Welcome to Oliver Harper’s Retrospectives & Reviews. Like us all at FTN, Oliver LOVES cinema, and like us, he has passions that not everyone shares, but he feels obligated to put the word out. This week Oliver looks at Soldier… we’ll let him tell you the aims of these videos himself. Over to you, Oliver…
Every week FTN will be hosting videos looking back at classic films from the 80s and early 90s…
The videos will be a retrospective look back at a particular film covering all sides of the production and discussing how the film turned out. Many people on the net generally like to discuss films with a negative attitude and take joy in bashing films for comedic effect which does work but often many of the reviews aren’t researched well or films are taken out of context for the purpose of making a joke and I feel websites such as youtube have become over-saturated with these types of videos, I wanted to do something different.
“Often you come across films with no extras available on the DVD and you want to know more about it, so with some of the upcoming videos I will be discussing films that don’t get the respect they deserve or the ones that aren’t as bad as people think…”
Soldier:
The year 1998 saw the box office flop Soldier hit the big screen. The screenplay was written by David Webb Peoples who worked on the re-writes of Blade Runner and he claimed Soldier was set in the same universe. There is little connection between the two films but apparently one of the flying spinners can be seen in the first 20 minutes.
FTN favourite Kurt Russell spent 18 months getting into shape and you can see he has made a great effort, but his character barely speaks and only mutters 104 words throughout the movie. Warner Brothers marketed Soldier at teenagers with an action-packed trailer featuring scenes that don’t actually appear in the film. If you’ve seen Soldier it’s not a film all about action, it concentrates on Kurt Russell’s character, Todd, coming to grips with developing his emotions and being out of the military environment. Soldier has developed a strong fan base who defend the film but are aware of the movie’s faults.
Have you seen Soldier or did you see it when was released and were you disappointed? Let’s have a look back at this misunderstood film and see if I can encourage you to watch it again.
Oliver’s review:
Original trailer:
Irwin Fletcher
I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.
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