6. Opening Montage - Soldier
Soldier is a frustrating movie for a whole bunch of reasons, none of which are quite so irritating as that which occurs in the first ten minutes of Paul W.S. Anderson's generic sci-fi flick. The movie stars Kurt Russell as a super soldier, trained from birth, who has his way of life threatened by a new batch of super super soldiers, who are enhanced enough to make his kind obsolete. This movie is supposed to be set in the world of
Blade Runner, but you can't tell: attention to detail is otherwise thin. Except for - yes - in those opening ten minutes, of course. Anderson's movie opens with a brilliant, silent montage which charts Russell's trope of super soldiers as they go from children to adults. It's a strangely mesmerising and remarkable sequence, one filled with great little details and glimpses of our futuristic world, all of which that help to make it feel fully-realised. It's safe to say that this is the best part of the movie, though, and it annoyingly sets up a movie that it can't actually follow through with. There are occasionally inspired moments throughout, but nothing reaches the levels of this brilliant sequence.