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Heavens to murgatroid! The latest installment in the Rageaholic Movie Review series is longer
overdue than Charlie Sheen's alimony. More to the point, remember during our last
forway into the delphic expanse of '80s action machismo that is Commando, when I prefaced
the video in question by saying this: 'We've plowed headlong through the feckless
filmography of some of the greatest piles of steely-jawed musculature that personifies
the entirety of the 1980s: Stallone, Norris, Seagal, Thor, Ventura, Lundgren... and of
course the apotheosis of all things manly... Kristen Kreuk!'
Whoa! Hold the ***' phone, me ... we haven't tackled all the major action stars yet. Not
even almost. Where's Eastwood? Where's Jet Li? Where's Bronson? Where's Jackie Chan?
Chow Yun Phat? Vin Diesel! Jason Stath-- nah, I'm just yanking your crank. Jason Statham
will grow a full head of hair before I devote half a *** minute to covering that conglomeration
of cockney conceit. Alas! With an excess of virtues, my only recourse
is to consult, at last, the Wheel of Zeal: Sweet thinly-veiled Belgian accents, it's
Jean-Claude Van Damme! And if you're keen to forage in the remains of what's left of
this man's career, then amidst the rubble, you'd be remiss to fail to acknowledge 1992's
tour de forceful let-down that is Universal *** Soldier.
Van Damme? Check. Lundgren? HA-check. WCW's Zeus? Czechoslovakian Wolfdog!
***, even casting the mom from 'Kazaam' as the love interest can't begin to *** this
movie up! There's enough testosterone in a single cell of this film to spawn 15 Rachel
Maddows. But enough about Rachel Maddow's fully-formed
***. Set phasers... to Universal *** Soldier!
FINALLY! A film that sets the record straight about
Vietnam! It wasn't an asinine clusterfuck wherein a cabal of western capitalists attempted
to quell the plague of communist insurgence... it was about a bunch of steroidal, flagrantly
European actors... and Dolph Lundgren... badly masquerading as American soldiers, telling
a backwards-*** asian country how to live! If you've ever found yourself directly behind
a vietnamese woman in L.A. rush hour traffic, you can already relate. Dolph Lundgren's prescription
is a .44-caliber lobotomy. Van Damme's prescription is a slapfight in the rain. Instead, they
both opt to mirror their future career arcs by falling the *** dead on the *** spot.
The U.S. government - represented here by a gravel-gargling berét with the ethical
boundaries of a kavorkian child *** merchant - elects to put the vets on ice, bringing
the career arc analogue full circle when Lundgren and Van Damme emerge from cryo-stasis three
decades later in a vain attempt to *** matter... as ***' cyborgs. You see...
cyborgs were to the '90s what ninjas were to the 1980s. In fact, in most films, everything
after the word 'cyborg' was an abject superfluity. Why does a man's hair need blonde highlights?
Cyborgs! Why do lanky, suburban white kids need military
cargo pants? Cyborgs, bro! Why does Jay-Z have a career? ***'
cyborgs, man! Welcome to '90s logic.
The 'Universal Soldiers' - like the actors that play them - have been wiped of individuality,
rendered effectively mute and pumped with enough 'roids to drop Scott Steiner. Unleashed
on the Hoover Dam in glorious Arizona, home of Rob Halford, Alice Cooper, and the most
humble, unassuming adonis to ever grace modern game reviewing... and RazörFist... they effectively
purge every sentient life form in the Sonoran desert from the face of *** existence.
When confronted by reporters as to the identities of the mysterious, mechanized ***-machines,
they're treated to the following response: 'These men have families. And I refuse to
do anything that would endanger their lives.' Wow! There's that Walter Cronkite spirit!
Discontinue your entire line of questioning after being handed a stern 'Nunya bidness!'
But at least one journalist is doing the job she was fired from five *** minutes ago...
