Soldier Boyz

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.

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."

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 saw this movie late night on HBO or something like that several years ago. The sheer stupidity of the concept just hit me several days ago.

A group of misfits from school get taken to vietnam for a covert operation? Huh?

I can just see the ads for the operation, study cooking hard or otherwise we will plant you on the Ho Chi Minh trail. The story is typical old Hollywood formula, a group of ragtag misfits who hate each other, come together, bond and save each other's lives. Ho hum.

What amazes me is that someone wrote this script, someone looked at this script, and said you know this could be a good movie to make. So, they went to the production company and studio and they said, you know this is such a great idea, let's give you several million dollars to make it. And wa la, we have a movie.

Michael Dudikoff is as wooden as ever and the rest of the cast is just creepy. To give this 3 stars is a crime.

To be generous, I would give it 0.5 stars out of 10.

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.