User reviews

To most, Dolph Lundgren isn't the best of movie performance material. It also doesn't help when a fairly well known actor goes into hiding by making hit or miss films because of outside problems. What's odd though, is that Dolph Lundgren hasn't had any publicity issues. And if he has, it's been well covered up because there have been no reports about it. You would think that after making popular films like Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991) and Universal Soldier (1992), he would have continued to make big hit screen movies like his other muscle counterparts. Instead Lundgren went into an almost two decade absence on the big screen.

So, because this movie was released in 2003, this is half way through his absence. At this point he was making Direct-to-Video films and Detention (2003) is one of these. Problem is, it didn't do anything for me. Even worse is that the title only exists because of the setting that its in. The story is about a group of criminals who break into a school to get a vanload of cocaine out of the country. And the only man that will get in their way is a gym/history teacher who's holding a detention after school. His name is Sam Decker (Dolph Lundgren).

This already doesn't sound very promising. Here's what works, which isn't all too much. If you (the viewer) want to see Dolph Lundgren play a role that is in his genre but dressed like he's going to work at a cubical, this is it. It's very interesting to see Lundgren be a character without armor and big weapons. Another notable part of this movie is the supporting cast. Even though they aren't memorable characters, they do carry some charm because of how various individuals act in different situations.

One actor who I found to be putting a lot of effort to make his character stand out was Alex Karzis as the main villain. A lot of the time Karzis would make strange gestures, faces or remarks that made me look at the screen and say (while chuckling) - "What was the point of that?" But hey, it kept my attention. The only other piece that worked in this movie was the music by Amin Bhatia. But even that I don't favor all too much because there was no theme, even if the music sounded average. It did lose me now and then so ehhh.

Now to the bad. In all honesty, there was a very thin story. The premise is just a setup for Dolph Lundgren to go jumping through windows and shooting handguns. There is a little bit of a flash back that involves post traumatic stress but is only to be given away one more time for a brief moment to reveal a connection. What's even weirder is that even when this movie doesn't have much of a story to go by, it manages to drag itself at various intervals. Which brings me to the last point, the action was very sporadic. It really wasn't present all too much. It felt very diluted, which I think is rare for a Dolph Lundgren movie.

I'm also going to guess that the direction to this movie wasn't great since it was headed by Sidney J. Furie, the director of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). It's hard to say. I was on the fence for this one. It doesn't please me like most of Lundgren's movies but it doesn't disappoint that badly either. I hope I don't run into anymore Lundgren movies like this.

It offers a few interesting concepts but its concentration is lacking. Its cast also tries to show some charm but its script and minimal action provide little to work with.

Detention is like a cross between "The Breakfast Club" and "Die Hard", only without the character development of the former or the special effects budget of the latter. The result is surprisingly entertaining and often wonderfully tasteless. In short, Detention is one of the better lightweight action movies to hit video shelves in some time.

Dolph Lundgren has spent the past few years mainly appearing in relatively gritty low budget action films like his directorial debut "The Defender" and its follow up, "The Mechanik". While I enjoyed both of those films, it comes as a nice surprise to see Dolph appear in something as stupidly entertaining as Detention. Make no mistake about it - this film is dumb in a very big way. You could get a bad case of RSI from writing down all the goofs and plot holes. However, what it lacks in credibility, the film more than makes up for in enthusiasm and an almost 1980s approach to action. There are very few dull computer effects here, just a lot of old fashion shootings and a couple of decent explosions.

The story involves Dolph's character, Sam, struggling with his disillusionment as a teacher at an inner city high school. Sam decides to resign but is asked to supervise detention on his last day. Unfortunately for Sam, he finds himself locked in the school building with a bunch of his delinquent students and an incredibly camp and violent crime boss called Chester. Conveniently, Sam is an ex-soldier and he calls on his military training to fight the intruders. The story is as clichéd and derivative as it sounds. Nevertheless, it allows Dolph to flex his action hero muscles and provides plenty of opportunities for senseless violence.

Detention benefits greatly from an undercurrent of black humour and a touch of irony. The characters are all pretty amusing, from the crack smoking, foul mouthed students, to Chester and his woeful to the point of being funny one-liners. The film also contains one of the funniest and most ridiculous chase scenes ever captured on film when one of the bad guys chases a wheelchair bound student (Dov Tiefenbach in another interesting role) on a motorbike. Sam's ability to turn a trolley into a metal covered battering ram, complete with metallic spikes, in a matter of minutes is similarly mind boggling.

