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RATING:   
SINGAPORE - When a movie goes straight-to-DVD, as this latest offering in the "Universal Soldier" series did in the United States, you can expect a few things: Simple and unoriginal storylines littered with plot holes, actors hamming up wooden dialogue and poor production values reeking of B-grade quality.
By this checklist, "Universal Soldier: A New Beginning" delivers on most fronts, and is a decently entertaining film. That's not to say this is a good movie. It's just our low expectations met.
The storyline centres around a Russian terrorist outfit that has stormed the Chernobyl power plant, with the President's children as hostages and a nigh-invincible universal soldier (Andrei "The Pitbull" Arlovsky) as a bodyguard. The US military is called in, with their own universal soldier (Jean Claude Van Damme reprising his role).
There's an explosive device ticking down, hordes of nameless extras ready to be gunned down, a "plot twist" involving sabotage and another universal soldier (Dolph Lundgren, also reprising his role) and violent one-on-one combat scenes.
In other words: Who cares? It's hard to judge anyone on their acting when a supporting character has more dialogue than the three stars combined.
Van Damme, Lundgren and especially Arlovsky grunt their one-liners well and punch hard enough, so to ask any more of them would be too much.
There's enough explosions, gunfire and hand-to-hand combat to satisfy fans of the 1992 original. Anyone else need not apply.
- TODAY/ar
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