Only for VOD could they make a Jean-Claude Van Damme sequel this weird, violent, and brilliant
Film Features Recommends
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: We look back on highlights of the DTV action craze—some of the coolest, wildest, and most entertaining action movies to skip theaters entirely.
Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning (2012)
The chronology of Universal Soldier has gotten somewhat snarled since the franchise launched in 1992. The timeline was first complicated six years after the fact by the release of a pair of made-for-TV sequels sticking former Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Matt Battaglia in the central role previously occupied by Jean-Claude Van Damme. The Muscles From Brussels reprised his performance as killing machine Luc Deveraux in 1999 with Universal Soldier: The Return, righting the ship and erasing the events of the small-screen installments. One decade later, the sequel Regeneration retconned even further, overwriting The Return and positing itself as the real sequel. When Day Of Reckoning, the latest and greatest chapter in this epically convoluted saga, came to video on-demand services in 2012, warring factions of purists took it as the third, fourth, and sixth film in the canon. None of that matters.
Though director John Hyams was settling back into the director’s chair after having cleared the slate on Regeneration, he used Day Of Reckoning to start from scratch yet again. The film sidelines Deveraux, ceding lead status to the newly introduced John (Scott Adkins), who’s really just some guy. In an opening sequence shot entirely in first-person POV, we’re awoken as John, in the middle of a home invasion, and dragged into the living room to watch the intruders execute our family. The perpetrator unmasks himself and it’s none other than Deveraux, having gone rogue and turned terrorist for reasons that, like almost everything in this wondrous, baffling movie, go unexplained. Characters drift in and out of the narrative. The previous film’s baddie, Magnus (Andrei Arlovski), goes by The Plumber now. John’s murky backstory contradicts itself. Clones figure prominently. Don’t worry: None of that matters either.
Hyams works in tones and textures, forging some sadistic new surrealism from a mélange of oneiric atmosphere, mannered performance, Google Translate dialogue, and hysterical violence bursting forth in constant, pitiless torrents. The character of Deveraux takes on a Kurtzlike otherworldly quality, materializing at random, hallucinated by our man John during bouts of stroboscopic madness. Dolph Lundgren rejoins the cast as the deranged sergeant Andrew Scott, once a foe of Deveraux, now a partner in a plot to liberate the Universal Soldiers that’s secretly a plot to create more Universal Soldiers so that they… actually, nope, never mind, doesn’t matter. Hyams conjures a bestial ferocity from Lundgren, pushing his aura past macho and into the inhuman. A deafening drone score reinforces the lurching sensation that something foundational to the cinematic medium has been mutilated. The only way to render this any more intense would be to shoot in 3D, which Hyams wanted to but sadly couldn’t afford.
The film shakes off its default of dark wooziness in the expertly choreographed action sequences, so vivid and visceral that they verge on body horror. The savage, vicious, blood-crazed fights put veterans at the top of their field through their paces, every single blow aimed to kill. Limbs take on the structural sturdiness of carrot sticks; skulls, the integrity of mid-November jack-o-lanterns. It’s all a bracing testament to how much raw gore can be gotten away with under the lack of oversight afforded by low-budget DTV filmmaking—the rare instance of an artist truly taking a disinterested executive’s instruction to “just do whatever” to heart.
This odd specimen has already been championed as a difference-splitter between the dollar bin and the hardcore arthouse, earning comparison to Haneke and Lynch, “secret masterpiece” status from The Paris Review, and glowing write-ups from such legacy publications as The Atlantic and GQ. But it still has the sui generis volatility of an outsider object, a rabid feral panther that no amount of mainstream praise can tame. Watching it feels like finding it.
Availability: Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning is currentl streaming on Fubo, Roku, Showtime, and DirectTV. It can also be rented or purchased from Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, Microsoft, Fandango, and VUDU.
38 Comments
Look, I love this movie. It’s great. But it’s seriously like the tenth time I’ve read about it on AVC.
JCVD’s unofficial life chronicler, Seanbaby, captured the post-90’s/modern JCVD dichotomy perfectly:For years I’ve been using a JCVD movie rating system based around four main criteria: sassy female reporter, buns, a second Jean-Claude Van Damme and the splits. It’s measured on a Splits scale that goes from 0 percent Splits for “No” to 100 percent Splits for “Yes.” However, since Van Damme has become a grim and serious actor, this system doesn’t work. That’s why I’ve developed a modern JCVD rating system that uses four new criteria: moody soul searching, kickfighting, gunfighting and a lack of value of human life. This new system is measured by the length of Jean-Claude’s grim and unfakeable 1000-yard stare. His eyes have eaten things that would make yours puke.https://www.cracked.com/blog/return-of-the-jcvd/
I think Jean-Claude Van Johnson gets like 1000% on the classic JCVD ratings and that was made in 2016.
