Soldier is a 1998 science fiction-action film directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. The film stars Kurt Russell as Sgt. Todd, a soldier trained from birth. The film also features Gary Busey, Jason Scott Lee, Jason Isaacs, Connie Nielsen, Sean Pertwee and Michael Chiklis in supporting roles.

Plot[link]

In the near future, as part of a new military recruitment and training program ("Project Adam"), a group of infants are selected at birth to be raised as soldiers. Undergoing extreme mental and physical training, they become virtual sociopaths, with no understanding of anything except military routine and war. A priority of the conditioning is that these soldiers are forbidden to speak unless spoken to, completely ignore physical pain, and to address whomever they are speaking to, women included, as "sir".

At age 38, Todd (Kurt Russell) is a hardened veteran of many battles, but he and his unit are about to be replaced. Colonel Mekum (Jason Isaacs) introduces a new group of genetically-engineered soldiers, designed with superior physical attributes and a complete lack of emotions except aggression.

Todd's unit's commander, Captain Church (Gary Busey) insists on testing the "new" soldiers' abilities against his own. But Todd, the unit's best soldier, is no match for Caine 607 (Jason Scott Lee). In the final trial, a fight between Caine and three "old" soldiers, two of Todd's comrades are killed, though Todd manages to gouge out one of Caine's eyes before he is defeated. Todd seemingly dies when he falls from a great height; but the body of a dead soldier cushions his fall, and he is simply knocked unconscious. Mekum orders their bodies dumped like garbage, and the remaining "old" soldiers are demoted to menial support roles.

Todd and his dead comrades are dumped on the surface of Arcadia 234, a waste disposal planet with dangerously high wind velocities. Though badly injured, Todd limps his way toward a colony of humans who crash-landed there twelve years earlier, and have managed to survive and build a society from the planet's ubiquitous mountains of trash.

Though they try to make him welcome, Todd has great difficulty adapting to the community due to his extreme conditioning. Todd's prior training of not speaking unless spoken to (and deliberately stunted social skills in general) make it difficult for him to answer questions in anything more than curt replies, and actually initiating a conversation is impossible for him. Many of the settlers are afraid of him, but he is sheltered by a settler named Mace (Sean Pertwee) and his wife Sandra (Connie Nielsen). Todd develops a silent rapport with the couple's mute son, Nathan, who had been traumatized mentally and physically by a snakebite. In a subsequent conflict with a curled snake, Todd teaches Nathan how to face it down and strike back to protect himself. However, his parents misinterpret the lesson, unsure of how to deal with Todd's apparent instability.

Todd soon begins to experience flashbacks from his time as a soldier and mistakes one of the colonists (Michael Chiklis) for an enemy, nearly killing him. The settlers decide that Todd is too dangerous to live among them, so they give him supplies and order him to leave. Outside the colony, he sheds tears. He is confused, not understanding what they are, implying that this is the first time that he has cried.

Shortly thereafter, Mace and Sandra are attacked by another snake, and are saved at the last second by Nathan, using Todd's technique. Mace then realizes that Todd has an important role to play in their community, and decides to leave on his own to find and bring him back.

The new genetically engineered soldiers arrive on a training exercise. Since the planet is listed as uninhabited, Colonel Mekum decides that the colonists' presence is unlawful and, as practice, orders his troops to slaughter them. Spotted by the arriving troops, Mace is killed just after he finds Todd. Though outmanned and outgunned, Todd's years of battle experience and superior knowledge of the planet allow him to return to the colony and kill the advance squad attacking the settlers.

Nervous that a much larger enemy force may be confronting them, Colonel Mekum, grudgingly accepting Captain Church's advice, orders the soldiers to withdraw and return with heavy artillery. Using guerilla tactics, Todd outmanoeuvers and defeats all of the remaining soldiers, including Caine 607, who is finished off in hand-to-hand combat.