The special effects are generally pretty basic but there is enough blood and shooting to keep action fans happy. Sidney J. Furie's direction is lively and he keeps the pace mercifully brisk. Sidney has been making genre films since the 1960s and he's still churning out good work. Detention is not a great film and it never pretends to be one. It is, however, 90 minutes of hugely enjoyable, dumb fun. If nothing else, watch it for the wheelchair chase sequence.

I wasn't expecting a lot from a film directed by Sidney J. Furie and starring Dolph Lundgren but I was surely expecting more than a got. A one-liner user comment - 2nd rate action movie - didn't seem too depreciative to me for a Lundgren film. On the other hand, I wouldn't have bothered to watch this film if its rating was below 5.0 but hey, the movie had a 5.9 out of 10 score, which seemed pretty acceptable to me for this kind of production.

Now I understand that the 37.5% of people who rated this film a 10 (excellent) was clearly a publicity stunt because DETENTION is the regular Nu Image garbage you have seen before, over and over.

Lundgren does not convince as an ex-military turned a history teacher assigned to a rough school. His acting is just plain terrible, emotionless and contrived. Lundgren's inability to act becomes more visible in the scenes with the juvenile delinquent kids. Either they are great actors or, compared to Lundgren, they seem great actors - just because they seem natural and believable.

DETENTION has some elements that could have been potentially interesting for this low budget movie - a closed-for-weekend high-security high school, four teens in detention with a war-veteran teacher and a group of ruthless criminals trying to get in - but the story (something like THE BREAKFAST CLUB meets DIE HARD, or is it PANIC ROOM?) is full of unbelievable situations, lots of clichés and stereotypical characters. And let's not forget Dolph Lundgren is the main actor.

Alex Karzis and Kata Dobó play a Bonnie and Clyde couple in love and they deliver the most acceptable performances of the movie, even if he seems a low-budget version of Sam Rockwell and she, a Milla Jovovich wanna-be. In a movie where everything fails, their craziness and style supplied enough fresh air to prevent my interest from dropping to ground zero.

Interesting story about a soldier in a war who misses out on saving the life of a young girl from the enemy and is haunted by this event, even though he did save many other captive children. The film flashes a head and this soldier is now a teacher in a high school that is managed mostly by policemen patrolling the hallways, bathrooms and even class rooms. In other words, the High School is a prison and most of the kids pay very little attention to their teachers or principal. Dolph Lundgren,(Sam Decker) plays the soldier/school teacher and decides he is going to quit teaching and go into another field. However, the principal asks him to have a Detention Class as his last duty as a teacher. It is at this point in the film when all Hell breaks loose and the story becomes a complete BOMB. Try to enjoy it, if you decided to View IT !

DETENTION

You know it is never a good sign when you can honestly say the best actor in the movie is Dolph Lundgren.

This film is bad... the story is nothing new. The acting was terrible. and there were so many things in this film that were so pathetic is was unbelievable. I mean, the bad guys looked like they belonged in Layztown. They could not shoot a non moving target, let alone students running away from them.

There was one scene where it felt like the A-Team. The students were hiding out in the Gym at their school, but in the gym just so happened to be an archery set all ready for them.

I still don't fully understand why the bad guys were in the school in the first place.

Honestly, this is a really bad B movie... funny in places, but not for the right reasons.

I will give this film 4 out of 10.

Dolph is lucky Stallone even called him for the Expendables after this film.

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I just viewed Detention last night and i liked what i saw. It was a cool fun movie.Dolph looked superbly cool on the Bike.He also looked good in this movie as compared to his other recent movies.He is now in a pretty good shape.The story was ok and the other actors were also passable.I wouldn't call this movie his best but its still a good movie.

