It's all blood, screams and painted heads in these new images and clip for UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING

Firstly, no, you have not gone off your meds again, they are indeed making another Universal Soldier movie. Secondly, who the hell In Hollywood went off their meds again and agreed to make another Universal Soldier movie?

Well, pharmaceutically induced justification aside, the film is here and now we get a good new glimpse of it. And specifically, Jean Claude Van Damme’s crazy facepaint.

The UniSol franchise has been drowning in a sea of mediocrity, hitting the occasional iceberg of just plain awfulness, ever since director Roland Emmerich’s 1992 original film (which in all honesty, was not the greatest movie to begin with) first pitched at the time A-listers Jean Claude Van Damme against the ear-collecting insanity of Dolph Lundgren. “They wouldn’t listen”, Dolph explained 20 years ago. Which is  ironic since not listening is exactly what the studios did after most of us said that we want no more after that godawful first sequel.

The only two things still keeping this film on my radar, are the facts that it looks like JCVD may be the villain in this one – and a completely insane looking one at that – and after seeing how much scene stealing he did as the bad guy in The Expendables 2, I’m completely down for more. Speaking of Expendables 2, that brings me to my other point of interest, as this film acts as a sort of mini-reunion, throwing Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren and Scott Adkins back together again. Whether that actually works or not, is a whole other story.

Here’s some newly released character posters (via Rama Screen) showing off the battle-weary mugs of the three action heroes, as well as couple of other action shots.

Along with the posters and synopsis, a new clip has also been released over on JoBlo showing a confrontation between Adkins and MMA fighter turned “screaming madman with an axe” Andrei Arlovski. No really, he can only communicate in screams. The clip is pretty visceral and definitely shows some promise for the rest of the film, well at least for the action sequences. I can’t promise you won’t be sniggering into your palm the moment these guys need to have a serious moment. But when it comes to axe-fights though…

Synopsis:

 Jean-Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins, Andrei “The Pit Bull” Arlovski and Dolph Lundgren star in UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING, which ups the ante in the UNIVERSAL SOLDIER series, giving you more hard-hitting, bloody, no-holds-barred fighting action. John (Adkins, The Expendables 2) wakes up from a coma after his wife and daughter were slaughtered in a brutal home invasion. Haunted by images of the attack, he vows to kill the man responsible, Luc Deveraux (Van Damme). While John tries to piece his reality back together, things get more complicated when he is pursued by a relentless UniSol (Arlovski). As John gets closer to Deveraux and the rogue army of genetically enhanced warriors led by back-from-the-dead leader Andrew Scott (Lundgren), John discovers more about himself and begins to call into question everything he believed to be true.

Just a note, the original press release synopsis had “As John gets closer to Deveraux and the ROUGE army…” which is something I would certainly pay money to see. Talking about paying money to see it, the film is already available for download on iTunes and will be getting a limited international theatre release on November 30, 2012.

Last Updated: October 29, 2012