Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning

***Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning*** (formerly known as ***Universal Soldier: A New Dimension***) is a 2012 American science fiction action film co-written, co-edited and directed by John Hyams.

## Plot

John (Scott Adkins) awakens from a coma to find that his wife and daughter were brutally murdered in a home invasion. With the help of FBI Agent Gorman (Rus Blackwell), the still amnesiac John identifies the perpetrator as former Universal Soldier (UniSol) Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme), now a wanted man. Meanwhile, a sleeper agent named Magnus (Andrei "The Pit Bull" Arlovski), one of the cloned Next Generation UniSols from *Regeneration* working undercover as a plumber, is activated. Magnus reaches a brothel and kills all the women working there and most of the patrons, a group of men with exceptional physical resistance. His last adversary, a clone of UniSol Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren) and Deveraux's former nemesis, negotiates Magnus and injects him with a serum that frees him from government control. Magnus is introduced to a separatist group led by Deveraux and Scott, who are taking in wayward UniSols to turn them against the government that created them, thus establishing a new order ruled by UniSols.

Determined to find Deveraux, John receives a call from someone claiming to be his friend Isaac, urging the two to meet. Upon reaching
his house, he finds Isaac long dead, as well as evidence of Isaac's involvement with the UniSol government program. A matchbox found on the scene leads John to a strip club. There, he is recognized and sent off by a stripper named Sarah (Mariah Bonner), whom however he cannot remember. John is assaulted by Magnus who injects him with Scott's serum, but despite hallucinating about Deveraux, he is not turned. John abducts Sarah and takes her to his apartment, where they are attacked by Magnus again. Though in the confrontation John loses some phalanges, they manage to escape. Sarah later tells John she remembers him working as a truck driver and living in a riverside cabin, and that the two were romantically involved.

Starting to call his own memories into question, John requests a meeting with Agent Gorman. He learns from Gorman that Deveraux was often
seen at the docks from where John used to take shipments. John goes to the docks, inspects the last unshipped cargo and meets with local manager Ron Castellano (Dane Rhodes), who plays hidden camera footage for him showing Isaac being brutally murdered by John himself.

As John and Sarah drive towards the cabin, they are once more intercepted by Magnus, whom John finally dispatches. On that occasion,
John realizes he possesses superior strength, resistance and fighting abilities, his severed fingers having regrown in the meantime. John and Sarah reach the cabin to find it inhabited by an exact duplicate of John, who reveals himself as the original with whom Sarah and
Castellano had been in contact in the past. The original John had been mind-controlled into hunting down Deveraux, but was turned by him and sent to kill Isaac and other men behind the UniSol program, until he met Sarah and deserted Deveraux. He then tries to kill Sarah, but is shot dead by the other John, now suspecting himself to be a UniSol sleeper agent.

By the river, a rogue UniSol takes John to the underground bunker where the separatists have their headquarters. There, he is greeted by
Dr. Su (David Jensen), who reveals that John never had a family, having been synthetically created merely a few weeks earlier. Dr. Su goes on telling that the missing shipment from the docks contains the hardware that will allow Deveraux to create clones. John accepts Dr. Su's offer to surgically sever his emotional bond with the fake memories of his family, but the pain and attachment to those memories drive John insane.

He kills every UniSol in his path, culminating with Andrew Scott in a one-on-one confrontation. John then reaches Deveraux himself and a fight ensues, with Deveraux eventually gaining the upper hand. Realizing that the cycle of sending clones of John against him is destined to repeat, and seeing John as a worthy successor who could turn the tide of the rebellion, Deveraux gives in to John, who kills him with a machete.

Some time later, John meets with Agent Gorman again. Gorman admits to his involvement with the UniSol program, and that he had purposefully put an unaware John on Deveraux's trail. Gorman ascribes John's success to the attachment to family he was designed with, as opposed to the patriotism implanted in his predecessors. John kills Gorman, then three UniSols and a clone of Gorman emerge from John's van. The clone leaves in the car of the original Gorman, hinting that John has acquired the cloning equipment and taken over the separatist group, now determined to infiltrate the government which he holds responsible for his pain. The film ends with John driving his car as he pictures flashbacks of him with his family.

## Cast

* Scott Adkins as John
* Jean-Claude Van Damme as Luc Deveraux
* Dolph Lundgren as Andrew Scott
* Mariah Bonner as Sarah
* Andrei "The Pit Bull" Arlovski as Magnus
* Craig Walker as Earl
* Andrew Sikking as Larry
* James Dumont as Dr. Brady
* David Jensen as Dr. Su
* Kristopher Van Varenberg as Miles

## Release

*Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning* premiered on VOD on October 25, 2012 followed by a theatrical run starting November 30, 2012. The film premiered on HDNet Movies on November 28, 2012.

## Franchise

The film acts as a semi-sequel to its 2009 predecessor, *Universal Soldier: Regeneration.*