I’m not sure what the streaming services have, but the US Blu/DVD were the cut R-Rated version (why they cut a VOD/Direct to Video release to R is a head-scratcher). The Canadian release is Unrated
I’m assuming that f you are streaming it in America, you get the R-rated cut. As to your confusion, they cut it to get an R-rating for a tiny theatrical run that lasted 2 weeks in like a dozen theaters, and then bafflingly only released that version to DVD/blu. I deeply love this movie, so I actually ordered the dual language English/French blu from Canada to get the unrated version. Until I found that one I thought I was going to have to order the German blu and find an all region player. (and I still have two blu copies of the R-rated version to lend out to people cuz it was like $3 at Big Lots).
Always good to see you swing by dropping knowledge on the DtoV flicks, and action flicks in general. And yes, your Adkins Diet as well 🙂
Thanks! I really do want to get the Adkins Diet Podcast going again at some point, my wife and I’s schedules just have not permitted it. I’m still paying for my Soundcloud membership just to keep the existing episodes online, because even without me talking about it or making new episodes we still seem to get a few new listeners every month (we have 1000+ total listens now!).Also, on the unrated cut of Day of Reckoning: The R-rated version is probably one of the most violent R-rated movies I have ever seen, and the unrated cut pushes it even further to the point where it is disturbing and even numbing (which I think is the intention), up there in The Raid 2 and The Night Comes For Us territory.
Unrated, eh? What’s that all aboot then?
Damn ultra-violent Canadians. When will their blood lust finally be slaked?!
Whoa, hang on, this is news to this Canucklehead, but I’ve been burned on this shit before. So mine is on a set with four other movies, rated 18A, 114 minutes. I certainly didn’t feel like it lacked for sex or violence, and it looks like I got the unrated version.
https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=583749
Not sure about the multi-movie releases, but the standalone Canadian release with the Unrated version should have bilingual packaging:https://www.amazon.ca/Universal-Soldier-Reckoning-vengeance-Bilingual/dp/B00A0HT94G/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=universal+soldier+day+of+reckoning&qid=1595281456&refinements=p_n_binding_browse-bin%3A2618860011&rnid=2618854011&s=dvd&sprefix=universal+soldier+d&sr=1-1The amount of blood in the headshots at the beginning are the quickest tell.
Printing on the disc is bilingual too; all these discs look like they’re just leftovers from main, generally well-extra’d releases.
That trailer is amazing trash. I mean, it’s fucking great.“The cloning program is OUT OF CONTROL!”
Oh hell yes. For years I’ve recommended Day of Reckoning to anyone who would listen. It’s perfectly understandable that anyone would take one look and dismiss it as worthless DTV/VOD trash, which admittedly it is. But somehow it’s DTV/VOD trash raised to the level of art.
What would it look like if David Lynch directed a ferociously violent martial arts movie? Just like this. And what glorious violence it is. The mid-movie brawl in the sporting goods store might be the most thrilling scene of hand-to-hand combat I have ever seen. This movie is nuts, in the best possible way.
I was EXTREMELY stoned when I saw this, and brother, let me tell you: IT IS AN EXPERIENCE
This actually got a theatrical release here in Singapore.
Good call on the Lynch influence. I thought the Billy Ray Cyrus pool cleaner fight in “Mulholland Drive” was really well staged, and would not mind two full hours of that.
That was the best scene!
Yeah the sporting goods store fight is incredible. One of the best fights I’ve ever seen in Western film and TV. Up there with Dan fighting the Captain in Deadwood and a couple of fights from Banshee.
Hyam’s reinvention of the Universal Soldier franchise is as amazing and surprising (while still rooted in core elements) as James Cameron’s sequel Aliens. Where the original treats its theme of the dehumanization of soldiers for popcorn action thrills, Hyams turned US into a horror franchise not just about soldiers but about the primal violence in men. His UniSols are part Frankenstein’s Monsters, part zombie wolf pack, part every cinematic traumatized, rampaging veteran (only their PTSD is eternal). It also felt like there was a still a lot of territory to explore in further sequel. I could imagine an eventual Planet of Apes style takeover of the world, led by the reanimated soldiers of all our wars.
