Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012)

“Delirious Lynchian mind-screw” doesn’t come to the mind when one sits for an action flick (and fifth in a series) starring Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, but that exactly is “Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning,” a skull-smashing, gun-heavy treat. 

Director John Hyams (son of Peter) daringly switches-up the concept of the first (and awful) film about slain U.S. soldiers genetically reengineered as unstoppable warriors, and plops them right in the U.S. of A., playing on Tea Party paranoia, government black ops, and “Apocalypse Now” showdowns with Van Damme as Kurtz, ghoulish in heavy makeup. 

The plot follows a man (Scott Adkins) who awakens from a coma nine months after watching his family slain by mysterious intruders. Grieved and lost, he obsesses over the attackers. He’s also hunted by seemingly unkillable men who unexplainably like his own body can grow back appendages after they are chopped off. 

The less you know the better, because it’s a kick of a nightmarish journey with hidden meanings about NRA kill-or-be-killed addictions so off kilter from this typical genre, I wanted more. The junk dialogue and headache-inducing strobe-light effects are easily forgiven. B+

Rocky IV (1985)

I’m biased on any “Rocky” film. Back in Philly during the 1980s, when a “Rocky” movie was released, work, school, transportation, and pretzel-eating stopped. It was our civic duty in the City of Brotherly Love to watch the latest pounding and last-minute triumph of Rocky Balboa, patron saint of boxing, American flag boxers and Sylvester Stallone’s enduring career. Here, Rocky fights Russian behemoth Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) who towers over our hero like a father to his toddler son. There is death (so long Apollo), there is Survivor (“Eye of the Tiger” never gets old) and training montages galore, before the grand finale. Stallone, also writing and directing, serves up the best storyline since the First Chapter, I mean the 1976 and Genesis, and a kick-ass rock-hard Cold War flick that seems genius now. Lundgren by sheer force takes the film, starting when he throws Carl Weathers across the ring as if he were a grocery sack. A true jaw-dropper scene even now. The fight scenes are bloody fantastic. Stallone was a god of my youth, I cannot criticize him. Everyone together: “Aaaddrriaaan!” A-