Maybe that will sound strange to you, but I have always confounded this movie, made in the early seventies, and the last of director Cy Endfield, with another mercenary tale, also from 1970-71, and also the last of another film maker: Gordon Flemyng, called THE LAST GRENADE. Both anti hero tales, as there were batches in those times, downbeat, gloomy, not for today's audiences anyway. I prefer THE LAST GRENADE, I don't know why....ha ha ha. Gordon Flemyng never gave us the same filmography as Cy Endfield. But of course both films are totally different. This one is a pacifist and totally improvised film in terms of script, not an action flick. Most audiences will find it tedious, because it is. We are here entirely in the seventies mood, hippy and so on...But this one is not charmless for old seventies dramas or thrillers. I don't care if that's not a masterpiece nor Cy Endfield's best work. I like it. Period. I would have imagined Nick cage in Lazenby's role, if it had to be remade. Maybe because of Cage in 2005 LORD OF WAR, also speaking of arms traffick.
Review of Universal Soldier
