Soldier 1998,

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If this isn't the worst and most pointless film I've ever seen, it's so damn close that it's barely worth the effort to clarify the matter.

Kurt Russell stars as Sergeant Todd, a man who has been trained from birth to be the best soldier humanly possible. However, Russell is downsized as newer, better, quicker, and more genetically superior soldiers are created by Armed Forces' scientists. So Russell is taken to a planet the Armed Forces use as their inter-galactic garbage dump, meets with the local outpost of humans, doesn't say anything to anyone, and when the genetically superior soldiers later land on the planet he goes and kills them. Then the movie ends. Seriously.

To say that Soldier is a vapid film is quite an understatement. Soldier is a vapid film even when measuring it against the standards of your run-of-the-mill Steven Seagal action flicks. For starters, there is no plot. Soldier has no element of conflict until the new, improved Armed Forces land on Russell's planet an hour into the film, and no sense of resolution either, as the last shot of the film is of the spaceship Russell has hijacked heading deep into space, effectively leaving the viewer to figure out what may, or may not happen next.

There is no true bad guy; the audience never is given the opportunity to root for Russell to get even with, or kill one individual, although screenwriter Daniel Webb Peoples makes an attempt to do so with Jason Scott Lee's character. There is no true good guy either. Being a brainwashed soldier that only speaks when spoken to, Russell says a whole of about 15 words during the entirety of the film, not endearing him to anyone, and not allowing for much, if any viewer sympathy towards his character.

The production design and set decoration were both confusing and poor, as the major ingredients in the garbage dump appeared to be automobiles and tires, which, even in the 20^th Century, we knew how to recycle. However, the worst feature of Soldier though, was director Paul Anderson's style of self-indulgent direction. The camera angles were poor, the quick edits during the non-fight sequences as rhythm inducing as music by Nine Inch Nails and the decision to have near constant unexplained explosions in the background horrendous to justify.

The choreography and blocking of Soldier's fight sequences was also a lesson in what not to do, with there being only one or two occasions throughout the movie where the action on-screen looked the least bit plausible or realistic.

This was 99 minutes of my life I will never get back. I hope and pray that it will be a long while before Hollywood can let another terror like Soldier slips through the cracks in the production system. This was as bad a movie as I've ever screened.