#80 – Soldier

All right movie chums.

Last Thursday night, Bill, Bill, Charlie, and I watched Soldier (1998). A movie that 22 year old Chris Johnson really enjoyed at the time of its release, and still enjoys to this day. Kurt Russell plays the lead hero and  probably says 50 words in the entire movie. But the little that he does say, to me it makes his words more poignant. You really get a sense of how he is feeling in that even though he was essentially bred to be who he was, it wasn’t that he ever had the choice.

So let’s begin with the…

Recap!

Soldier starts off with a bunch of military doctor types strolling through what I believe to be orphaned prom night babies. The doctors/mad scientist types are supposedly cherry picking what they believe could be the best of the baby specimens for their experimental soldier program. They train these babies from birth up until their teens or twenties to be…

Fearless – watch those dogs fight the boar, kid! Don’t look away!

Strong – you better keep up with the rest of the platoon on this 20 mile run kid because if you don’t, you’ll end up getting the long end of my pistol like that nameless kid back there did.

Smart – Complete the puzzle, kid.

Ruthless -that kid touched your puzzle? Fuck him up!!!

Calm – good job beating that kid to a pulp, now get back to your puzzle. And most of all –

Obedient – “Sir!” 

When they finally become grown ups and pass all their big boy tests, soldiers earn their names by having them tattooed on their faces Mike Tyson style. Our lead hero is finally named Todd, and Todd is the best of them all and becomes their Sergeant. Todd and his buddies are battle hardened vets who go through a variety of battles and wars and get these tattooed on them as well. I suppose as a sort of badge of honor. 

Well, after 15-20 years or so of battles and wars, Todd and his men are the best, having never lost a military campaign. But for some reason they are slated to be replaced by a new batch of soldiers. These newly created genetically altered Gremlins are much faster, stronger, better shooting, and can yell “SIR!!!” much louder than Todd and his boys. The leader of the new batch is Caine, played by Jason Scott Lee. Caine is the bomb and he can kick the shit out of these old non-genetics easily. So after several tests where the new batch of soldiers show their mettle, they have Caine fight Todd (and two others at the same time) because the guy in charge of Todd’s group played by Gary Busey!!! is tired of losing this dick measuring contest. Caine kills Todd and the two other soldiers but not before Todd gets in a nice eye tear on Caine essentially “ruining” him.

Gary Busey relents. His dick is small, and the new soldiers are vastly superior to his.

So dead Todd and his two dead comrades who lost to Caine are tossed out like yesterdays garbage (quite literally) on Planet “Trashcan”. The rest of Todd’s men are no longer considered soldiers and are relegated to all the bitch work. This is honestly the most unbelievable part to me of the entire movie for a variety of reasons, but in Soldier, that’s apparently the price you pay for genetic obsolescence in the year 2035! 

Plot twist! Of course Todd ain’t dead. He was just really, really knocked the fuck out after the fight. Check for a heartbeat? Ain’t nobody got time for that. So Todd wakes up on planet Trashcan and discovers he isn’t alone. Some people live on this planet (including a young Michael Chiklis with hair) and I don’t think it’s ever explained how these people got there, but they aren’t supposed to be there. I could speculate that they haven’t been on this planet very long, based upon their pretty sad state of housing (were they built by nine year olds?) but I digress.

Todd is less than enthusiastically welcomed into their trashy community and he starts out by becoming a minor league hero for saving Michael Chiklis the day after he arrives. Shortly after becoming the savior of Vic Mackey though, the community leaders decide Todd is dangerous because when Michael Chiklis tried to give him a tattered scarf to thank him for saving his life, Todd has PTSD rage and almost kills him. So they banish Todd and tell him to go live by himself. Todd does so, because Todd always obeys an order from his superiors. “Sir!” Todd, finally feeling that he is all used up, cries a little for the first time in his life apparently because the wetness coming from his eyes is shocking to him.

This is starting to get really long. So to speed things up – New Soldiers come to planet trashcan. They discover the inhabitants on the planet and are given a “Test” to take them out. They don’t know Todd is with the trash people. Todd goes to fight them all by his lonesome because “Soldiers deserve soldiers, sir.” Afraid for his odds of winning (and in turn their ultimate doom should he fail) Todd is asked what he intends to do? “I’m going kill them all, sir.”

Todd proceeds to do just that in a variety of awesome ways. After Todd kills all of the new batch of soldiers, one on one duels Caine and gets his Rocky II style victory, he stumbles across his “old” soldiers who were no longer considered “fit to carry a gun” or even salute, doing the bitch work for the new soldiers. They salute one another and they back him as the leader and they escape from planet trashcan on their newly stolen spaceship with all the inhabitants. 

Best line of the night came from Charlie – “the one battle he could never plan for, love”

This movie really didn’t do well at the box office or reviews which I quite honestly find very surprising because it’s really not that bad of a movie and for being a 90s action flick it delivers what is intended.

10% on Rotten Tomatoes, but 43% of the Audience liked it.

Budget:

 $60,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

 $6,447,237 (USA) (23 October 1998)

Gross:

 $14,567,883 (USA) (4 December 1998)

-Chris