The Burt Reynolds Movie That Got A Big Fat Zero On Rotten Tomatoes

Being a movie star is both a blessing and a curse. The blessings are fairly obvious, but, like all things that are too good to be true, they bring with them the seeds for the curse that follows, which is that movie stardom can set actors up for that much greater a fall should they start to slip off their pedestal. Some instances of actors taking a hard fall are deserved when it's to do with their offscreen behavior, yet in instances where it's mostly to do with the projects they're involved with being subpar, it's hard not to feel sorry for them.

Take Burt Reynolds, for instance. By the end of the 1970s he was among the most well-known and highest-paid actors working, and as the 1980s rolled on he continued to work with other name stars and solid filmmakers like Dolly Parton, Don Siegel, Blake Edwards, his buddy Hal Needham, and so on. Yet a string of flops saw his star dwindle, and, according to Reynolds himself, he did make at least one major mistake in turning down the part that went to Jack Nicholson in the Oscar-winning "Terms of Endearment."

By the 1990s, Reynolds had mostly retreated from the silver screen to television, appearing occasionally in character parts in movies. Although his turn as Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights" revived his career in the critical and public eyes, Reynolds didn't think so; he apparently hated the film and clashed with Anderson while making it. At the same time that "Boogie Nights" was premiering to much acclaim, Reynolds was shooting a movie that would end up getting a big fat zero on Rotten Tomatoes: the direct-to-cable sequel "Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms." And yes, it most certainly deserves that zero.

In the fall of 1997, "Universal Soldier II" was shot back-to-back with "Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business" as two feature-length episodes of a hoped-for syndicated "Universal Soldier" series. Sadly (for the filmmakers) and fortunately (for the fans and the audience), this series did not come to pass, leaving both episodes as a pair of orphaned TV movies that got dumped on The Movie Channel about a year after they were filmed.

It makes sense why a series was attempted: quite simply, genre IP was a hot property for syndicated television in the '90s, especially for the company then-known as Skyvision Entertainment, which was behind other live-action spin-off sequel series to cult classic films like "Robocop: The Series," "F/X: The Series," and "La Femme Nikita." There are so many of these spin-off/sequel series shot in Canada that they run the gamut from being obscure, like "Total Recall 2070," to being cult sensations in their own right, like "Stargate SG-1," which was based on the 1994 Roland Emmerich film.

"Universal Soldier II" sees the movie pick up from Emmerich's own "Universal Soldier," the 1992 film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Rather than the Muscles From Brussels, the sequel's Luc is played by former Eagles linebacker Matt Battaglia, who not only makes for a poor thespian but is directly responsible for Reynolds' involvement in the sequel. Reynolds, playing a shady CIA Deputy Director, played college football with Battaglia's father, Carmello, and it was apparently Reynolds who encouraged the younger Battaglia to act.

If I'm being charitable, perhaps Battaglia actively made the choice to play the brainwashed-by-the-government Luc as robotic. Yet that hardly explains why everyone else in the film, including Reynolds and Gary freakin' Busey, are so similarly subdued.

Reynolds' career has long been viewed as one of glorious highs and dismal lows, with the majority of his '70s and early '80s output being seen as classic while his work from the late-'80s on is regarded as junk. I've been impressed when digging into some of these maligned Reynolds vehicles; films like "Heat" (not that one) and "Malone" are flawed, but Reynolds does some solid work in them nonetheless, while late-period Reynolds flicks like Adam Rifkin's "The Last Movie Star" are as fascinating as they are poignant.

Sadly, the "Universal Soldier" duology is undeniably a blight on Reynolds' resumé. They're the worst kind of bad movie, as uninspired as they are dull. Thankfully, the "Universal Soldier" series went on to much better things, bringing Van Damme back for a proper theatrical sequel called "Universal Soldier: The Return" in 1999, and then handing the reins to director John Hyams for the gritty "Universal Soldier: Regeneration" (which brought back Dolph Lundgren, too) and the transcendent "Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning." As for Reynolds, his best work remains as good as it ever was, ensuring his cinematic legend will live on.

Now, to be totally fair, the bulk of the reviews that contribute to the dismal Tomatometer score for "Universal Soldier II" are just a handful of retrospective ones, most of them from blogs written in the early '00s. (For more proof that the Tomatometer should not be used as a concrete barometer of quality, the rating for "Universal Soldier III" is at 20%. I promise you that "Unfinished Business" is not 20% better than "Brothers in Arms.") Yet if this article has made you at all interested in giving either movie a try, may I recommend watching paint dry instead? You'll get more out of it, I promise.