That poster is seriously poor. They need to start making better posters and DVD covers.
I am not surprised this film didn' t do well, but I think a lot of people don't get it, thats why.
I personally think its excellent!
Moderator: Moderators
The logical initial reaction to seeing Day of Reckoning is to assert, “This thing shouldn’t exist.” The R-rated American action film, once a proud staple of our cinema, has become something of an endangered species in a Hollywood landscape where only projects with the broadest possible appeal make it through the focus group abattoir. But of course a movie this vicious, this daring, this bizarre could only have been made for the direct to video market. This is a movie where its two biggest stars get a combined total of about 20 minutes screen time. A movie where we watch a man’s family die in Enter the Void-esque first-person POV. A movie where Jean-Claude Van Damme squares off for his final battle looking like a replicant of Colonel Kurtz. Something this beautiful and fucked would have set fire to any multiplex screen it touched.
2. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (John Hyams, 2012)
The Universal Soldier franchise is interesting because it wasn’t actually very strong to begin with. The first 1992 film is a lumbering Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle that plays to the strengths of neither the hero or director Roland Emmerich. The canon is also extremely confused, with six films, two made for television and two for video on demand, and multiple subtitles, like The Return, Regeneration, Unfinished Business etc.
In 2009 John Hyams, the son of director Peter Hyams, relaunched the franchise with Universal Soldier: Regeneration. Hyams trained as an artist and developed experience with television and documentaries, but was untested as a director of large-scale franchise properties. He might have been interested in the franchise because of his father’s relationship with Van Damme (they made three films together) and because any commercial or critical following for the films was basically non-existent.
Regeneration is interesting, but its modest success and unusual marketing (it only received theatrical exhibition in the Middle East and South-East Asia) let Hyams direct and edit its incredible sequel, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning.
Here the director transforms an indistinct franchise into a lean and extreme exercise in action and horror, whilst treating the original films with affection. Without the restraints of cinema releasing the violence can be both graphic and fantastical. The fights between the enhanced soldiers are ultra-refined and dragged out, until the action film becomes body horror as they push far beyond the limits of the human form.
Striking long takes, clear editing and a toxic sense of unease and fear about the self and the body turn the franchise into something unique and powerful. The film pushes the figures of the previous films to the margins and creates a story of conspiracy and alienation that recalls 1970s films from Alan J. Pakula and indeed Peter Hyams’ Star Chamber and Capricorn One.
Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren become Kurtz-like figures, pursued through a mind-altering world of steroid psychedelia and mind-control.
Jox wrote:Only came out July 31 in Italy but theatrically,
and it grossed €21,916 this week-end for 5,479 admissions (in 3 screens I believe so it's not bad)
So, what would you say are some of your memorable highlights in action directing and stunt work so far?
Well, I’ve been fortunate that for example, there haven’t been too many serious injuries on most of the films I’ve worked on, but there have been a few. One was during the fight in the sporting goods store in “Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning”, when they crash through the window. The timing was off where the glass should’ve broken and one of the stunt guys ended up getting the back of his head cut by a shard of glass, so he had to go and get stitches.
There have also been movies where we were told we’d have three days to do a fight scene and when we’d get there, it’d actually turn out to be less than one! So we really have to work fast. In those situations, you really have to adapt, so I tell the actors, “Okay, we’re taking section 3 out, taking section 7 out, and combining sections 2 and 4”, and then we have to rehearse it in about ten minutes.
But some of them are so much better now. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, for instance, couldn’t have been made back then nearly as well.
I love that movie as well. The problem with that film is the people it was aimed at really didn’t understand it. They just wanted something they could just switch their brain off for. [Imitates viewer; not you, some other viewer] “Well, I don’t understand the story, man. This is bullshit.” Maybe you shouldn’t be smoking as many spliffs while you’re watching it.
I’m very proud of the story. I think it delivers on both levels. That’s down to John Hyams, not me. But people need to respect that film much more.
I have to admit, my first watch I didn’t get it. I had to watch it twice, but I was totally converted.
What other film do you know where you’re following the protagonist for the whole thing thinking he’s the hero, and then at the end of the movie you realize he’s the villain. How cool is that?
Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 2 guests