Sunday, August 16, 2009

Soldier (1998)

soldier This movie came on ion tonight and I gave it a watch for the first time since seeing it in theaters.  This movie stars Kurt Russell as SGT Todd.  Todd is the soldier of the title and was trained since birth, with several others, to be a super soldiers.  The movie opens with a montage of different training that the soldiers went through and also different battles that they had fought in. 
Flash forward and the soldiers are all well decorated and Todd stands out as the best of the best.  The soldiers are aging and their numbers diminishing from combat.  Just in time, a new crop of soldiers show up.  This new group are genetically modified perfect soldiers.  To test the new soldiers Todd is pitted up against Cain 607 (Jason Scott Leigh).  Cain beats Todd in every test and eventually dispatches him in hand to hand combat with two other older soldiers, just to make it fair. 
Todd is left for dead on a trash planet and is adopted by the locals.  For whatever reason the ship comes back a couple of weeks later and they decide to wipe out the population of the planet as training for the new soldiers.  Todd has gained affection for these people in the two weeks, and decides to protect them while wiping out the new batch of soldiers, killing the leaders of the program, and liberating the old obsolete soldiers. 
The movie isn’t half bad.  I like the concept of soldiers raised from birth and the message that a non brain washed soldier will be a superior soldier to one that is basically a robot.  If you know what you are fighting for, you are more likely to win.  The really awesome thing about this movie is all the nods it makes to other science fiction movies.  Check out the trivia on imdb for a rundown.

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