Paul W.S. Anderson’s Films Ranked From Worst To Best

Soldier feels like a mega-budget version of a straight to video Dolph Lundgren film. The story follows a futuristic soldier –raised since birth to feel no emotion – who is dumped on a planet by his former unit and is taken in by the local community. When his unit comes back to wipe out these settlers, he picks up a machine gun and gets busy.

Soldier is technically a side-quel to Blade Runner; it takes place in the same universe, but it doesn’t share any characters. Kurt Russell brings a surprising amount of depth to his near-mute character, who is experiencing feelings for the first time ever and doesn’t know how to deal with it. The problem with Soldier is it feels like an action movie, but long stretches go by where nothing happens, and the drama isn’t interesting enough to compensate.

The film was a bomb on release, to the point that Russell offered to refund his hefty salary to the studio, who politely declined. It’s far from Russell or Anderson’s best, but it’s worth a curiosity watch.