But it also had its share of Problems. The first one was the way bullets were flying everywhere and even when they were being fired at point blank range they missed the target.They should've had shown the ppl escaping the bullets in a better way. Another problem which i had was the way the students were swearing. I dont know in which school the students can swear in front of their teacher and even in the classroom. The third problem was that the bad guys were very few in numbers. There should've been more bad guys. Last problem was definately the fact that the set looked cheesy , but that was due to the small budget. Overall the movie was a good Movie.I enjoyed it.I would recommend others to watch it. P.S. Now u r a DEAD beat cop. (Some One-liners were also cool)

I mean the school premises and its different rooms like chemistry class, assembly room, long passageways... And selection of actors was better than in most low-budget action movies - apart from Dolph Lundgren, there were some other outstanding personalities (Alex Karzis, Kata Dobo).

In spite of constant gunshots-bursts that almost never hit, and neurotic activities, the scenes began to develop and make sense as the movie went on. And the good ones had their tragic as well. Thus, as a whole, Detention-movie was not totally blunt and predictable, although several actions lacked logic and looked ridiculous (not Lundgren-related, however). But if you have 1,5 hours to kill and not fond of flaking out in front of screen, then this movie is just OK. Not a profound experience, but a kind of violent entertainment.

Detention has Dolph Lundgren former army ranger and now history and gym teacher getting stuck with supervising Detention on his last day of school. Lundgren is kind of disillusioned with teaching and surely babysitting for some of the worst motivated kids in his school is one find sendoff.

However on this day after 3:00 pm the school figures prominently in the plans of Alex Karzis and his gang of criminal misfits to pull off a robbery of drugs confiscated by the police. There's even crooked cops in on it.

Between Lundgren's kids and Karzis's gang it's quite the struggle. The whole scheme is something you might find in a Mel Brooks film and in the case of Karzis he never figured some folks would be staying after school or it would be someone like Lundgren. It's like an episode of the old A-Team series.

In the spirit of that old show, you might enjoy this rather goofy film.

A bunch of Canadian exploitation legends were put together to make this movie - writers Paul Lynch (PROM NIGHT, BULLIES) and John Sheppard (BULLIES, AMERICAN NIGHTMARE), as well as the legendary director Sidney J. Furie (IRON EAGLE IV), who lost any directorial ability he may once have had a number of years earlier! Not that Lynch and Sheppard have had exactly stellar careers.

The movie appears to be a rip-off of the 1987 movie TERROR SQUAD, which was goofy fun. You think that with more at their disposal, this movie would be better than that one. Think again. Despite the considerable budget ($10 million), movie looks extremely cheap, with the production values of Canadian TV dramas that are typically made for about a tenth of that value! That might have been forgivable had the movie been exciting, but it isn't. None of the action scenes is particularly good. In fact, a number of them have stupid touches. (Why, when Lundgren holds a shield, doesn't the shooter just shoot him in the legs? Why, when one of the protagonists knocks a bad guy down, do they immediately run away instead of using the chance to beat on them more?)

In fact, the whole movie is full of stupid things. Why would a lockdown on the school lock down the fire exits as well? If the school is locked down, how did they get to the roof? Most importantly, why on earth did the bad guys think using a high school was their best choice? In fact, the more I think about the movie, the more dumb things come to my mind. I could go on and on, but I won't. Lundgren understandably doesn't seem that enthralled by it all, but you have to give him credit for at least putting some effort in his performance. At one point, his character reads a Clive Cussler novel. Do that instead of watching this movie - you'll be a lot more entertained, I assure you!

I like Dolph Lundgren. And I like a lot more of that "A Minus-Movie" stars. I never understand how they do movies like this. (Maybe that's the reason Dolph Lundgren started to direct his own movies recently) This movie is a mimic of the old "Die Hard" theme. This time in a school. But the supposed "terrorists" are total freaked out punks. Some could do some decent movie out of this plot, but here it fails. Dolph plays an ex-soldier, but then he makes the same errors a frightened normal person would make. If you had a very bad day and need some cheap fun, you can watch Dolph running around in a High School set kicking other peoples 'back'. But just ignore the blatant goofs and this truckload of illogic that seems to be common in "that type" of movies.

