Soldier Boyz

Michael Dudikoff (In a not so appealing haircut)stars as a prison warden named Tolliver who lets out six prisoners to do a dirty dozen style rescue, mainly a V.I.P's daughter who has been abducted by communist Vietnamese soldiers (Ah, isn't the cold war over, guess not.) along the way Dudikoff a former soldier trains the prisoners and leads the attack on Vinh Moc (Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa) in this lively actioner which although stupid at least offers the action with a good amount of flair. Indeed when compared to Dudikoff's duds like Crash Drive and Moving Target this comes off as a vast improvement. Still the story is undeniably silly and Dolph Lundgren's "Men Of War" did this type of story much better. Although sadly the 60's song "Soldier Boy" doesn't play once during the movie.

2.5/5 Matt Bronson

I doubt the concept of this movie would work in real life. A group of delinquents are recruited by Michael Dudikoff for a dangerous mission in Vietnam, forming a dirty half dozen (as the film was advertised). Despite the unbelievable go-point, the movie's pretty good, and does a good job creating the feeling of a hostile and deadly war area with dire consequences for the people who go there. One interesting element of this movie was watching Dudikoff acting with a cast of younger actors, and knowing his real-life passion for spending time with children, it makes one feel that he really believes in these kids despite the screw-ups they had made in their lives. The action is violent and bloody, but is needed and works in effectively creating a believable war zone. I like the fact the teens aren't all pretty-faced kids off the streets of Beverly Hills, as would probably be the case if it was made today. Fans of movies like THE DIRTY DOZEN and UNCOMMON VALOR should give this one a look.

What we have here is yet another version of the formula that became popular with the making of "The Dirty Dozen" (though we have fewer soldiers in this movie, probably due to the low budget.) It could have been an entertaining version of the formula, but "Solider Boyz" utterly fails. To begin with, the setup is ludicrous - would a millionaire whose daughter was kidnapped allow the lead soldier he hires to have a bunch of TEENAGERS who have almost no combat experience? (Why not hire professional mercenaries?) And there are other silly things like the fact the teenagers only get about ONE DAY of training! Plus, there are plenty of clichés, such as when one solider steps on a land mine and needs to be saved from it exploding.

The movie might have been made tolerable with some good action sequences, but the action sequences in this movie are horrible. All they are basically is shots of people firing guns towards the camera, over and over. It looks lazy and cheap, and so is much of the rest of the movie. The jungle locations look skimpy, and some scenes seem to be hastily shot, like when the millionaire's daughter is captured. As you can see, "Soldier Boyz" has problems going far beyond bad spelling.

This movie was quite OK, not bad or good. It's about a billionaires daughter (Nicole Hansen) that are kidnapped in Vietnam by a terrorist grup led by Vinh Moc (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa). A former major (Michael Dudikoff) are asked to being sent down there to find her, he does it if he are allowed to bring six prisoners and that they will be free after the operation (if they survive). One thing that is bad is that they choice following prisoners. A nazi-guy (Channon Roe), a female murderer (Jacqueline Obradors), a black mass murderer called the Monster (Cedrik Terrell), an innocent murderer that can fight (David Barry Gray), and one black man and one latino that wants to kill each other (Tyrin Turner and Demetrius Navarro). The movie makers choosed this because making the movie characters so tough as possible. But no one in the world would choose murderers and revenging people and put them together for a rescue mission and then release them if they survived.

And why do they have to have a women in the team. I'm not against women in movies or in tougher character roles, but I don't think you need a women in every war-movie just because you wants to show that you are not against women in war.

But the movie works because it has action. But that this kind of movie tries to put in some message about women being discriminated and humiliated by man is awful. If a movie can't handle the basic story and get some descent actors then no one cares about the message.

But as an action-flick its OK.

It seems that most of the viewers have the same idea about this one...pretty good, but there were some major problems. I'll admit, anytime this one comes on cable, I'm usually watching it, but the technical gaffs, and continuity errors are still annoying. The worst part of the movie? When the lead actress playing the kidnapped "Gabrielle" (GAB-REE-EL), mispronounces her own character's name, saying "Gabriel" (GAA-BREE-EL). Not surprising we haven't seen this actress in much else. But if you're bored one night, catch this one on cable. It's somewhat exciting.