A dour sci-fi nasty that operates on a clipped shorthand. Machine men batter and brutalise each other against a derelict Soviet backdrop, their violence an atypically ugly MMA stomp. Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a lined relic, kidnapped and doped up by panicking officials to face a rogue muscle monster with a pit bull mindset. Dolph Lundgren floats around as a confused clone, fixated on violent repetition, but unable to understand why. None of the UniSols display any recognisably human traits. Each is an automaton locked into their own distinct mechanised predicament. Further to this, Van Damme's character doesn't triumph because of any underlining humanity, rather Deveraux is simply the most recently maintained - his performance supplemented by a battlefield deployed syringe of psychotropic amphetamines. Everyone in Universal Soldier: Regeneration is alien; no-one can be related to. These aren't men anymore, and the film knows it. It revels in it.
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