Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Sergeant Todd is a veteran soldier for an elite group of the armed forces. After being defeated by a new breed of genetically engineered soldiers, he is dumped on a waste planet and left for dead. He soon interacts with a group of crash survivors who lead out a peaceful existence. The peace is broken as the new soldiers land on the planet to eliminate the colony, which Sergeant Todd must defend.
Soldier (1998) is a serviceable but largely forgettable sci-fi action film. The plot is a straightforward fish-out-of-water military story with little originality — a grizzled veteran displaced by superior replacements is a well-worn premise executed without much flair. Kurt Russell commits to the near-silent role of Todd, but the character's extreme minimalism limits dramatic range, and the supporting cast is underdeveloped. Cinematography by David Tattersall has some gritty, textured moments on the waste planet that capture a lived-in dystopian feel, slightly above the genre average. Novelty is low — the film borrows heavily from concepts already present in Blade Runner and other genre staples (it was even marketed as a 'sidequel'), and the execution is formulaic. The ending delivers a competent if predictable showdown with modest cathartic payoff, slightly elevated by Russell's physicality.