I Remember seeing
Toy Soldiers for the first time in the mid 90s on late night ITV, I
think it was probably a saturday night, back when ITV used to show
awesome movies, Toy soldiers was that night's awesome movie. I
vaguely remember thinking that it sounded like a Die Hard with kids
which to this impressionable teen, well familiar with the exploits of
Det. John McClane, I thought “cool” and so I watched it, in fact
I taped it off the TV, I did that a lot back then. I remember
watching it and seeing Sean Astin show up, “that's mikey from the
Goonies, and that's Wesley Crusher from Star Trek, awesome!”. These
were the two members of the cast that I knew of but I did recognize
others, I remembered seeing Louis Gossett Jr in the mini-series Roots
and recognized Denholm Elliot from the Indiana Jones movies but I
wasn't prepared for the awesomeness of the film. Looking back now the
film, although not part of, felt like a Cannon film, you know, the
studio that brought us all those OTT Chuck Norris/Michael Dudikoff
action films of the mid 80s, it had that Golan/Globus feel to it. It
wouldn't be out of place in their oeuvre of action extravaganzas.
The plot is pretty
straight forward, infact it's the same plot as Air Force Once, ok I
know that came some 7 years later but they all owe debt to Die Hard.
A group of Hispanic terrorists take over an elite prep school for
boys with the plan of using the kids as hostages to get the leader's
father released from prison. What the terrorists didn't count on was
school misfit Billy Tepper and his gang of friends. Their
determination to sabotage the terrorists is put into motion almost
immediately. Can Billy and his pals, stop the terrorists and save the
school?....well obviously yes, name one film where the terrorists
ever win, oh and the lead terrorist is played by movie villain god,
Andrew Divof so it's pretty obvious that the goonies win.
Re-watching it now,
some 20 years after my first intro to Toy Soldiers the film does have
some issues, it's a little bit predictable but it's still fun. We
have a pre-Samwise with mullet, a pre-god of the geeks Will Wheaton
as the son of Jerry Orbach's mafia don, “that kid from the 80s
movies” Keith Coogan (Adventures In Babysitting), Video from Walter
Hill's Trespass and a guy who looks a bit like A.C Slater off of
Saved By The Bell. Throw into the mix of kids some adults and you get
a good support cast of well known actors like Louis Gosset Jr and the
deputy principle, Denholm Elliot as the actual Principle, R.Lee Ermey
as the head of the military, the previously mentioned Jerry Orbach as
Don dr. Houseman and Divoff as the villain. For a film like this, a
pretty desposable actioner for teens, they amassed a pretty good
cast. It also has a great central role for Sean Astin, his Billy
Tepper is a cocky twat but friendship means a lot to him and he'll do
whatever he can to make sure his friends are safe. Astin make Tepper
both cocky and sympathetic.
The film was
directed by Daniel Petri Jr. the writer of the original Beverly Hills
Cop, the hugely underrated wilderness action flick, Deadly Pursuit
and Turner & Hooch, oh yeah I forgot, he also wrote and directed
the Pauly Shore comedy, In The Army Now (we all have regrets).
Petri's script is good but does seem to drag in certain places, his
handling of action is good and it's a well shot film. It does bring
to mind other School set films such as the 1997 TV movie Masterminds
and the 1983 film T.A.P.S about a military academy that is taken over
by it's pupils when they hear that the school will be closing, both
decent films but Toy Soldiers has the edge due to the awesomeness of
Andrew Divoff's great villain.
It's a good watch
but does have some flaws. It's prefect rainy afternoon fodder and
well worth your time just don't expect anything other than kids vs
terrorists.
As for the U.K
blu-ray release from 101 Films, the picture is good and seems to be
in it's original aspect ratio but don't take my word on it as I
wasn't given the technical aspects of the disc. The Audio is the
films let down, I had to boost my volume up to 27 on my TV, I
normally have it around 11 when watching a film and this was a big
issue. The HD-PCM sound was too quiet. The picture is good, the
colours are nice and bright if a little washed out in parts but it's
not an issue, there is grain, some scenes are grainier than others,
especially night shots but that could be down to the masters that 101
Films had. Overall the picture and audio get a 3.
The biggest problem
with the package as a whole is that there is nothing else on offer,
the disc is bare bones and only has the film and scene selection with
9 scenes. There's no trailer, no subtitle option or multiple audio
tracks for different languages, no special features of any kind and
this might be it's biggest selling obstacle. The disc is priced at
£12.99 and for that price, which isn't the ideal price for such a
bare bones release considering that other U.K indie labels are
bringing out releases packed to the gills with extras for only a
couple of quid more, i'd have thought 101 would be wanting to push
their releases as much as possible. But at least we have a HD version
of Toy Soldiers and we should at least be thankful for that.
Hopefully 101 Films will start putting more into their cult releases
in the near future.
So in all the disc
was a bit of a let down, the film is still awesome but the package
really disappointed me. TOY SOLDIERS is released on DVD and Blu-Ray on 2nd Feb from 101 Films.
DVD: £9.99
BLU: £12.99
FILM
PICTURE/AUDIO
OVERALL PACKAGE
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