This woman has the biggest, heaving balls in this entire movie. And not just because
of Van Damme's steroid-induced testicular atrophy, either. She sneaks on to a top secret
government testing site, pops the lid on one of the beer coolers, and finds the only six
pack is attached humongous *** dude. Does she flee? Does she cower? Does she even bother
to crouch behind cover to avoid surveillance? *** and no. She brandishes her camera and
squeezes off enough shots to make Peter North lime-green with envy.
But one guy who needn't be envious... is Solid Snake, because this woman has the espionage
skills of a sherman tank. Of course, this immediately draws the ire of the Power Team,
who promptly disembark to rid the world of the peerless danger presented by a 95-pound
woman with a nikon. With stealthy discretion, they fling her car off a *** ramp so it
can inconspicuously capsize from 30 feet in the *** air!
So, wait... you sent three guys into a concrete megafortress to *** a well-armed and at
least sufficiently-trained militia... but for one loopy slag armed with a lipstick tube,
you unleash the entire Beef Brigade?! But when Dolph Lundgren blows the cinematographer's
head off his shoulders, Van Damme spontaneously decides to abscond with Margaret Whorke-White
in his Chevy Bronco... ...which, like the man's career, promptly
runs out of gas. That is until this *** happens: Sweet... Belgian Waffles! That car is officially
moving faster than this film's plot. After pulling into Pendulous ***, Arizona
and exchanging sweaty glances with the innkeeper, they rent a room, where Jean-Claude Van Damme
reverts to his natural state of nude. After collapsing from the heat, it emerges that
- in order to maintain his accellerated cybo-kinetic sci-fi *** metabolism - he needs to be
a walking ***' ice house. Lundgren and the Beef Brigade roll into town in what appears
to be the trailer from Jurassic Park: The Lost World, at which point Universal Soldier
remembers it's a ***' action movie. Will our gallant hero leap out the window?
Bound through the door? Crawl through an air vent?
Try 'bash through a wall like the Kool-Aid man on bath salts'. And again. And again.
At least until our Bulging Belgian finds himself face-to-face with his mortal enemy: Mortarwork!
And may I field a spontaneous question: When... in the history of anything... has the 'circle
the building and empty seven *** clips into it with no rhyme or *** reason' tactic
ever *** worked in an action film? They tried in on Stallone in Cobra. He wound up
murdering the entire state of California. They tried it on Arnold in Commando. He single-handedly
massacred every brown person in South America. What makes Dolph Lundgren think this is the
tactic to finally drop the guy who can kick a ***' building down?
So, naturally, they slip the 'net, and pop into the nearest shitheap, where Grate-a Van
Sustren finally brokers the query on absolutely everyone's mind:
'Where are you from, anyways? France or Canada? I figure you've got to be from out-of-town
because of your accent...' 'What accent?'
If it seems like Roland Emmerich just deliberately wrote a plot-hole into his *** movie and
draped it in a hot pink ***' bow... that's only because he *** did.
The two pull into a gas station attended by a sonoran inebriate, aaaaaaaaaaaaaand this
*** happens. 'They must have placed a tracking device on
me. Look for something unusual. Something hard.'
So, the thing about Van Damme is that if it's physically possible for the man to reach his
button-fly... he's already naked. Over the course of his filmography, this man has flashed
more *** than Shawn Michaels on a grand canyon Burro Ride. I'm dead *** serious. Right
now. At this very moment. Even as I speak these words and the miracle of broadband communications
beams them directly into your gradeschool, somewhere, somehow... Jean-Claude Van Damme
is nude. 'Stay in shape, don't you?'
It's a law of nature no less immutable than gravity. Next to unemployment, it's the closest
thing to his natural state. But enough about Van Damme's suspiciously well-shaven asscrack...
She yanks the tracker from his sphincter just in time for the Pectoral Posse to pull up
in their Turtle Van. With tactical acumen rivaled only by the Black Night from Monty
Python, they charge the empty building, triggering a gasoline trap that turns most of the ***
unit into Kingsford Briquettes in the process. With the coast now clearer than his ***'s
complexion, Van Damme hops into his car in a rapid attempt to-- Jiminy ***!