Panicking, Mekum orders his ship's crew, composed of Todd's old squad, to activate a portable nuclear device powerful enough to destroy the entire planet, then orders the ship to lift off before they are back on board. When Captain Church objects, Mekum shoots him in cold blood. Before they can take off as planned, Todd appears, and his old comrades, now recognizing him as the ranking officer as a side effect of their conditioning due to their dismissal by Mekum, silently side with him over the army that has discarded them. Todd and his comrades take over the ship, tossing Mekum and his aides out onto the planet, and evacuating the remaining colonists just as the bomb detonates.

Todd orders the ship to set course for the Trinity Moons, the colonists' original destination, then picks up Nathan and points to their new destination, while looking out upon the galaxy.

[edit] Blade Runner

Soldier was written by David Peoples, who co-wrote the script for Blade Runner. By his own admission, he considers Soldier to be a "sidequel"/spiritual successor to Blade Runner.^[2] It also obliquely references various elements of stories written by Philip K. Dick (who wrote the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, on which Blade Runner is based), or film adaptations thereof. A "Spinner" vehicle from Blade Runner can be seen in the wreckage on a junk planet that features in the film.^[3]

There are also several dialogue references to events such as "Tanhauser Gate" from Blade Runner.

Cast[link]

• Kurt Russell as Sgt. Todd
• Jason Scott Lee as Caine 607
• Jason Isaacs as Col. Mekum
• Connie Nielsen as Sandra
• Sean Pertwee as Mace
• Jared Thorne & Taylor Thorne as Nathan
• Mark Bringleson as Lt. Rubrick
• Gary Busey as Capt. Church
• K. K. Dodds as Lt. Sloan
• James R. Black as Riley
• Corbin Bleu as Johnny
• Mark De Alessandro as Goines
• Vladimir Orlov as Romero
• Carsten Norgaard as Green
• Duffy Gaver as Chelsey
• Brenda Wehle as Hawkins
• Michael Chiklis as Jimmy Pig
• Elizabeth Dennehy as Jimmy Pig's wife
• Paul Dillon as Slade

Production notes[link]

The script was 15 years old at the time of production.^[4]

Kurt Russell broke his ankle during the first week of shooting, so the entire production needed to be rescheduled. The film makers first shot scenes involving Russell lying down, followed by scenes of Russell sitting, Russell standing but not moving, and so on.^[4]

References to other works[link]

Among Todd's service records (both on computer screen display and on his arm), one can see:

• Combat history:
  • Battles of Tannhauser Gate and Shoulder of Orion (references to Blade Runner (1982), co-written by the same screenwriter)
  • Battle of Nibian Moon, Antares Maelstrom War (a reference to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)).
• Commendations:
  • "Plissken Patch" (a reference to Escape from New York (1981) and Escape from L.A. (1996))
  • "O'Neill Ring Award" (a reference to Stargate (1994))
  • "MacReady Cross" (a reference to The Thing (1982))
  • "Cash Medal of Bravery" (a reference to Tango & Cash (1989))
• Ordnance levels:
  • DOOM MKIV BFG (a reference to Doom)
  • USCM Smartgun (a reference to Aliens)

Reception[link]

Box office[link]

Soldier was a box-office flop. Shot with a budget of $60 million, it performed poorly during its theatrical run, earning only $14,594,226 domestically.^[1]

Critical reception[link]

The film received mostly negative reviews upon its release, currently holding a 10% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 51 reviews.^[5] It was mainly criticized for its lack of character development and predictable script, but praised for its action scenes. Bruce Westbrook of The Houston Chronicle commented that "the action is handled fairly well, but it's routine, and there's no satisfaction in seeing Todd waste men who are no more bloodthirsty than he is."^[6] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly criticized the film's overuse of genre clichés, saying "any cliché you can dream up for a futuristic action movie, any familiar big-budget epic you can think to rip off, Soldier has gotten there first."^[7] Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune described the film as "a big, clanging, brutal actioner in which we search the murk in vain for the sparks of humanity the moviemakers keep promising us."^[8]

