10 Wildly Underrated Action Movies Of The 90s

Jean-Claude Van Damme made a lot of garbage movies in the 90s. It's true. But a handful of his post-Kickboxer filmography suffered from audience's expectations that Van Damme's acting had to evolve beyond the stoic delivery and occasional wide-eyed screams he displayed in Bloodsport. Which just doesn't seem fair for a martial arts star.

Ironically, critics blasted JCVD for coming off as "laughably wooden" in this 1992 Roland Emmerich film. For those who haven't seen Universal Soldier, Van Damme plays a robot. So that would be like criticizing Zachary Quinto's performance in Star Trek as "too alien."

More specifically, the Muscles from Brussels plays Luc Devereaux, a reanimated super soldier who died in the Vietnam War, was cryogenically frozen, and then brought back to life as part of a shady military program. Dolph Lundgren plays a similar character, except he's more deranged, more manic, and has a much greater affinity for necklaces made of human ears.

If you can't tell from those descriptions, Universal Soldier is a delightfully absurd movie.

It's the confrontation between these two meaty specimens that drives this part science-fiction, part action, not-quite-blockbuster that's basically a mix of Terminator 2 and Commando. (Except with more spin kicks.) Van Damme displays a goofy kind of charm as an innocent robot learning to act human again, while Lundgren clearly relishes playing an increasingly unhinged, pyschopathic mandroid.