I love this movie so much

To me, this movie is perfection.

Admirable film.

The acting in this movie is really good.

As far as incredibly lame and shameless cheapo rip-offs of the almighty "Predator" are concerned, this astonishingly appalling dud rates as one of the all-time most blatant and laughable. A visibly worn-out Kevin Sorbo gives up the ghost early on and phones it in as the rugged leader of a ragtag group of special ops soldiers, Bookeem Woodbine goes way above and beyond the call of basic B-movie duty with his usual reliable solid pro work as the happy-go-lucky Jackie (yep, once again poor Bokeem buys ranch; has this guy ever done a film in which he's still alive at the end?), and petite blonde Heather Marie Marsden sure looks cute, but fails to convince as the scrappy'n'spunky token hot chick. Worse yet, Don Garcia's flat (non)direction fails to generate any much-needed tension or excitement, the Predator clone is some beefy guy covered in clunky metal stuff that appears to have been scrounged up from a local junkyard, the cheesy CGI and tacky gore are downright painful to behold, we've got clumsy use of slow motion, the members of Sorbo's crew are all a bunch of unlikable one-note macho meatheads, the jungle locations were apparently shot in somebody's backyard, the hopelessly derivative by-the-numbers script offers zero surprises, the redundant rattling score grates on the nerves something harsh, and the climactic fight between Sorbo and the cyborg super soldier is staged with all the finesse of an amateur back alley boxing match. The competent and energetic cinematography by Jim Lands makes this bilge look far better than it deserves to. A real stinker.

Kevin Sorbo (who couldn't look more bored) leads a team of commandos (take one look at them and you'll wonder just what Sorbo finds so valuable about them) into a black ops covert assignment to find two scientists and a few military men running into "terrorists" (they aren't especially frightening) and a cyborg human killing machine. Ripping off direct scenes from The Jason Bourne Trilogy, Predator, and Universal Soldier, "Flesh Wounds" is a cheap, unsatisfactory, wretched sci-fi action movie with heroes that look handpicked from a suburban neighborhood while they were playing videogames. "Wanna be in my movie?" "Sure." Sorbo just cannot muster any inspiration and he is normally reliable even in pretty bad syfy channel stinkbombs. With television credentials (Hercules & Andromeda) that are positive for his career, "Flesh Wounds" does the poor guy no favors. Bokeem Woodbine does what he can with his "I don't give a rat's ass what you think of me, I'm my own man and will do whatever I damn well please" fearless soldier routine who is even given a hero's demise not shown on screen (unlike the others who are blown apart by Universal Soldier with his laser blaster) as a token to his "cool cred". The Universal Soldier, like Bourne, thought he was doing good for his country, turned into Universal Soldier, and moves around the Caribbean forest (it looks like most of the movie was shot in my backyard forest) mostly hidden in an invisibility cloak, looking at Sorbo's bunch through a particularly "hi-tech" (more like hi-tacky) lens aping Predator embarrassingly (there is even the scene where the soldiers start shooting blindly at the forest after one of their own is killed, and Universal Soldier "repairs malfunctions" which has him screaming out in agony; oh, brother). A female tags along, much to the males' bemusement (Sorbo is especially unfriendly towards her), as she represents government bureaucracy, but eventually holds her own when the time comes. Even the finale when Sorbo and Universal Soldier square off, it ends with the hero having his way with the cyborg human a bit too easily. Just skip this and watch Predator, Universal Soldier, and the Bourne movies instead.

...but it just had its moments that redeem it somewhat and save it from the rubbish bin of cinematic history.Let me be blunt: As a combat and long-term Army veteran, nothing pisses me off more than seeing incorrectly worn or cobbled together uniforms. This was full of them. From the Colonel wearing small US Marine rank on an Army uniform as well as two unit patches on his right sleeve, to the oaf wearing the Sergeant Major rank with a cobbled together uniform. That's usually the kiss of death for a film as far as I'm concerned. I won't watch it any further. I find it personally offensive, if you can believe that.Then you have the tough-guy clandestine unit. Rag-tags with long hair and bad attitudes fighting amongst themselves. Doesn't happen in a real special ops unit. Fighting between the members is quickly dealt with and usually winds up in a transfer to another unit for the aggressor.Having said this, the action was good and special effects were above average with a few exceptions. One was the suicide headshot at the end where the blood spray clearly comes from the side of the door across the viewing window. The other was one of the baseball grenades that was thrown and the explosion clearly occurs to the right of it. lots of technical goof-ups like that.The other thing that really rustled my jimmies was the smart-mouthed female who insists on joining the group as part of her mission. Seriously, anyone, male or female, who tries to jump in with a crack unit and runs their mouths like that to the unit CO, is going to more than likely get beat to a bloody pulp and left behind. Pity it didn't happen here. In my opinion, she added little or nothing to the movie.The movie premise is possibly real enough: find a terrorist organization that is training in the wilderness. Then the group finds that the organization is using US supplied weapons. There is more! The real reason is that a killer cyborg has escaped and is running loose in the jungle there with enough state-of-the-art equipment to render it invisible. The predictable slaughter happens, but in some innovative ways! This is a rip-off of the Predator series with a twist to the plot. Plain and simple.In summary, lots of things to make you hate the movie, but then there's just enough to keep your interest. It's a 3-beer and half-a-pizza kind of movie for a rainy weekend afternoon when you've nothing else to do.

This isn't exactly a master-piece. But it's not quite the opposite, either. There is some kind of story. There are some kind of characters, among them and foremost a world-weary, disillusioned black-ops guy, portrayed by Kevin Sorbo in a most convincing manner. There even is some kind of acting by more people than just Kevin Sorbo.None of this is really very much fleshed-out, everything is a tad disjointed and quite... trashy in terms of production value. Which I suspect pretty much hits the nail: it's yet another remake of Predator, suffering from all of the original's problems as well as lack of money.But there sure are worse things out there to kill 82 minutes with.