Not all reviews were negative. Lisa Alspector of the Chicago Reader found the film to be enjoyable, calling Russell's performance "persuasive" and saying "this appealing formulaic action adventure displays a lot of conviction in its not-too-flashy action scenes and a little levity in the gradual socialization of Russell's character."^[9] Similarly, Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a rating of 3.5 out of 5 and called it "a potent comic-book-style action-adventure."^[8]

Home video releases[link]

Soldier was released on DVD on March 2, 1999. It was released as a double-sided disc, which included the widescreen version on one side, with fullscreen on the other. Included on the disc was a film commentary. Soldier was released on Blu-ray for the first time in USA on July 26, 2011.^[10]

Release in the United Kingdom[link]

This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (January 2012)

Soldier was one of a number of high profile Warner Bros. releases in the late nineties and mid-2000s to be released direct to video in the United Kingdom after underperforming at the box office Stateside.^{[citation needed]} While the film shares this dubious honour with titles such as Chill Factor ($34 Million) and Bait ($51 million), at $60 million Soldier was for a number of years the most expensive film of all time to be relegated to a video-only release^{[citation needed]}, up until the releases of 3000 Miles to Graceland in 2001 ($62 million) and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever ($70 million) in 2002.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Soldier at the Internet Movie Database
• Soldier at Rotten Tomatoes
• Soldier at Box Office Mojo
• WB-Soldier.com - The film's official site
• October 2, 1997 draft of the screenplay
• Special effects sequences for the film

Loreena McKennitt
Background information
Birth name	Loreena Isabel Irene McKennitt
Born	(1957-02-17) 17 February 1957 (age 55) Morden, Manitoba, Canada
Origin	Stratford, Ontario, Canada
Genres	Celtic, world, New Age
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, producer
Instruments	Voice, piano, harp, accordion
Years active	1985–present
Labels	Quinlan Road, Warner Bros., Verve Forecast/Universal
Website	quinlanroad.com

Loreena Isabel Irene McKennitt, CM, OM (born February 17, 1957) is a Canadian singer, composer, harpist, accordionist and pianist who writes, records and performs world music with Celtic and Middle Eastern themes. McKennitt is known for her refined, clear soprano vocals.^[1] She has sold more than 14 million records worldwide.^[2]

Early life[link]

McKennitt was born in Morden, Manitoba of Irish and Scottish descent to parents Jack (died 1992; a livestock dealer) and Irene McKennitt (1931-2011; a nurse). She moved to Stratford, Ontario in 1981, where she still resides.

When Loreena was young she wanted to become a veterinarian but she found that music chose her rather than she it.^[3] Developing a passion for Celtic music, she learned to play the Celtic harp and began busking at various places, including St. Lawrence Market in Toronto in order to earn money to record her first album.^[4]

Career[link]

McKennitt's first album, Elemental, was released in 1985, followed by To Drive the Cold Winter Away (1987), Parallel Dreams (1989), The Visit (1991), The Mask and Mirror (1994), A Winter Garden (1995), The Book of Secrets (1997), An Ancient Muse (2006), A Midwinter Night’s Dream (2008), and The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2010). All of her work is released under her own label, Quinlan Road.

In 1990, McKennitt provided the music for the National Film Board of Canada documentary The Burning Times, a feminist revisionist account of the Early Modern European witchcraft trials. The main theme would later be rerecorded by her and her band and called "Tango to Evora", a track that appears on her album The Visit.

In 1993, she toured Europe supporting Mike Oldfield. In 1995, her version of the traditional Irish song "Bonny Portmore" was featured in the Highlander series. McKennitt's single "The Mummers' Dance" received airplay in North American markets during the spring of 1997, and was used as the theme song for the short-lived TV series Legacy. It also saw use in the trailer for a wide-release 1998 Drew Barrymore film Ever After.^[5]

Her music appeared in the movies The Santa Clause, Soldier, Jade, Holy Man, The Mists of Avalon and Tinkerbell; and in the television series Roar, Due South, and Full Circle (Women and Spirituality).

