Young Warriors

Trying to have the time of your life, only to have tragedy to ruin it. That happened when a group of punks attacked a young couple, killing the boyfriend, and the girl getting gang raped. That causes the brother and his friends since high school to take action against crime. Angry with all the "red tape", the group became vigilantes. Since they couldn't wait to get justice for his sister murder, the quad-squad go on a manhunt to find the murderers, only to become murderers themselves. During a robbery at a liquor store, they kill the culprits which one of them is a girl who was carrying a toy gun. It was a tragedy, but she was hanging out with the wrong people, and look what it got her. Standing up to crime is good, but going too far has its consequences. Another 80's cheese, and enjoyed it very much. Has Ernest Borgnine, "Shaft" star, Richard Roundtree, Tom Reilly who was fresh off from "CHiPs", and the star, James Van Patten of the Van Patten family. Good for a rainy day. 2 out of 5 stars.

Where do I begin as I really don't know. I came out of this film as blindly as I went into it.

First we have comedy (I think that's what it was meant to be), then we have heinous crimes, then we have love and then vigilanteism. As I haven't a clue as to what genre this is really meant to be I've had to refer to the film page here to tell me. It says it's a crime/action. OK, crime I can go with as it was a crime to release it but where is the action? I've seen more action in a documentary about pot plants!

The fact that this sorry tale enlisted the help of Ernest Borgnine and Richard Roundtree made it even more painful to watch and knowing they were in it was the only reason I looked at it to start with. I came out of it almost bereft and spent the whole time looking for some decent acting.

Someone ought to tell the scriptwriter that you cannot put horrendous crime, no matter how badly acted, into what can only be classed as a farcical romp into the world of crime-fighting by young guys who fancy themselves as Charles Bronson wannabes.

My lasting impression on this will be my own disbelief at how I managed to sit through this. (1/10)

One line angrily spouted from an acting great, in this enjoyable typical 80's pic, is that 'Violence Only leads to more violence'. Words were never, any more true, than in Young Warriors, a film could be a great anti vengeance movie, as pretty much this message is telegraphed through the duration. Granted YW is a well made action film, but just seems very 80's cliched now, with some predictability, the main one from a character who provides one of the sickly bloody demises YW is very violent, and the bad guys are real dredgy scum here. But the standout is Van Pattern. Whose character is a repellant, hyped up teen psycho, and oxi moron, hellbent on avenging the brutal rape and murder of his younger sister, another violent scene. I hated his character so much, I'll never be able to get the name, Kevin out of my mind. And what is Ernest Borgnine doing in this, as Kevin's very wisen Dad, who is, get this, a Detective, where angry, adrenaline fueled Van Pattern and mates, are interrupting and sabotaging their case with their wild, and amateur antics, but the latter is who you would call, if you really wanted the job done. Borgnine ,must of really been desperate. Get this, the sexy Lynda Day George plays Borgnine's wife. Very 80's, but Kevin's non fetchng persona brings the film down a bit, and very much resembles the cop character, in the b movie, Deathflash.

This movie was just average. Some scenes were good and some were just plain stupid! A well supported cast though and some good action. The best actor in this movie is definetely Anne Lockhart from the T.V. series "Battlestar Galactica." Cast also features "Mission: Impossible's" Lynda Day George, Mike Norris (Chuck's brother) and a supporting role by cult actress Linnea Quigley as Ginger(lookin' good!), who only appears in a few, but good scenes. There's also a one violent rape scene by a vicious gang which was well done! Savage Streets did a movie like this a year later (which also featured Quigley, but the role was bigger and better), except it was alot better than this movie! Some of the scene's in this movie was filmed in my hometown.

Normally I hate 80's action movies, but this one was written and directed by anti-auteur Lawrence Foldes, so I knew that, although it would no doubt be completely incompetently made, it would also violate all the tedious clichés and formulas of the genre (not to mention all the boundaries of good taste), and I certainly wasn't disappointed. This starts out as a typical dumb frat comedy (with some surprisingly homoerotic pranks and hazing rituals). Then in a change of tone so sudden it might give you whiplash, the younger sister of one the fraternity guys is brutally and graphically raped and murdered by a gang of bikers. The cops won't do anything as usual, which is very odd since they are represented here by the father of the hero and the murdered girl (Ernest Borgnine)and his partner Shaft, I mean, Richard Roundtree. The brother becomes a vigilante and very implausibly gets his beer-drinking, good-time frat buddies to join him, even though he gets almost all of them killed. But you see they're all graduates of Foldes infamous "Malibu High" of which this movie is completely unrelated sequel.

Unlike most of the action movies made during the happy fascism of the Reagan era this movie definitely doesn't glorify "make-my-day" vigilantism, but is more in the spirit of harrowing 1970's rape-revenge movies like "Last House on the Left". But any message this movie might have about "digging two graves" when you go seeking revenge is lost in the jaw-droppingly incompetent narrative and film-making (my favorite scene is when the protagonist gets in an argument about violence with his philosophy professor and emphasizes his point by throwing his desk through a window).

Unlike in his previous films, Foldes has quite a cast on hand here. Besides Borgnine and Roundtree, Lynda Day George plays the protagonist's mother. Linnea Quigley also makes an appearance as one of several girls whose sole function seems to be to strip off and substantiate that the male characters are not actually gay. The lead is also interesting given that he is the son of Dick Van Patton from TV's "Eight is Enough". Recommended, but for all the wrong reasons.