" soldier " , by director paul anderson , is <NEG> a film in which any presence of originality is fleeting </NEG> . the best moments of the film are in the opning scenes where kurt russel's character todd is shown growing up under strict military supervision . brutality through the eyes of the innocent and stripped of it every single day growing up is something that has a lot of emotional potential power behind it , and the opening scenes tap into it a little . then it <NEG> goes nowhere with that idea </NEG> . there is perhaps one rather fleeting scene afterwards that deals with the potential trauma of this dehumanization , and <NEG> the rest of the film is just some of the biggest action movie cliches </NEG> i've ever seen . the whole idea of the inhuman , soldier-type character gaining some degree of humanity by defending a potential female love interest and family from his evil counterpart out to kill her is done , and it's been done much better . i was able to predict the plot of the _whole_ story , which wouldn't be so bad if other aspect of the film somewhat interesting . between the action sequences , it tries to deal with the aforementioned issues of humanity through the performance of mr . russel in the film and the tiny little window to his soul that is his eyes , since <NEG> his dialog is extremely limited </NEG> . his performance in that way isn't all that bad , but certainly is not enough to carry this film . other performances in this film are <NEG> really not worth much mention at all </NEG> , and they generally are <NEG> about as weak as their characters </NEG> . but enough of this stuff about plot and character , right ? isn't the most important part of an action film , well , the action ? even in this aspect the film is a disappointment . in mortal kombat ( 1995 ) , director paul anderson proved that truly engaging use and choreography of action in a film can override problems with plot and produce something entertaining . however , <NEG> he fails to repeat that </NEG> in this film . the combat scenes , particularly the big one at the end , is <NEG> incredibly unimaginatve </NEG> . fighting and combat scenes are supposed to bring about thrills in this type of movie , a point which even an otherwise unimpressive film like starship troopers seemed to realize . but instead of reaching for something truly interesting to end the film with , <NEG> it goes for the old , shoot-em up , one guy vs . an army type of cinema </NEG> that i thought died with the military action films of the 80s . if the film went with some of the ideas it opened up with the introduction more seriously , it could have been a rather engaging science fiction film . however , <NEG> it utterly failed </NEG> to go in any new directions after that , making the film <NEG> a big disappointment </NEG> .
