Here it is, "Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning," the one straight-up masterpiece in the entire franchise. Made for only $8 million and released by Magnet, the genre arm of indie distributor Magnolia, this installment saw the return of John Hyams, who also co-wrote the screenplay (dad didn’t come back to lens, sadly), as well as Van Damme and Lundgren (despite that killer death scene).
A lot of the charm of this film is thanks to a lead performance by Scott Adkins, one of the most unsung heroes in all of action cinema, and a performer who can emote as well as he can deliver a roundhouse kick to the forehead. He is a man who wakes up from an amnesiac stupor to finger Luc Deveraux as the man who murdered his family. This movie is just as cumbersomely convoluted as the other films, but with entirely more conviction, and goes to some increasingly weird (and oftentimes outrageously violent) places. But through it all, thanks to Adkins and some committed performances from an almost unrecognizable Van Damme and Lundgren (amounting to glorified cameos that they probably could have shot during filming for "Regeneration"), you stick with it.
It’s a visual feast and very much worth tracking down the hard-to-get-a-hold-of unrated cut of the film to see it unfold in all of its gory glory. This was the one sequel to do the premise of the original film justice while pushing it to surprisingly lengths both visually and storytelling-wise.
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