Personal life[link]

In 1998, McKennitt's fiancé Ronald Rees, his brother Richard and their close friend Gregory Cook drowned during a boating accident on Georgian Bay. She was deeply affected by the event and subsequently founded the Cook-Rees Memorial Fund for Water Search and Safety in the same year.

At the time of the incident, she was working on a live album of two performances called Live in Paris and Toronto. The proceeds from this album were donated to the newly created memorial fund, totaling some three million dollars.^[6] After the release of the live album, McKennitt decided to substantially reduce the number of her public performances and did not release any new recordings until the studio album An Ancient Muse in 2006.

Honours[link]

• Juno Award, Best Roots/Traditional Album 1992, for The Visit.
• Juno Award, Best Roots/Traditional Album 1994, for The Mask and Mirror.
• Billboard Music Award for International Achievement, 1997.
• Headline performer for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at The Golden Jubilee Celebrations, Province of Manitoba, 2002.
• Honorary Doctor of Letters, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2002.
• Member of the Order of Manitoba, July 2003.
• Member of the Order of Canada, July 2004.
• Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Manitoba, June 2005
• Canadian Ambassador, Hans Christian Andersen Bicentennary, June 2005
• Honorary Doctor of Laws, Queen's University, October 2005
• Investiture as Honorary Colonel, 435 Transport and Rescue Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, December 2006
• Nominated for a Grammy award, Best Contemporary World Music Album, in 2007
• Western Canadian Music Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, September 2009
• Performed at Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, Opening Ceremonies, February 12, 2010
• Honorary Bachelor of Applied Business, George Brown College, June 2010

Genre and work[link]

This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this section if you can; the talk page may contain suggestions. (September 2011)

McKennitt's music has generally been classified as World / Celtic music even though it contains aspects and characteristics of music from around the globe and is sometimes classified as Folk music in record stores.^{[citation needed]}

Before McKennitt composes any music, she engages in considerable research on a specific subject which then forms the general concept of the album.^{[citation needed]} Before creating Elemental and Parallel Dreams, she traveled to Ireland for inspiration from the country's history, folklore, geography and culture. The album The Mask and Mirror was preceded by research in Spain where she engaged in studying Galicia, a Celtic section of Spain, along with its abundant Arabic roots.^{[citation needed]} The result was an album that included elements of Celtic and Arabic music. According to the jacket notes, her album An Ancient Muse was inspired by travels among and reading about the various cultures along the Silk Road.

McKennitt is compared to Enya,^{[citation needed]} but McKennitt's music is more grounded in traditional and classical invocations,^{[citation needed]} using literary works as sources of lyrics and springboards for interpretation such as "The Lady of Shalott" by Lord Tennyson, "Prospero's Speech" (the final soliloquy in William Shakespeare's The Tempest), "Snow" by Archibald Lampman, "Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross, Dante's Inferno, William Blake's "Lullaby", Yeats' "The Stolen Child", "The English Ladye and the Knight" by Sir Walter Scott and "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes.

Court case[link]

In 2005, McKennitt was involved in an acrimonious court case in Britain when her former friend and employee, Niema Ash, published a book that contained intimate details of their friendship. McKennitt argued that much of the book contained confidential personal information that Ash had no right to publish. The British courts found that there had indeed been a breach of confidence and a misuse of McKennitt's private information, and the case is likely to set important precedents in British law on the privacy of celebrities.^[7] The House of Lords affirmed the lower court's decisions in 2007.

2006 and later[link]

In September 2006, McKennitt performed live at the Alhambra. The performance premiered on PBS and in August 2007 was released on a three-disc DVD/CD set titled Nights from the Alhambra.

