"Luc Devereux, I am Your Father", 6 April 2013
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
I only knew Scott Adkins as "weApon XI/Deadpool" from "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and even then he was supposed to be a guy who was originally played by Ryan Reynolds.
But here, he is not just a stunt actor, he's the main guy. But wait, he also IS the stunt double.
All I can say, is this guy ROCKS. Took me a while to get used to him being the actual main character, but he's got some real good moves.
I've been a fan of "Jean-Luc Picard Van Dam" for a long time. In this story which vaguely ties in to the plot devices of other Unisol movies, Devereux has become a kind of Priest. And just as an excuse to have Dolph Lundgren in the film, in this one, Andrew Scott and Luc Devereux are both on the same "side" so to speak. Andrew Scott is still the same guy even though he was chopped into tiny chunks, sautéed and pureed in the first Universal Soldier, and given an unimaginable headache in "Regeneration" via a pipe though his head (where he finally remembers what he was trying to remember).
Well now we know - As many times as these guys get killed, they'll keep coming back, because they keep getting re-made.
This is something that was left out of the original Unisol movie but still viable and hinted at slightly in the 2nd and 3rd ones.
But we go into this not knowing any of that. Adkins has a wife and daughter, who are killed, apparently by Luc Devereux. Adkins (His character's name is "John") is beaten savagely by a guy with a Tire-Iron and Devereux shoots his wife and daughter. But we are thinking, why would Devereux take off his hood? So from the start we smell fish, are they trying to set up Devereux?
It would seem so, but not in the way we thought. Adkins is released from a Hospital where he had allegedly spent 9 months in a coma. All he has are his memories of Wife and Daughter, and image of Luc in his head. An FBI agent shows John a picture of Devereux and there is talk of Insurgencies. But the FBI guy makes a phone call and this sets a crazy Russian Plumber guy after John.
As John tries to find out what is going on, his world becomes shattered, apparently he had a whole other life than the one he remembered, he was a truck driver, and frequented a Strip club. A guy he "knew" calls him and says "I've got the stuff" and so when Adkins goes there we see the guy pulverized to death. He goes to the Strip Club and tries to talk to a girl whose name was written down on a matchbook, he goes into the bathroom where the huge Russian guy is, who injects him with something and he has a vision of Devereux telling him, his thoughts are not his own.
So, while John seeks out Devereux to kill him, the mad Russian Plumber is pursuing John, who eventually catches up to him after a great car chase and there is one of the best on screen fights I have ever seen between Adkins and Andrei 'The Pit Bull' Arlovski.
Mainly this movie deals with Identity, at first we think it is just a case of Brainwashing but we find out that it is something more insidious going on. And all the while, we keep seeing little scenes of the "First Church of the Unisol" of which Devereux is the leader and Andrew Scott the minister. Apparently they have been freeing the Unisols of their Programming and planning to take revenge on the government agencies that created them.
It's a pretty convoluted storyline, so I did not want to get into the specific twists that are dumped on us, of which there are plenty. Some of these twists take place in John's mind, others in reality- But which is which? That's the question.
For old guys, JCVD and Dolph Lundgren still have it, they are great in this, and Adkins just fits right in, with his over the top fighting style. It's great when all three get into it, we see all three of these actors distinct fighting styles.
And if you really want to get into the main plot, think Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back and the famous "Luke, I am your Father" line- This movie is a strange take on that.
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