Rent Soldier (1998)

Tells a simple story well - Soldier review by RP

I enjoyed this fairly run-of-the-mill sci-fi film. It's certainly no masterpiece, but it tells a simple story well, has action and *very* few words – so sit back and enjoy.

Kurt Russell plays Todd, a soldier trained from birth to be a highly disciplined fighting machine. He is an emotional cripple. After long and distinguished service he is superseded by a new breed of genetically engineered soldiers, and literally thrown on the scrap heap, in this case on an outworld garbage dump planet.

Here he meets a small colony of shipwrecked civilians and is exposed for the first time to the emotions of family life. The new supposedly improved soldiers arrive, Todd defends the civilians, and everything ends happily.

Don't expect great dialogue: Kurt Russell says about 100 words total of which the majority seem to be 'Yes Sir'. But he uses a limited range of facial expressions to convey both feeling and emotion as his character changes from an automaton to a man.

I enjoyed it and can recommend it – it's deeper than it at first appears and there is even a little bit of character development if you watch out for it...

Simplistic but does what it sets out to do - Soldier review by JD

Probably worthy of more than 3 stars - but its not quite a 4 in my book.

The film shocked me with its year, late 90's. It comes over as older given it looks very, very cheap.

And for those of us used to seeing KR in Carpenter films - this is a very different role. Rather than being some wise crack - here he is virtually silent for the whole film.

But, is that a reason KR was put in the role? To emphasise this silence and strict discipline?

Something that stands out is the basic storytelling and how it sticks to that rule. And thats not a bad thing, it means the film makes sense and it progresses in a logical and meaningful fashion. It invests you in characters with almost no time. It does show many modern films to be complex messes.

This film is better than it appears on the surface and well worth a watch.