Rich Garcia

Much better than Universal Soldier: Regeneration which I found gloomy and depressing, despite the heaps of praise that film gets for being "gritty" and abandoning the humor and hokeyness of it's predecessors. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning benefits from a main protagonist which the previous film lacked (Jean-Claude Van Damme's Luc Deveraux became the POV character in the third act of Regeneration) and an actor (Scott Adkins) young and nimble enough to pull off the fight choreography. My gripes with this film are it's lack of charm and energy that made the first two theatrical outings with Van Damme (the 1992 original and it's 1999 theatrical sequel The Return) fun and entertaining. Sure, they were cheesy but they also featured a protagonist we cared about. Day of Reckoning forces you to care about the protagonist out of necessity. Not because he's a charming or compelling character. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning functions more as a neo-noir, with amazing cinematography and brutal, bloody, gory action sequences interlaced between the plot. There's a market for films like this, and Day of Reckoning succeeds on it's own merits.