The ad claims that it is the original sequel to the #1 blockbuster hit.
What makes me so happy about this ad is the fact that, at last, Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren have a new movie. For so long, I have not seen a movie of these two great martial art stars.
During those silent nights in my grandfather's house in Cayus, Pilar, Capiz, only the movies of these two men gave me the courage and the confidence that, if there were momo's hiding in chico, rambotan, or lanzones trees that surrounded my grandfather's three story house, I could kick and knock them out.
I was about 10 or 12 years old then. My lawyer uncle, who was based in Bulacan, went home to Pilar after my father's death in 1990. Uncle Nonoy would always ask for my company. As a come on, he would rent for me action movies.
The good guy in the movies would be humiliated, battered, and abused. In the end however, he fights and wins. His victory brings change to his life and the lives of the people in his community.
I would later learn from attending literary workshops that such a plot is very common and over-used.
A work of art, like the film, must not only entertain people. It must also enrich the lives of the people who watch it.
We know for example that bad people do bad things to good people and vice-versa. But what we do not know and would like to understand is what makes the bad people do bad, and good people do good.
What drives people to do good or bad things to other people beyond their own personal experience? Good things happen to bad people, yet they persist in doing bad things; bad things also happen to good people but they persist in doing good, or at least, in not doing evil. Writers stop, look, listen, and examine themselves in the hope of finding answers to this question so that in the masterpieces that they create, we see ourselves, or a part of ourselves, and learn as if for the first time who we are. After all, we are creatures capable of doing both good and evil.
This is what I am looking for now, not just in a film, but also in other works of art like a novel, a play, or a short story. And this is also what I wish to see in the new Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, and Andrei "The Pitbull" Arlovski's movie, Universal Soldier Regeneration, aside from the usual action-packed sequences found in their movies.
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