SPOILER!Anthony Smith3 said:Concentrating on following the plot and where it's headed... concentrating on grasping the big picture.
I honestly don't see much to grasp here. Everything is pretty straightforward from start to finish. You have the cause at the beginning and the consequence for the rest of the movie.
Because beneath this exterior—this revenge story (which isn't even the main theme)—lies a different story altogether.
I can't agree with that. It revolves entirely around revenge. It's fictional, sure, but it's about what a person is willing to do when the one thing that matters to them is taken away.
It’s just all handled a bit clumsily; I’d even go as far as saying it was poorly put together.
If you went into this expecting something like the first or second film—just a straightforward, simple-minded action flick with endless action scenes stacked one after another—then you went in with the wrong assumptions, and I get why you're disappointed...
I expected a movie that actually made sense. To me, this movie makes zero sense.
The only fact is that you have Akri, Van Damme, Lundgren (and for some reason, Aralovski again). Actually, you really just have Akri; JCVD and Lundgren are basically just there for show because they represent the brand, and without them, the franchise doesn't exist. As for Aralovski... I didn't get why he was even in it. Maybe he thought he was filming a new 300 🤣
But this is a completely different approach to the concept of the soldiers, designed more as a sci-fi (noir) thriller with elements of horror and action, focusing more on storytelling rather than pure action.
There's nothing "sci-fi" about it. There isn't even an "S" or an "F" in it. Just a few vague hints.
I think someone who hasn't seen any of the previous films wouldn't understand a single thing. Everything important to the plot is just briefly mentioned by side characters as if they're explaining it to someone who missed everything. "Noir"? In my opinion, there isn't even an "N."
And yes, as I mentioned in my comment, this sequel doesn't share much with the original... but then again, no official sequel shares much with the original since all these movies differ in style, look, and their take on the theme.
And again, the writer (who also directed, John Hyams) clearly wanted to—and succeeded in—completely distance himself from the well-known concept from the first film (the third one ignores the second, The Revenant, right?) to make something totally different, exploring other motives like the God complex or creating modern-day "Frankensteins."
To felt like some half-baked indie project in the vein of Uwe Boll’s work—you know, those movies based on big video game titles that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual games except for the name on the box. 🤷
The third installment already established its own narrative rules, and this one just takes them in a completely different direction. That whole program from the original where they used reanimated corpses? It’s dead. From what I can tell, that program was shut down after the first movie, but it found new life through cloning instead, which is what they touched on in >.
The third movie actually handled things somewhat logically. It kept the focus on the Unisol project, which feels totally missing here.
In this case, the soldiers are basically the Government's cloned killing machines under total control. The movie explores what happens when they break free and gain self-awareness. You get those > vibes too... > starts questioning if he’s a real guy with a family or just a replicant with implanted memories. He eventually finds the answer, though... well, actually, he figures it out even earlier than that... but anyway...
He doesn't really "question" anything. Honestly, he's clueless because his memory is full of holes. All he has is an implanted memory of killing his wife and kid, nothing more. Until he runs into a previous clone, he doesn't realize what's happening, and even then, he's still just driven by that fake memory of revenge. Even during the "lobotomy" phase, those memories take over and he breaks control again, simply because he has to finish his revenge and kill anyone in his way. To me, there's no depth here; it's just style over substance.
Plus, right at the end before that guy spills brains all over the combo, he tells him directly: "you were designed with selfish motivations, loyalty to the family, not country," whereas the previous clone wasn't built that way.
So, they basically created him with the
goal of finding whoever killed his family (Luke Deveraux) and taking him out, which he does. Then he realizes he didn't even kill the right person because the memories weren't real. Whoever planted those memories also killed the memories themselves—which was the only thing he actually had.
Maybe I'm missing some deeper layer and you're right, but personally, I think it could have been much, much better.
All in all, it's a slow movie—slower than I expected—but damn, it's interesting IMO...
I agree it's interesting, but unfortunately, I think they dropped the ball on the execution.
Slow, indescribably so, but the last thirty minutes actually shine.