This is the kind of movie that wants to be good but sucks. First thing, what the hell are those punk trying to do with the school? I think the kids doesn't seem to realize the gravity of the situation. Deker guy say to the girl that they under his responsibility when she ask why he wants to go back for them but right after this he gives a gun to the wheel chair dude and wants him to go alone repair the phone line. Where is the responsibility there? I understand poor actors must pay their food but why not just give them the money that takes to make a stupid movie like that or give that money to a charity. Oh yea and none of them knows how to aim. The stupid punk guy shoots in the cafeteria nowhere like a crazy. They all want to look professional but they all suck. One more thing I don't believe that there's no emergency exit in the school the kids are trying several doors but they all locked. What happens if there's a fire and the dumass security guard is dead? It is illegal to not have an emergency exit in school. Anyway there's a lot more to say but it would be too long. I spent some time of my life to watch a crap.

I'm not sure where this genre got it's start. 'Blackboard Jungle'? It's also reminiscent of Tom Berenger's 'Substitute 1' and '2'.

Dolph's lean, and in top form, as he takes on recalcitrant students and a gang that's bent on taking over the high school.

The gang members have lots of strangely colored hair, assorted tattoos and body piercings, if you like that sort of thing, but when they shoot they can't seem to hit anything.

I especially enjoyed watching the thug on a motorcycle in a high school hallway who could neither catch nor hit with a machine gun a cripple running away in a wheel chair.

Grab the popcorn and settle back for an hour and a half of not too serious fun.

I just rented this movie to see Dolph Lundgren, whom I hadn't seen in any movies since Rocky IV. Unfortunately this movie was a big disappointment. The acting of all the parties was bad except for Mr. Lundgren, who was okay-ish. Kata Dobó was something nice to look at despite her ridiculous outfit and make-up.

The plot is not at all clever, it's something that's been repeated a million times in different movies. The crooks were utterly stereotypical, and Lundgren's character hadn't any depth in it. I didn't really expect a movie masterpiece, but unfortunately this is not even decent action. Every turn in the plot is extremely predictable and the unbelievable amount of over-the-top unrealism and comic-book like characters started to annoy me strongly pretty soon.

I would recommend this to young kids wanting some comic-like action, but only if nothing else is available.

1/10. (I guess the current average vote of 7.0 with 6 votes must have been influenced by somebody involved in making this movie)

This film is focused rather on the growing contemporary youthful violence in America: take notice how these youngsters act when they got a gun and how they kill people with ease. I don't think this film in 80's would be with kids as bad guys like this(i don't know but they seem to me as kids). It's hard to say that's a bad film, it's not so effective, almost no plot, no twists (there's really a problem with screenplay) but in spite all of that,its interesting entertaining guilty pleasure B-movie with always charming DOLPH LUNDGREN. According to plot and superior Furie's direction i hope Direct Action will be little comeback for Lundgren.

Dolph Lundgren is back! Detention marks Dolphs first film in nearly 2 years, and that is following the delayed Hidden Agenda. This film still marks an improvement for Dolph over his cheapie trilogy of Jill Rips, Agent Red and Stormcatcher. However this film is well below the standard of Hidden Agenda, which was better in almost every respect. What this film does have in it's favour from Dolph's previous outing, is a sense of cheesy fun. The film also has a rejuvenated Dolph back in a high action role, and it's good to see Dolph doing his own stunts again.

The films story is ludicrous and prime B-movie material. An ex-military man is now a teacher and on his last day of teaching, whilst taking a Detention class, he runs into some Slovakian bad guys who have taken over the school to use as cover for a big drug deal. The film has no originality but in a movie of this type you need to have a sense of fun with all the cliches. If you take it too seriously the audience will find little to enjoy. Thankfully the filmmakers don't take matters too seriously and along with all the action cliches you can think of and the predictability, this film has a so bad it's enjoyable kind of vibe.

Where the film is let down is miss-using a fairly decent budget. The budget of around 10 million has not been well spent. It's all up on screen with plenty of carnage and big explosions but a lot of the shootouts lack imagination. The opening action is okay but after that the good moments become more sparse. There are some good moments. You have a car careering through school hallways for example and a decent shootout at the beginning, with plenty of destruction. The rest of the shootouts are fairly mechanical but there is plenty going on onscreen.

