Solo

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Written by ktp

Solo:  An autistic super-soldier’s journey into the power of family, laughter, and violence.

You can ultimately blame this movie and all like it on Universal Soldier which started this silly ass genre of the super-soldier with the heart of gold. People tried to replicate it forgetting that Van Damme and Lundgren’s rivalry is what made it great. These same people managed to create the script for Solo, rubbing their hands together so impressed by their own bullshit that they slowly pushed the script to Mario Van Peebles with shit eating grins. With Highland: The Final Dimension and Posse under his belt, I imagine that he looked at the script, shrugged, and said, “Fuck it, why not?” The rest is movie history. It’s a shame really that while Kurt Russell’s Soldier manages to whistle and walk the other way, Solo takes the fall for having a rep for being the shittiest. That’s what you get for doing handsprings in the middle of a firefight.

"My programming tells me to destroy all 90's fashion and do sweet flips."

Solo (Mario Van Peebles) is a cybernetic super-soldier on a mission to fuck shit up in Anywhere, Central America fighting local guerrillas. His first mission has him attempting to blow up an air field, but has a malfunction (conscience) after seeing civilians in harms way. This pisses not only the General in charge of the project, but Colonel Madden who doesn’t like Solo and is the resident asshole for the rest of the film. Bill Stewart (Adrian Brody) tries to fix his damage from the mission and ponders why the hell he’s drawing so many spiders like an 8th grader. After he finds out that his personality is getting wiped, he throws up them deuces, steals a chopper, and hangs out with a small village for the rest of his time. There he learns how to laugh, the importance of family, and how to lie like a dirty child. He manages to save the village from attacks from the guerrillas and U.S. military alike by doing a bunch of sweet flips and ramming poles in peoples’ chests. He even gets to kill Solo Mk. II which looks just like the asshole Colonel. Adrian Brody also dies like a bitch.

"Thank you padre for letting me wear this tablecloth. It makes my pecks sexy."

I don’t think this movie would be able to be made today with all the autism awareness bumper stickers all over the place. I kept expecting Peebles to start asking the villagers if they want to join his Minecraft server or explain why the Japanese katana is the greatest weapon ever made. He is embarrassingly blatant with this autism acting that it almost connects in the scariest sense. Autistic super-soldier loses his shit after developing a conscience (not taking Zyprexa), managing connections with people while having no social skills, and going on a fucking murderous rampage at the end of it all. Would you invite Solo into your house for any reason? Nope. Just remember that April 2nd is autism awareness day.

"Wanna know how good your movie is, Solo? You don't get to save a hot girl at the end of this. Instead, you get to stop me from using this annoying little shit as a human pinata."

Miraculously, most of the cast came out of that mess relatively unscathed. Van Peebles continues to churn out B roles in TV and straight to DVD films. To Barry Corbin and William Sandler, it was business as usual continuing to play the same characters to this day. Maybe it was a twist of fate, or the star aligned, or some dark ritual took place, but Adrian Brody is the only one who managed to rocket out of that shit show with could be considered great success. After playing around with a piano in World War II, he managed to play a believable badass hunting down Predators. I guess at the end of the day, the story of the super-autistic super-soldier Solo wasn’t career wrecking.