he, you know, he has a few run liners.
SPEAKER_00I'm all ears when he's got his big ear necklace. It's not only that, com considering that Van Damme has about twelve words spoken in the whole film. Yeah. Because obviously he he's at the beginning when he speaks, he speaks a bit more, but the rest of the time he just has one word or he just stands there because he's effectively robot sort of kind of hybrid, yeah. So he's not really saying much. Dolph Langren has the speeches and says a lot more, and he's like, Oh, it's this this is Lieutenant Scott's time now, you're all traitors, blah blah blah. So he he does speak a lot more and is more acting than just being half robot.
SPEAKER_02And they have to address the accent as well. She she says at one point, where are you from? Are you Canadian? Canadian France or something like that. And we're not. He's Luke Devereux, so he's got a L U C'est nothing. His mom is French.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're French, yeah, because they they speak French when he gets there, he's like there. Louisiana, that used to be the last stronghold of the French now. Oh, there we go.
SPEAKER_02History lesson too. Was it uh a sweet return to this movie? You know what, Chris?
SPEAKER_00I I used to have this on VHS. I just literally this was amazing. Every Van Damme film. Back home, these were the films Kickboxer, yeah, Blood Sport, this one, Commando with Schwarzenegger, Double Impact, Double Impact, Total Recall. These ones were the ones that we would have. There would be in our little community in the building where we lived, everyone had one or two of these VHS to share. And we would just share them around, and honestly, we would have them every other every four days. It would be like, Should we watch the Van Damme ones? Yeah. Should we watch the So this would be Random Butt stuff, isn't it? You know, if you're and it was duffed in Romanian by this lady and all the words were go to hell. Yeah. But she would say it in a go to hell. There wouldn't be any any d any change of the tone. She would translate like she would be reading us, you know, w without any without her almost watching the film, right?
SPEAKER_01Supposedly Van Damme and Dorf hated each other, but then they later on said that that was all just kind of like Well they had a a play fight, like a publicity on on on the red carpet, they pushed each other and everything.
SPEAKER_02And it just got attention, but they did say later, yeah, it was just for publicity. It was just for publicity. Right. But they played it out as as two enemies. Two enemies, that's why. Yeah, I you know, the you know what you're getting into when you're going to these nineties action films, and there's there's a lot of it's very easy to to like poke fun at them and and do the things, but for me, Dolph and Van Dam here probably peak of their powers, the the pair of them, yeah, and the the fight scenes and things are uh are pretty good. There's no you know, it's practical effects when they're running down the the dam there, that is people that are kind of running down. You know, so things like that hold up a little bit better.
SPEAKER_00Budget was twenty-three million. It would have been big then, yeah. What do we think? Yeah, that didn't make money.
SPEAKER_02I think it would have made money. Well, it would have made money.
SPEAKER_00And plus there was the the guy from Friday, the big black guy from Friday, the that's that plays tiny in in Friday. Have you ever seen Friday?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think so, yeah.
SPEAKER_00He's the big, the big boy, and the other, the gigantic universal soldier. He was in Conan, he was in The Gladiator, he was in Lowe's, he's another one that's kind of so there's there's a few of these action kind of actors. I reckon it made money. This is this was a cult classic.
SPEAKER_01Dude, 120 mil.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, made some spondooleys. I d I think I sort of deliberately stayed away from it at the time because it seemed like a kind of shit road. Action trash someone dies, bring him back as some, you know, replace cop with soldier. But I was also I also like Van Dam, so I should have just watched it because it was good fun. Enjoyed it. Oh yeah. Like out and out, just Van Dam Kung Fu movies. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Your blood split spawn is still, you know, kickboxing. Kickboxing. Kickboxing. Kickboxing is the one.
SPEAKER_01Kickbox is the one with his brother. He's like trying to reven Avengers.
SPEAKER_00When they do the and and he's dancing drunk in Thailand. Oh, it's amazing. Honestly, he did a uh was it.
SPEAKER_01You see his ass in that one, yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, when he does the split, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think Foreign Legion was one he did as well. French Foreign Legion.
SPEAKER_00But that's a bit later. Right. That was already he was already a bit later. That these ones are the the peak.
SPEAKER_02Well, I I I started to have a look around at some of his best moments on on YouTube, and one of the things that came up was a little spat he had with Stephen Sigal about who would be there. And they these two really didn't like each other very much. Did anyone like Segal?
SPEAKER_00Sensei, well you can't argue with Sensei.
SPEAKER_02Seagal really fancied himself as still does? And yeah, I think he's in Russia now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he just does bits in North Korea as well, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_02I think he's completely loony. He's he's gone well off the the charts. Whereas when Van Damme was interviewed, he'd always stay on the fence and be quite polite. He'd say, Oh, you know, I wouldn't want to say I think it, you know, we'll ask the audience, you know, if who's gonna be be best, whereas Sigal would just be laughing at, you know, there it's just such disrespect from him. He really does fancy himself big time. So definitely out of the action heroes uh the 90s, Van Damme. He is up there. He he's yeah, 120 million. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's big bucks.
SPEAKER_00Did you enjoy this? Your first time? I did enjoy it, yeah.
SPEAKER_01There's a load of sequels, which I don't think I'm gonna go down that road. Yeah, there's quite a few.
SPEAKER_00Three or four, yeah, yeah. Because there's like the reckoning day, there's all all these, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I don't enjoy it enough to want to go down the lower budget, sort of trashier ones, but this for me is a strong recommend. Oh, yeah. Go for it. Yeah.