In 2008, McKennitt wrote and composed a song she titled "To The Fairies They Draw Near" as the theme song for Disney's direct-to-video animated film Tinker Bell. She also provided the narration for the film.^[8]

In early 2008, she returned to Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios to record A Midwinter Night’s Dream, an extended version of her 1995 mini-album A Winter Garden: Five Songs for the Season. The album was released on October 28, 2008.^[9]

Since the release of An Ancient Muse, Loreena has toured consistently, with a European and North American tour in the spring of 2007, an extensive cross Canada and United States tour in the fall of 2007, a summer tour of Europe in 2008 and a Mediterranean tour in the summer of 2009 with stops in Greece,^[10] Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, Hungary and Italy.

On September 17, 2009, McKennitt announced that she planned to release a two-disc album titled "A Mediterranean Odyssey" in the fall of 2009. The first CD, "From Istanbul to Athens," consisted of ten new live recordings made during McKennitt’s 2009 Mediterranean Tour, including songs she had never before recorded in concert. The second CD, "The Olive and the Cedar," had a Mediterranean theme which McKennitt herself curated. It contained previously released studio recordings created between the years of 1994 and 2006.

November 16, 2010 saw the US release (November 12 for Europe) of McKennitt's latest studio album, "The Wind That Shakes the Barley." Recorded at the Sharon Temple, Ontario, it consists of nine traditional Celtic songs. "Every once and again there is a pull to return to one's own roots or beginnings, with the perspective of time and experience, to feel the familiar things you once loved and love still," says Loreena.

Documentaries[link]

Late in the 1990s, McKennitt created No Journey's End, a half-hour documentary, for American television. In it, she discussed the influences behind her music. No Journey's End contained excerpts from several songs from the albums Parallel Dreams, The Visit, and The Mask and Mirror. It also shows live performances of the songs "The Lady of Shalott," "Santiago," and "The Dark Night of the Soul." It was later released on DVD and VHS, the former also containing music videos for "The Mummers' Dance" and "The Bonny Swans." A bonus copy of the DVD was included with the 2004 remastered versions of McKennitt's CDs.

In 2008, Loreena released A Moveable Musical Feast, based on her 2007 An Ancient Muse tour. The DVD included interviews with Loreena, her band, crew, fans and professional colleagues from the Canadian music industry.

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

Live albums[link]

Compilations[link]

EPs[link]

Boxed sets[link]

• The Journey Begins (2008)

Singles[link]

Videos[link]

• H.M.S. Pinafore Live performance recorded during the 1981 Stratford Festival in Stratford Ontario, Canada, starring Michael Burgess, Katherine Terrell, Eric Donkin, Kenneth Pearl, Jim White, et al.; Loreena McKennitt performed in the chorus. (CBC VHS 1986)
• The Mummers' Dance (1997)
• The Bonny Swans
• Nights from the Alhambra (2007, Live concert in Spain premiered on PBS)^[22]
• A Moveable Musical Feast (2008, A tour documentary from Loreena's 2007 North American Tour)^[22]

Other[link]

• No Journey’s End (half-hour profile, aired on PBS; DVD)
• Heaven on Earth (TV Movie 1987 - played "Lady Traveler")
• Highlander III (Soundtrack contribution)
• The Santa Clause (Soundtrack contribution, "The Bells of Christmas")
• Léolo (Soundtrack contribution)
• Una casa con vista al mar (Soundtrack contribution)
• The Mists Of Avalon (Soundtrack use)
• The Burning Times (Soundtrack contribution)
• Due South (Soundtrack use)
• Northern Exposure (Soundtrack use)
• Tinker Bell (Direct to DVD movie, 2008 - Narrator)
• Soldier (Soundtrack use)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Loreena McKennitt

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Loreena McKennitt

• Official website
• Loreena McKennitt interview from the echoes public radio show