FANTASTIC FEST: Silly, Serious Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning At Least Makes A Star Out Of Scott Adkins

The new Universal Soldier picture, the latest in the series about genetically-modified supermen raging against their government creators, is a curious exercise in cognitive dissonance; here you have an action flick high on gory, bone-crunching slicing and dicing and kicking and punching — everything star and Ben Affleck doppelganger Scott Adkins (Undisputed II and III) can possibly do to evoke oohs and aahs in 3-D in the serious-faced, beefy fashion of his '80s and '90s predecessors — and yet director John Hyams didn't sound completely delusional this week at Fantastic Fest when he said his UniSol fourquel was influenced by David Cronenberg, Michael Haneke, and (yes, I see it, kinda!) even art house provocateur Gaspar Noe.
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