Too much of everything

Powerful

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Soldier is vastly underrated. It's actually a great movie. I think it may be misunderstood because it is more like an old Western than a modern dystopian SF tale. It conveys the idea that genetically bred soldiers of the future still have something human in them, which can be awakened by the love of community. It certainly portrays the military industrial complex as evil and seeks to inject a sense of humanity into what it means to be a soldier. It could be seen as a morality tale in support of today's soldiers who are increasingly expected to act like robots in hi-tech wars. It juxtaposes the utopian self-supporting family community with the dehumanizing corporate-military machine -- which is unfortunately what many future conflicts may look like. As in a Western of old, the hero is the underdog fighting for the community against overwhelming odds. A one man Seven Samurai. I found it quite moving. The acting, story, sets, music -- all masterful. It's a mystery to me why it did poorly in the boxoffice. I hope Soldier 2 is made with the same cast set 20 years later!

Paul Anderson likes to mix his genres. Mortal Kombat was fantasy-kungfu film. Event Horizon was scifi-horror. And now with SOLDIER he has western-sc fi.Soldier (1998) really did understand all the right things about combining science fiction and the western genre.Soldier was written by Blade Runner co-writer David Webb Peoples and, by extension, was done so, not as a sequel per se, but as separate story set amidst the cannon of Blade Runner's future as a distant Off-world exploits. Kurt Russell i a professional fighter trained from birth to be nothing other than an efficient killing machine.In the movie's grim opening scenes, we watch the education of Russell's character, Todd, who is nurtured in an incubator at a special hospital devoted to producing lethal warriors. As a boy, Todd learns to watch with unblinking calm while attack dogs tear apart a man.He is indifferent when a classmate, lagging behind in a long-distance race, is deemed useless and casually executed by an instructor. By age 21, Todd's face has frozen into an expressionless glare. His name and number are tattooed on one cheek and a bicep is inscribed with his war record.Like most science-fiction movies, "Soldier," directed by Paul Anderson from a script by David Webb Peoples.The drama begins when Todd, in his 40s and battle-scarred but still one of the toughest men alive, suddenly finds his generation of soldier about to be replaced by a new genetically enhanced model. The best thing in Soldier is the acting of Kurt Russel. In the film, Sgt. Todd only as about 100 spoken words, 11 of them are "Yes Sir." This means that Mr. Russel, had to develop Todd through body language and actions, and lesser actor would have been unable to pull it off. The talents of Mr. Russel really shine though when Todd interacts with the colonists on Arcadia 234.Kurt Russel, the man who forged Snake Plissken, one of the greatest characters in Sci-fi, worked so hard to make Todd-3465 believable. British director Paul W. S. Anderson has made and surprisingly maintained a career of helming B-movie entertainment with A-list studio backing.Soldier at its absolute best -- when action, story and character harmonize.

Here's another movie that was marketed to the wrong audience and therefore died at the box office. I found Soldier to be a profound meditation on violence and beauty. Kurt Russell delivers yet another exemplary-but-unclaimed performance. His Sgt. Todd is an Everyman who does his duty, no questions, and is tossed out with the rest of the garbage when the next new thing comes along. From that point, Russell's facial expressions combine with the sensuous camera-work of the cinematographer to provoke the questions: Do I deserve love, beauty, and community? and: When, if ever, is violence necessary? This is a flick I'd recommend to the content guardians who are knee-jerk haters of violence. Soldier uses violence appropriately, intelligently. It is a film for grown-ups. Then again, censors rarely get that point. Bottom line: When you watch this film, you have to watch everything that is going on. It's not just another action flick.Highly recommendation for a 90's and action sci-fi lovers! My ratings: 8 out of 10.

Oh Paul W.S. Anderson, you always bring me such disappointment and you always give me a deep rage inside of me in your films that feel unfinished in a strange way. Now he makes a film with Kurt Russell and Gary Busey and still mangers to f'ck it up but still directing today. Why I may ask?.The story is about are main character Todd who is an engineered military fighting machine, but after being left for dead on a remote planet he starts a new life. He must fight his very replacements to save his newly found friends. In every Paul W.S. Anderson movie that he direct's it always looks like it has a good budget to it like: The Resident Evil film series, Mortal Kombat, Death Race and now this film, and just like some of his other films it always has the same results; a wasted opportunity of being good. I know Paul W.S. Anderson can be a good director, I found Alien Vs Predator to be my biggest guilty pleasure of all time and Mortal Kombat wasn't all that bad, so I know he can be good, but Soldier isn't one of them. The best way to possibly describe this nonsense of a film is be saying something like this: Imagine you got all you're army action figures and you're small plastic gun figures together and simply set them on fire and throw them down the stairs and watch them go all over the place making has much noise as possible, then close your eyes and think to yourself "God that was annoying and stupid", yeah that's this movie, that's this freaking movie!.Let's start off with the good: Kurt Russell dose the best of what his got and that's saying a lot because of the blandness of his character. The action scenes are pretty well done if I must say and Gary Busey once again brings such a goofy performance but his so enjoyable to watch with the little screen time he got.Now for the bad and these a lot: The movie is just bombarding with dull scenes and cardboard character's that the end of the day is a waste of time watching. Todd the main character of the film barely speaks a word through the film, yes he dose say a couple of lines but for most part his dead silent. Main character's barely not saying anything can be a big risk in movies but some films pulled it off really well like the movie Drive and it was all down to good writing, but this doesn't have good writing and the silent hero thing completely did not work at all and made the character less interesting to watch. The writing was pretty poor, the other character's I didn't really care about at all and I doubt that Kurt Russell has ever had less dialogue to work anywhere. Overall this movie sucks and to the people who are defending this movie I got this to say to them, "Don't even try it".