After the only backseat encounter that didn't end with Van Damme paying two decades of child
support, he slams on the breaks and puts Lundgren through a windshield that's at least half
as thick as his cranial ridge. Careful, Van Damme! He can jump over the ***' car! But
even though he's basically a Swedish Pachycephalosaurus, the impact evidently jostled something ***'
loose, because subsequent to the crash... this happens.
'GR-13! I said... it's OVER!' 'My name is Sergeant Andrew Scott!'
Back at the 5 and Downer, Van Damme is learning how to eat, but evidently, not how to ***
pay for it. 'That food is good.'
'***' A, it is! The question is... how are you going to pay for it?!'
Let's see... slovenly, borderline obese cook? Belgian kickboxer with buttocks toned enough
to crack wallnuts? Who the *** could possibly win this altercation?
If you think he's dangerous when he's unarmed, you should see him with a white flag.
A sentiment that Van Damme evidently shares, as he's bought Murphy Brown her very own Greyhound
ticket without so much as a complimentary dicking.
Oh, will she? Won't she? It's like Casablanca Van Damme's naked ***.
That is, until they're apprehended by a sea of mustaches.
Carted away in a prison bus, running a fever, and chained to their seats, things look decidedly
bleak for Bonnie and Claude, when suddenly... LUNDGREN!
Well, it's time to dust off the Rageaholic's Chase Scene Scale from 1 to Death Race, and
with a mid-air grenade-fight, a dead driver, mid-air flips, and t-bone collisions, this
chase scene is among the *** elite, but it doesn't ascend to the Death Racesphere
until it ends in a massive explosion at the base of the Grand - *** - CANYON!
THAT... is how you end a chase scene! With the bad guy splattered at the base of a chasm
as cavernous and vast as Colin Moriarty's ignorance.
Murphy Brown then promises to bring him home to parents who - like the modern movie going
audience - have assumed he was dead for the past thirty ***' years. But, as we all
know, you can't turn your back for 5 minutes without Lundgren kidnapping your folks and
jungling your girlfriend in a barn. 'Devereaux! Can you hear me? Get your ***
out here! We have some unfinished business, you and me!'
Van Damme obliges, and so begins some of the finest cinematic combat ever depicted in the
entire decade of the '90s. But like most Franco-Belgian conflicts, it's also one-sided. After being
handed his magnificent, powdered ***, it's time for Lundgren to truly cross the Rheinland.
'Run!' 'Run!'
With that, Van Damme does the one thing his home country never could: No, not inventing
Sephiroth's sole character trait! I'm talkin' about standing on his hind legs...
and beating some ***. Swedish ***. But still.
After a brief flurry of kickassery, the superior strength of his opponent has Van Damme on
the ropes again. That is until he Sam Fishers the super soldier smoothie out of Lundgren's
vest pocket... and takes the Ultimate Warrior road to fame and fortune.
Remember, children: The moral of the story is: 'Drugs are good and will help you win
fights!' Van Damme unleashes the most merciless act
of Belgian violence since King Leopold III nearly yanked his shoulder out of its socket
while hoisting that white flag in 1940. And-- Well *** ME, Dolph Lundgren can act his way
out of a barn! But let's be real, here. The moment you saw
the rusty spikes on that wood chipper, you - and all the residents of Fargo, North Dakota
- knew exactly how this *** was going to end.
'You're discharged! Sarge!' 'Are you okay?'
'I got better.' Riddled with shrapnel, and in all likelihood,
full-on concussed, they embrace, and presumably engage in a bloody, mud-encrusted ***-off
right there on the Louisiana swamp-floor. And the peasants *** rejoice!
I've probably uttered the words 'Van Damme' at least 12 billion and a half buttfucking
times by this point, but for the purposes of this review, I'll imbibe one last time:
Jean-Claude Van Damme... you are the *** man. Now get over your little *** match
with Steven Seagal, so we can finally see a proper Expendables movie. You can compliment
his hairplug ponytail... he can help you wax your ***... I give less than a *** how you
do it... but do it. I'm RazörFist.
God - *** - SPEED!