I'd heard some absolutely terrible things about this one, so I went into it as though I was to be watching a comedy, and I didn't watch any of the other 'Universal Soldier' films that had come before it (of course, it's never clear in what order the sequels are in, anyway). 'Brothers in Arms', it's... well, there's just no way to sugarcoat it - it's cheap, it's cheesy, the dialogue is bad, the placement of peculiar songs during scenes of gratuitous violence was bad and quite weird, and there's a bizarre cryogenics scene where a naked man is broken out of a freezer and when he wakes up, it's like watching a scene out of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. On the bright side though, this film is funny, has some great Canadian scenery and background Canadian talent, and it does seem to at least follow up on the original film fairly well compared to the other produced sequel ever did. Among some of its best cast members include Chandra West as tough reporter Veronica, Julian Richings as Bix the naive hitchhiker and... okay, that's about the best talent that this film has to offer cast-wise. Unfortunately, while it has a strong female lead, the two male leads (Matt Battaglia and Andrew Jackson, neither of whom even look like their characters from the first film are supposed to if searched images from the first are anything to go by), speak in constant monotone, make a multitude of odd faces while acting for no apparent reason, make weird moaning noises during the Pet Sematary-like resurrection scenes, and neither of them seem to know what they're doing half the time. Also I'm a big fan of VHS as a format (yeah yeah, I'm a pretentious hipster), but this particular film, recorded on VHS and later released to DVD, has definitely not aged well. And don't even get me started on all those corny-looking "action fight scenes".
To be fair, this film is still watchable. I didn't love it, but I definitely didn't hate it either, and it does have its moments. It's one of those "so bad it's good" type ones that you'll probably only ever watch once, but there are far worse ways to spend your time.
To be fair, this film is still watchable. I didn't love it, but I definitely didn't hate it either, and it does have its moments. It's one of those "so bad it's good" type ones that you'll probably only ever watch once, but there are far worse ways to spend your time.