Noble private Luc Deveraux (an acceptable performance by Jean-Claude Van Damme) and demented sergeant Andrew Scott (robustly played with lip-smacking unhinged gusto by Dolph Lundgren) are a pair of soldiers who kill each other in the Vietnam war. Deveraux and Scott are subsequently transformed into genetically enhanced killing machines who are rigidly programmed to follow orders. However, complications ensue when both Deveraux and Scott regain their memories and pick up where they left off back in Vietnam.Director Roland Emmerich keeps the entertaining story hurtling along at a brisk pace, stages the exciting action set pieces with rip-roaring aplomb, and brings a refreshingly straightforward and unpretentious B-movie sensibility to the whole dynamic show. Better still, neither Emmerich nor the screenwriters Dean Devlin, Christopher Leitch, and Richard Rothstein take the pretty silly premise seriously; instead they treat the blithely trashy material with a pleasing sense of dark self-mocking humor and give Scott several choice one-liners to happily quip. Ally Walker injects her role as spunky and helpful reporter Veronica Roberts with a winning surplus of charm and energy. Moreover, there are solid supporting contributions from Ed O'Ross as the hard-nosed Colonel Perry, Jerry Orbach as the regretful Dr. Christopher Gregor, Leon Rippy as nerdy scientist Woodward, and Tico Wells as Woodward's sassy assistant Garth. Brawny hulks Ralf Moeller and Tommy 'Tiny' Lister portray two of the titular super soldiers. Christopher Franke's spirited score hits the stirring spot. Karl Walter Lindenlaub's slick widescreen cinematography provides an impressive polished look. A real blast.

Roland Emmerich turns out decent work when he starts with a decent idea. And this movie is based on an extremely cool idea: a secret government project to use the reanimated corpses of dead soldiers as 'UniSols'. They're like killer combat zombies equipped to receive commands remotely, impervious to pain, quick to heal, and pretty much unstoppable although they tend to overheat if they stay active for too long. There isn't a huge amount of action in the film, but in between scenes we get to see a lot of Lundgren's bad guy one-liners and attitude. Van Damme doesn't have many fights either until the end, when he goes up against the Lundgren character.This is a fun, violent movie, with both stars hamming it up, Van Damme the more stoic of the two. I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more marital arts in the film. Oh, there are a couple of kicks thrown but no real Karate fighting. Though Van Damme was well known for busting' moves by 1992, Dolph had only recently started illustrating his abilities in that department, particularly with the previous year's "Showdown in Little Tokyo", co-starring Brandon Lee. The action is not bad, otherwise, with plenty of stuff blowing' up and dudes being thrown through windows n' stuff. Overall, it has good action, a few cheesy moments but also a few memorable catch phrases (some of which I can't repeat here).Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

The plot is pretty unoriginal, but the existence of the plot in this particular film is really just an excuse for action, and the action in question is good enough to make this worth your time.If you looked at the poster and saw the names of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, you probably figured out that the acting would be pretty poor, and you were right. Van Damme tries his best, but he doesn't really have it in him. To be fair though, Luc Deveraux isn't a compellingly written character in the first place. Lundgren is OK when he's just an emotionless soldier, but pretty hammy once his character's true personality reemerges. Even though neither of them are very convincing actors, the opening of the film is actually quite dark and compelling. As previously stated, the action is quite good, with the best sequences being in the third act. The cinematography and production values are of high quality as well.

The story isn't all that original and is reminiscent of Terminator and many other movies, but who cares? It's Dolph vs. Jean-Claude Van Damme and it has one of my favourite fight scenes in the history of cinema. Dolph's bad guy death is the greatest of all time: "You're discharged Sarge".It marked the beginning of the ascent for the mighty Roland Emmerich/Dean Devlin combo, as they showed their love of B-grade science fiction (dead soldiers brought back to life to fight!) with an assured hand at both carnage and comedy. Van Damme shines as a lethal innocent, a side to his acting that really helped to set him apart from the ever invulnerable likes of Seagal and Schwarzenegger. There's a genuinely sweet sense of naivety to Luc Deveraux, marked with the existential tragedy of being a man out of his own time, which makes his plight even more compelling, especially knowing that he was killed for trying to do the right thing. I hold that it's the same quality that makes Jet Li so great in the likes of Unleashed, but it's a role that really helped to humanise and differentiate Van Damme from the crowd. I'd be remiss not to mention the mighty Lundgren, too, as deranged Andrew Scott (a man, it seems, who just won't stay dead), who fills the running time with endless quotes that I'm still partial to impersonating, from "Do you hear me?" to "It's empty!" It's Dolph's greatest performance, and the sheer mania, combined with his penchant for necklaces made of body parts, is just superb.