As for the cast. Hidden Agenda boasted the best cast Dolph has worked with in ages. There was a good standard of actors for a DTV film. This however has problems. The actors are on the most part bad. The bad guys are terrible, but the lead bad guy has a kind of enjoyable cheesiness because Alex Karsis plays it so over the top and without the hint of any menace that you can laugh at the pure badness. The teenagers of the piece are actually good but they are playing such cliched characters. They all hate authority, each other and all have bad attitudes and of course by the end they learn important life lessons, but generally they are decent and Chris Collins in particular has a likeability. This movie is all about Dolph though. While this film is nowhere near his best, it is nowhere near his worst. It also marks a turning point in his career. He is now back in good shape, and will be in even better shape in his next film Direct Action. Dolph looks enthusiastic here, he does all his own stunts and it is good to see him play the typical action man (running from explosions in slow-mo, one liners, and handling large weapons) again in a movie like his older ones, albeit with less flair and imagination than cliched films like Army Of One. It is good to see Dolph looking energised. His films of the last 8 or so years have seen Dolph looking a little more weary, and using doubles a lot (he still does all the fights himself though) but the new streamlined Dolph seems up for it.

Overall this is watchable if only for the cheese value and Dolph in prime action man mode. There's not a single surprise but it has a laughably inept kind of charm. **

Dolph Lundgren has certainly had an interesting career. Going from a mildly successful action star and then dropping off the face of the earth and only acting in widely unknown direct to video films and then coming back into the public eye with The Expendables movies. 2003's Detention is one of those direct to video films which starred Dolph Lundgren. Now, the United States would not see this film until 2004 where it would get put on video. Detention is directed by Sidney J. Furie (Superman IV: The Quest for Peace) and as stated stars Dolph Lundgren (Hidden Agenda).

High school teacher Sam Decker (Dolph Lundgren), who was in the military, is planning on quitting his job but is conveniently (or inconveniently) has after school detention duty and while doing that, some bad guys (a total of four in fact) come and take over the school and Decker and the students have to fight back (and not in the style of Red Dawn sadly).

You know, the whole "evil terrorists or bad guys taking over your school" deal is something that only pre pubescent teen boys seem to dream about. Now there are a surprising amount of films that do the whole Die Hard in a school thing but it is something to see a post-Columbine Die Hard in a school film. I think the premise is silly and not very plausible but I think it can be good popcorn fun which is how I approached this film at first, but what I got was a film with a silly idea and it was not all that fun in the least bit. First off, you have to have a good reason why the bad guys have came to the school. Well, this film just says "Screw it, who cares?". It makes no sense why this takes place in a school and it just makes the bad guys seem really stupid. Second, you gotta have characters that I can get behind. As a teenager coming out of high school (as of this review being written), I want to be able to find a character or two that I can really get behind. One character being Dolph Lundgren and the other being the student or students that I see myself most like. Well, clearly this film and whoever made it thought that high school is full (and I mean like 99.9 percent) of people who partake in recreational drug use, sex, and violence. Nobody is likeable save for (sadly) the disabled kid in the film and even he is the one student who gets the least amount of screen time in the whole film. The student characters are largely all the same. I hardly know their names and they are not well developed enough for me to even care. Now Dolph Lundgren is actually not bad here. Not great, but compared to everyone else, he is alright. I feel the whole military background because it only serves as to explain why Dolph Lundgren is a badass teacher because obviously nobody would believe that Lundgren was a teacher and only a teacher. Now, a film like this needs bad guys to suffice the needs of the average viewer. Well, this film gives us a total of four (technically five) bad guys and to me, that is not enough. The main bad guy is given an over the top performance, but characterwise, absolutely nothing. He is two dimensional, and to be honest, I really have no clue what his motives are at all. Plus, having a villain being able to fairly compete with the hero would be nice. I do not for one second believe that the main villain in this film would be able to beat Lundgren in a fight. The action here is actually not terrible and for people not expecting much action out of this direct to video film, you maybe surprised. Now my only problem with the action (which is pretty big in fact) is the shootouts. Shootouts are fine and all but this film makes it very annoying. The way things are edited, it is like you have the shooter shooting at someone and that someone walks out of sight and the shooter still keeps on shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting. Like for pete's sake people, you can stop shooting at the walls and stuff. It only seems that if people really want to hit something, they actually will.

Detention is not the worst of the direct to video Lundgren films but this one is certainly bad. From a very not so plausible plot, bad villains, bad characters and annoying shootout scenes. I think a rating of three out of ten stars shall suffice.