aidancramsay Honestly, it's pretty astonishing that this movie exists; it's the sort of project that could only have been brought into being via complete studio indifference to a franchise that probably should have died almost two decades ago. It's almost comically brutal, frequently surreal, and far, far more pretentious and high-minded than a movie called Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning has any right being. It's an art-horror movie hiding underneath the skin of action trash, and thinking of all the meathead bros who got tricked into watching what can best be described as what would happen if Gaspar Noe remade Apocalypse Now warms the cockles of my withered heart.Maybe I'm overselling this. Universial Soldier: Day of Reckoning isn't quite as deep or clever as it thinks it is, but it WORKS. It's hypnotic and frequently mesmerizing in spite of its flaws, and the action scenes contain some of the best fight choreography you'll see in a modern American action movie. It's not a great movie, but it's damn good, and worth watching if just for what a gutsy move it was to make a late-in- the-game DTV sequel to a trashy movie no one really cares about as genuinely affecting and ambitious as this.

Maziun *SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERSThis movie is a very fresh take on an old action/sci-fi franchise. The tone of this movie is completely different from previous movies. It feels like an horror/thriller movie now. There are references to video games and "Apocalypse now". Scott Adkins is a main hero now , while Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren basically play 5 minute episodes now. Fans of Jean and Dolph will probably be disappointed. Adkins tries to find out who and why murdered his family. The story starts intriguing , but the more the movie moves forward the plot becomes confusing . Why is Van Damme working with Lundgren ? They were enemies before , so what changed ? And Lundgren died in earlier movie ,so why he is alive now ? Is he a clone ? What's the government part in all of this ? What's with all the clones ? What was the point of the hallucinations ?None of this is answered and the final result is one big mess. I like to figure out things on my own , but the writers should really give the audience more information. Otherwise the movie feels like a badly connected set of twists. Also the characters are completely bland and uninteresting.Director John Hyams provides the movie with some great action scenes. He knows how to create suspense and excitement. I would love to see him make a big budget action movie. The R-rating is used fully and wisely. Too bad that most of the action happens only in second half of the movie. Also , the movie sometimes drags during dialogues.Overall , it's quite entertaining in places and ambitious movie , but the bad screenplay drags it down. I give it 3/10.

pcdoctor-1 I agree with the previous reviewer...The fighting scenes were so lame, like if they were made by ghetto men, the story is very unclear and controversial, the bloody massacre scenes were more of a horror movie.What a disappointment for us, Scott Adkins fans...This is the worst action movie I have ever seen, out of hundreds, I mean it! The whole emotion one gets from the movie is deep depression.This government blah-blah propaganda is too much and too old for now, you can see it in many movies...The first movie had a reason, had something to interest a lot of people, and this one? Ruins everything ! ! ! It is not even worthy of writing about it...

TdSmth5 A guy named John (Scoot Adkins) sees three guys invade his home. They grab his wife and daughter and kill them right in front of him and beat him up. He ends up in a hospital in a coma. When he wakes up he keeps having flashbacks of the killings. The killer is Van Damme. A FBI agent visits him and offers to help find the killer.When John leaves the hospital with no recollection of the past, he listens to a phone recording at home. A friend of him was in trouble and called him. John goes to the apartment and finds his friend dead and beaten to a pulp. He finds matches from a strip joint. He goes to the strip joint where a stripper recognizes him but so do the bouncers who kick him out. He meets up with the girl who tells him about a bit about his past, that he beat up some guy at the docks. He goes to the docks and talks to the boss who tells him he has some type of container that was to be shipped.Meanwhile the FBI agent orders to activate "the plumber". And the plumber (Arlovski) stops plumbing and leaves. He goes to a whorehouse and kills everyone. Apparently he is after Lundgren who injects him with something and talks to him about being free. The next time we see Arlovski he is after John and the girl. But something ticks in John's brain and he defeats the plumber in a brutal fight. John too got injected at some point. We see Lundgren later in a cave giving a speech to a bunch of soldiers about freedom. They are part of some cult and the leader is Van Damme.Next, John and the girl go to a cottage somewhere in the swamps and meet up with someone who will tell him more of what is going on. Now John goes to the cave where a dr. grabs him and drills his brain, not before giving an explanation about what really happened to his family. But John escapes and finally he goes after the killer of his family.Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning has a convoluted story and it doesn't go well about explaining it. It's not a bad story but clearly they tried to keep the audience in the dark and reveal things little by little. Unfortunately it takes too long, and this is a long movie at almost two hours. Two hours that are mostly devoid of dialogue.I really enjoyed the previous entry in the Universal Soldier series and was looking forward to this one, but it turned out to be a letdown unfortunately. US-Day of Reckoning had tremendous potential- a fantastic cast, great locations in Louisiana, a somewhat interesting story that deviates a bit from what we are used to in the series. It has truly fantastic fight scenes, is brutal and gory- even in the censored version. However, what ought to be highlights- fights between Adkins and Lundgren and Adkins and Van Damme turned out to be disappointments as well. It is never clear who the bad guys are, given that everybody is talking about freedom and giving the soldiers free will. The movie is however pretty unique and different. It's trippy and well filmed. But the shortcomings are too evident to overlook- even though Adkins is great, this may not be the role for him and we're not given enough reason to like or care for John. And you're always waiting for Lundgren to show up and cause mayhem or for Van Damme to kick butt- and in both cases it just doesn't happen.I think we can let Day of Reckoning be the experimental entry in the franchise, most of them do have one that where they try to do something fresh and different; here though it didn't work all that well. I hope thought that the next movie will be a return to form.