Bullet Points: The Soldier

Ken Wahl had some quality action movies to his credit, like Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr and The Taking of Beverly Hills. Despite that fact, he remains an unsung hero in the action movie world.

Part of the reason is Wahl never had that huge breakout action movie, instead his biggest success came on the small screen on the CBS series, Wiseguy. The crime drama series took Wahl out of the movie game for three years… three years during the height of the big action movie blockbusters.

But the biggest reason Wahl remains an unsung action hero is because Wahl got out of the acting game back in 1996. In this “out of sight, out of mind” world it is not surprising that more action movie fans aren’t praising Wahl’s work or in some cases are even aware he ever existed.

I am about to make everyone aware of another entry on Ken Wahl’s action movie resume, 1982’s The Soldier…

• The City of Brotherly Love?: Ken Wahl is a special agent and leader of a five man unit that works for the Central Intelligence Agency. Wahl’s character is only known by his code name… The Soldier. The Soldier answers only to the Head of the C.I.A. We get to see Soldier and his team in action (including Steve James) with effectiveness and efficiency. Unless you were there to see it, there was absolutely no evidence that four automatic gun toting KGB agents were shot dead on the streets of Philadelphia as Soldier and his team leave no traces behind. This served as a great introduction to The Soldier and company and their skill level.
• Geopolitical Machinations: The KGB’s ranks may be a little thinner thanks to The Soldier but they are just getting started. Led by Ivan (and his cool gun up the sleeve), a rogue group of KGB agents manages to hijack at weapons grade plutonium shipment on United States soil… they then travel to Saudi Arabia, where they have used the plutonium to create a bomb and plant it in Saudi Arabia’s biggest oil field. These KGB rogues have made it known they will detonate the bomb and contaminate more than fifty percent of the world’s oil supply UNLESS the Israelis pull out of the West Bank… but the Israelis have no intentions of budging which is going to force the United States to have to make some tough decisions. The President of the United States immediately calls the Head of the C.I.A.

• It’s All Downhill From Here: Soldier is now on a mission that first takes him to Austria where he’ll meet up with an old Russian contact of his named Dracha (Klaus Kinski, The Great Silence). If anyone will know exactly where the KGB guys have planted the bomb, Dracha would. Soldier tracks down Dracha at an Austrian ski resort and instead of getting info about where exactly the bomb has been planted, Dracha sets up Soldier, locking him in a ski cable car and making him a sitting duck for a bazooka attack (and then Klaus’ Dracha completely disappears from the film)… Soldier manages to escape the cable car and an awesome Bond-esque downhill ski chase quickly follows. Things unravel even more for Soldier after he makes his way to the United States Consulate in West Berlin to contact his boss. After the ski resort fiasco, a paranoid Soldier is not in a trusting mood so he sneaks into the consulate makes his call to his boss but it is interrupted by the Marines in charge of security… well that and the fact that his boss is blown up on the other end of the line!

• Reunited: With his one point of contact eliminated, Soldier now finds himself as a man without a country and being chased by the Marines on the streets of West Berlin… the chase ends with Soldier crashing the gates of the Israeli Consulate. It is there that Soldier is reunited with an old flame/colleague Susan Goodman. We don’t get too deep into the romance or past history between Soldier and Susan, but with the clock ticking on when the bomb will be detonated and when the United States plans on forcing the Israelis off the West Bank, it would not have made much sense to devote too much time to that subplot. Susan does take part in one of my favorite scenes later in the movie when she and The Soldier jump their car over The Berlin Wall!
• Use the Force: The Soldier may be a man without a country, but he is not a man without a team! While Soldier and Susan are doing their thing in Germany, Soldier has his team led by Steve James’ unnamed character (all the members of The Soldier’s team are listed as “The Soldier’s Force” ) take control of a Strategic Air Command site in Kansas giving The Soldier a leg up on the competition. But the real Steve James highlight in The Soldier is when he gets in a bar room brawl (complete with Steve making Bruce Lee sounds) with some rednecks at a local honky-tonk.

There is a lot to love about The Soldier and I actually thought it was the weakest of the Ken Wahl movies I’ve seen. Not sure if that’s an indictment of The Soldier or praise for Wahl’s other films, but I do know The Soldier is definitely worth watching.

And I know these Bonus Bullet Points are definitely worth reading…

• Familiar Face: William Prince played the President in The Soldier. I remembered Prince from his work in The Gauntlet and my personal favorite Ken Wahl movie, the aforementioned The Taking of Beverly Hills.
• If You Ever: …wanted to see Steve James dressed up like a ninja, sneak up on a sleeping Ken Wahl, then The Soldier is the movie for you.
• Self Promotion: The Soldier was directed by James Glickenhaus (The Exterminator). The action sequence at the ski resort is actually in the movie theater scene in another Glickenhaus film, Shakedown.
• Missed Opportunity: There is a mud wrestling scene in The Soldier, but Gene LeBell was not the referee.