Soldier Boyz

Another Michael Dudikoff movie that I had never heard about, and thus of course never seen. But as I had the opportunity to sit through a heap of old 1980s and 1990s movies, I had the opportunity to watch "Soldier Boyz". And of course I opted to do so, on account of it being a movie that I was not already familiar with, nor actually seen. So in a way, I suppose writer Darryl Quarles and director Louis Morneau had every opportunity to entertain me.

Writer Darryl Quarles put together an insanely laughable plot here. I mean, a group of prisoners venturing to Vietnam to rescue some girl, and if they succeed there are full presidential pardons awaiting them, some of the worst inmates in the prison, yeah, that was a very good idea. And you take a bunch of gang members, killers and other such filth of society, pull them from prison and expect them to function as a military unit, and guess what, they just magically knew how to function like a highly trained military squad, who knew? I just guess realism was a concept that Darryl Quarles was not familiar with. There is no limit to the headshaking going on when you sit down to watch this.

Now, I am sure that writer Darryl Quarles was fully intent on being serious when he wrote the script for this movie, and I am sure that director Louis Morneau meant for this to be taken as a serious war movie. But you can't help but chuckle at the goofy storyline and how far out there it really was.

And it just made zero sense that the local Vietnamese people would communicate in English during the shootout scene.

Aside from leading actor Michael Dudikoff, the only familiar face on the cast list was Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, whom they had portraying a Vietnamese person in the movie.

Despite the questionable plot, then the movie was actually entertaining enough. There was a good amount of action and shooting which made the movie all the more enjoyable to sit through.

"Soldier Boyz" is definitely not without its flaws, not to mention a silly title. But the movie was actually oddly entertaining for the cheesy, campy rubbish that it was.

My rating of director Louis Morneau's 1995 movie "Soldier Boyz" lands on a four out of ten stars.

The plot is not new, but also not uninteresting. Ok, we have not much tension here and the intellectual level is very low, but SoldierBoyz delivers lots of action and jungle-combat. SoldierBoyz lives from action and violence, plot and acting are unimportant. Worth to see, when you want action, not more. **** out of ********** stars

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.

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.

Michael Dudikoff cares for delinquents… these are violent delinquents, who he would like to give a second chance to and if they choose to accept; freedom is there if they come back alive. Killers, rapists and psychotics of different backgrounds. And hey some are innocent. Hell he even negotiates a deal for 10 million dollars to a youth group. You know conning out the money of a rich tycoon who tries to hire him to rescue his daughter who has been kidnapped while doing aid work in Vietnam. So Dudikoff (who's in prison, but we never know why --- maybe it had something to do with the death of his wife and child in a drive-by shooting?) goes about picking a ragtag group of delinquent prisoners to go gangster and popping caps (you'll know what I mean when you see certain gunfire sequences) in the jungles of Vietnam. Watch as they bicker at each other, train their butts out and have a little hand-to-hand combat with the almighty Dudikoff. This is to prepare them to take on character actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tarawa (doing his usual viper shtick), his army and that helicopter. The whole thing is ridiculously obtuse and macho, but this routine b-grade in-and-out rescue mission entertains in sort of a teen version of "The Dirty Dozen". Be it from its trite script to paper-thin story and stereotypical characters looking to redeem themselves in some clichéd shape. However at least it moves at a quick pace, it's competently staged in its stunt work and there's a gratuitous amount of bloody action and hysteric slow motion. Sometimes comical and sloppy, but it's indeed gratuitous. And plus you got to have explosions. As it packs enough at the end. Too bad the climatic showdown comes to really nothing.

"I am the people."