As I sat down in 2022 to watch the 2019 action sci-fi movie "The Wheel" (aka "2099: The Soldier Protocol"),it was without ever having heard about this movie from writer James S. Abrams and director Dee McLachlan. But the movie's cover was interesting enough, and David Arquette is an adequate enough actor, and with it being a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to sit down to watch it.

And let me just say that writer James S. Abrams certainly didn't manage to produce a script and storyline that offered much of any entertainment or enjoyment to my liking. The storyline was so simplistic that it was actually boring to watch. I mean, a guy trapped in a room with some experimentation done on him, and him having to brawl through more and more guards just hardly substituted proper entertainment for me.

The narrative takes forever to get you from nowhere to nowhere. Yeah, there simply were no forward momentum in this movie.

And the movie's cover with the dystopian snow cityscape was downright false advertisement.

The acting performances in "The Wheel" were dubious and sluggish at best, and even David Arquette seemed to be not even bothering putting in much of an effort here. But of course, with such a lacking script and storyline, who could blame the actors and actresses.

"The Wheel" is not a movie that I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on.

My rating of this slow paced and essentially pointless storyline of a movie lands on a two out of ten stars.

Understanding that The Wheel is a low - budget, Australian made variant on The Universal Soldier type theme, which kind of succeeds in spite of obvious production drawbacks, may assist potential viewers in deciding whether to watch it or not.

On the downside, it's one of those increasingly common films, that are just terribly lit from the somewhat irrelevant prologue, which doesn't involve the major characters, to the more interesting ending. The film is clearly designed to appeal to a martial arts type audience, but lead actor Jackson Gallagher, whose dramatic performance is quite competent, is no Van Damme fighting skills or charisma - wise. On top of this, many of the action scenes, leaving aside the murky lighting, are filmed in close - up, with choppy editing.

On the plus side Gallagher, does develop a certain chemistry with female lead Kendal Rae, in the second half of the film, where circumstances, see their characters, thrown together. I notice others in this forum have been quick to criticise Rae, but its her performance as disbarred medico, Dr Alison Turner, that really makes The Wheel for me. She is able to realistically transition from creepy experimental, out there scientist, early in the film, to a woman seemingly regaining large doses of humanity, in the third act, which also includes a couple of perhaps unexpected, storyline twists which enhanced the predictable super - soldier narrative for me.

David Arquette is "the regulation name Hollywood actor", in a supporting role, to purely try to attract North American audiences to this independent feature. But the acting heavy lifting is done (and achieved IMO),by the 2 younger leads.

The Wheel is nothing spectacular, but I'm always interested in seeing how well these low budget sci - fi types succeed in creating their stories, derivative or not. In my view, The Wheel, which optimistically, sets up the ground for a sequel, that will likely never happen, gives itself a fair old nudge in the right direction.

So, we have a research facility in a secluded place where this evil corporation is performing tests with human subjects. They recruit a doctor who was expelled because she did something nasty to resus monkeys in her own experiments. They put her monitoring a subject who is a former (american) football player and a convicted man who became paraplegic after an "accident" in prison. This guy has an unusual genetic makeup, so they want him for testing their evil nanoparticle-thingamabob designed to create super-soldier. So there you have it: the plot can only account for 10 minutes of film, so they had to dill the other 70 minutes with idiotic BS and lame fight scenes. Only thing good in this movie is the production design. Great job, probably with near-zero budget. Everything else is really shoddy, with the exception of the lead who turns out to be a casting error because he is the only one who actually delivers: everyone else is a dud. Bottom line: skip this and find something more interesting to do for 80 minutes, like watching the grass grow.