The Soldier

The Soldier is absolutely one of this worst movies I have ever seen in my life. Just name an aspect of a movie; acting, writing, directing and it is bad. Probably the worst parts are the action; a man is hit in the chest with a half-dozen bullets from a machine gun by the hero (who is flying through the air on skis at the time, don't ask) and croaks out the complete plans of the bad guys to the hero for no particular reason. And that is not the dumbest scene by far. Only rent this if you want to laugh at a movie.

At the time this movie had some teeth and a small reason to exist, however those things have both since been swallowed up by time.

Check it out only if you are going through an 80's B action phase :)

A film so ridiculous it's almost good. Released a year after "For Your Eyes Only", this is similar in only one respect a skiing chase scene. Even this is pretty poorly done. The cast are uniformly dismal and the music isn't much better. The only saving grace is that it doesn't overstay it's welcome and they didn't make a sequel.

Not a great movie, but better than other films. The Soldier is about the cold war between the Soviets and Ameriacans. This movie is similar to James Bond but is more violent than the Bond films. Ken Wahl is the C I A's version of James Bond. However, I find the movie is inferiorly made compared to the Bond series. I hate seeing a few good scenes wasted in a film which has choppy directing, an unbelievable script, and bad acting. I like these kind of films but this movie is like a HBO style, low budget film. I wish the makers had more time and money to make this movie the way it should have been made. The Soldier is an 3 or 5 out of 10. Watch it on late night TV.

The people who have been trashing this film are missing the point. Of course the film's premise is implausible, many of the scenes are improbable to the point of being ridiculous, and some of James Glickenhuas' political views may be offensive to some, but as far as I'm concerned, The Soldier is more entertaining than all the 007 movies combined. This is a very offbeat, unusual film that requires a complete suspension of disbelief in order to watch from start to finish, but it's definitely worth watching.

Ken Wahl was an interesting choice for The Soldier. I'm surprised that Robert Ginty wasn't offered the role considering that Glickenhaus and Ginty enjoyed great success with The Exterminator less than two years prior. Still, Wahl turns in a good job, although the brief appearance of Klaus Kinski as Dracha is one of the highlights of the film.

James Glickenhaus had a good run in the 1980s (The Exterminator, The Soldier, The Protector, Shakedown) and offered an interesting alternative to all the lousy mainstream movies of that decade. This is one cynical, jaded New Yorker who wishes Glickenhaus would return to film-making and give us another interesting film like The Soldier.