I deeply love Day of Reckoning and think its the superior movie over all, but I think Hyam’s best moment is in Regeneration. The brief, haunting monologue from Lundgren where you realize that over the course of being killed, resurrected, killed again, and cloned, there is nothing left of him except the desire to perpetuate the cycle of violence with Van Damme without even knowing why, simply because that’s what they do. It felt like it could be a commentary on both the nature of violence and action movie sequels in general.
Even though I recognized Lundgren’s speech as self referential, I hadn’t considered that it was a meta comment on the entire genre. But imo its precisely because both films horror/monster movie hybrids, rather than straight action films, that Hyams can both critique violence and revel in it.Scott Adkins has been occupying his quarantine time by creating a YouTube interview series on the art of action filmmaking. He’s interviewed most of his memorable opponents and just had a conversation with Gareth Evans, director of the Raid franchise. I’m praying Adkins gets Hyams to agree to talk about these films.
Oh man, despite being an Adkins-super fan I have fallen behind on his stuff since I stopped doing the Adkins Diet Podcast. I will have to check those youtube videos out, thanks for the heads up!
I remember the first time I saw this. I was super bored and paging through Netflix when I saw it. I was unaware of the previous flick, but I enjoyed the first one, so I queued it up. When JCVD glocked a 9 year-old in the first five minutes, I knew I was in new and dark territory for this series. Then John went outside and I started recognizing locations. Turned out this was a rare exception to the unspoken rule that good movies don’t get made in Baton Rouge.
“The only way to render this any more intense would be to shoot in 3D, which Hyams wanted to but sadly couldn’t afford.”So are you saying that the 3D release (which was how it played in the theater) was done in post-production? That seems unlikely for such a low-budget film. I’ve only seen it in 2D and the whole movie, with its thoroughly exaggerated wide-angle lens style camerawork looks like it was always intended for 3D.
From AVforums dot com
“Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning comes to UK Blu-ray in two packages – the standard Blu-ray which sports just the 2D version of the film (like the US release) and the Limited Edition Steelbook which, although it has gone largely unnoticed, actually sports both the 2D release and the original Theatrical 3D version of the film… Shot in 3D, this fourth official entry in the Universal Soldier franchise looks remarkably impressive.”
I am contractually obligated to post this gif on any article that mentions Jean-Claude Van Damme:Also, did you know that his full name is Jean-Claude Camille François van Varenberg? Well now you do, and you’ll make a ton of friends at the next party you attend with that trivia!
Jesus. I’d like to meet the stuntman who did that.
For real. Its not the scene in question, but this bit gives a look at what the stunts people went through on that movie:
I prefer the simplicity of this gif from HARD TARGET, a movie full of WTF moments, but there’s no doubt that the motorcycle-surfing gun-fu is peak JCVD and deserves more celebration.
Dang! Here I was hoping for an epic sequel to this:I am disappoint.
Haneke and Lynch? maybeNoé? very yestry to watch Unrated if you’re gonna watch it
I also came here to say that it felt more like Gaspar Noé than either of those two.
This film is practically the textbook definition of how to make a silk purse out of rejected hog ears. Almost everything that can make a movie disastrous is there — no money! a fourth/sixth/whatever installment of a worn-out and convoluted franchise! A star who clearly doesn’t really want to be there and is only going to do the bare minimum! A plot which is utter nonsense! — and not only is the end result good, it is absolutely glorious.
Don’t get Van Damned.
This is a series where, everyone who encounters it becomes something of an evangelist. Jon Hyams is really something, huh?
I saw this amazing mess at the Philadelphia Film Festival several years ago and was blown away by it’s bugf*ck awesomeness! I don’t know if it was actually filmed in 3D or converted after filming, but the unrated cut screened there was shown in 3D. It added nicely to the bizarreness. Loved it!
Watched this last night on your recommendation. It was 1) insane and 2) really good. Still thinking about it, would watch again.
Just watched for the first time – loved it. It doesn’t try to be deny it’s a VOD action DNA, but the director just went nuts creatively. I really enjoyed the avoidance of trying to explain the gonzo reality they are. And Scott Adkins using his accent to slip in and out undercuts the reality of everything. At first I thought he was just fucking up, but after his “clone” appears, it feels like an inspired bit of nuance.