Emboldened by JCVD goodwill, and perhaps Sylvester Stallone's successful run of reboots, Jean-Claude Van Damme retreats to his only franchise for a payday. In conception Universal Soldier: Regeneration is worrying similar to 1999's stinker Universal Soldier: The Return; Van Damme as a lone super soldier battling a zeitgeisty muscle man. Return saw Van Damme battling charmless WCW breeze block Bill Goldberg, whilst Regeneration pits the ageing star against Belarusian MMA fighter Andrei Arlovski. Similarities cease there. Whereas Return was a pocket money distraction for subnormal teenagers, Regeneration entertains ideas that form a credible meta-text about star personas.
Like Rambo, or even The Wrestler, Regeneration distils the appeal of its lead down to one idea, then ruthlessly delivers on it. Here, Van Damme is simply an efficient killing machine. No effort is expended to create any recognisable human traits or feelings for Van Damme's Luc Deveraux. The absence of character, is the character. This imposed limitation eliminates the need for any motivational downtime, as well as organically strengthening the hijacked man conceit. Deveraux isn't human anymore. He's a reanimated corpse, programmed to harm. Why should he have any drives other than his orders? In domestic scenes Van Damme is a numb. Drugged up and placed in the field, he's a career best murderer, effortlessly driving long, prowling flashes of predatory knife play. Universal Soldier: Regeneration isn't about anything other than a group of emotionless machine-men beating each other to death in a utilitarian ruin. Quite right too.
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