Toy Soldiers (1991)

Wonderfully offbeat film!

It is a performances centric movie

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It's a special boy that goes to St. Regis prep school. This one is for rich misfit kids who've been kicked out other prep schools like Groton or Exeter. But sometimes it's the rebels you need in a nasty situation.It doesn't get nastier when a of bunch terrorists take over this prep school headed by Headmaster Denholm Elliott and Dean of Boys Lou Gossett, Jr. The head of the group is Andrew Divoff who overacts the entire film. He's son of a Columbian drug lord who is now in US custody. Divoff's original target was the son of a federal judge whom he planned to kidnap and hold for ransom exchange. But when the Feds move him and he sees that the whole school is a bunch of privileged kids, he decides to hold them all for ransom for his dad.The hero of the hour turns out to be Sean Astin and his little crowd of special misfits. Turns out that Astin had a lot of the right stuff that no one but Gossett suspected he had.Toy Soldiers is a nice action oriented flick aimed at the young. Divoff is an especially nasty villain whom you want very badly to see get taken down. Mason Adams as the Assistant FBI director and R. Lee Ermey as the army guy in charge are the authority figures.More than the young will like this.

I remember seeing TV spots for Toy Soldiers in October 1991. I had recently seen The Goonies and I was surprised at how much Sean Astin had matured since then. It made me wonder how I would look once I stopped being a child. I didn't actually see the film until now (the 15 certificate meant I could not see it at the cinema and I just never got around to renting it later) but I seem to associate it first with that particular memory.I was expecting it to be an action comedy, something along the lines of Home Alone meets Die Hard. How wrong I was. Toy Soldiers is surprisingly grim and serious. Directed and co-written by Beverly Hills Cop creator Daniel Petrie Jnr the film features a lot of well shot and staged action. The opening scene in particular has a memorable freefall stunt and there are innumerable blood squibs aplenty (a dying art in an age of awful CGI blood effects). Billy Tepper and his gang of misfit Rejects draw the ire of Dean Parker at their prestigious boarding school, but he refuses to expel any of them as he sees their potential and wants to make real men of them. One of the kids is taken away by the FBI for protection when a terrorist group attempts to put pressure on his dad. Said terrorists promptly take over the school and are dismayed that their target has vanished. Instead they make do with the crop of students that they have and begin making demands. Billy and his gang do not take well to this plot and plan to strike back using whatever limited resources they have at their disposal.It's here that Toy Soldiers sort of disappoints me. Instead of taking place in a concise time-frame it drags on for a few days and nights and features low-octane plotting for the most part. It would have been much more exciting if the gang were efficient and ready for action instead of fighting back with trickery and subterfuge. I guess it does ultimately work and hang together but the suspense could have been ramped up significantly further.There is a great supporting cast featuring Louis Gossett Jnr, Denholm Elliot, Jerry Orbach, R. Lee Ermey, and the terrific Andrew Divoff who doesn't get as much recognition for his many bad guy performances. The movie also features a lot scenes with the boys hanging around in their Y-fronts. I am not sure to whom the director was trying to appeal with this but it feels very unnecessary. There's not much surprise in the fact that it's fallen out of popularity and become a cult movie. Toy Soldiers had a high concept but is too low-key for it's own good. Certainly a good movie to discover but not as good as it should have been.

Picture this. Someone makes a film about the Columbine or Virginia tech massacre only the film is directed by the guy who did home alone (i know this isn't but bare with me) and stars Sean Astin off of Goonies!! picture the terrorists being overpowered by buckets of water on top of ajar doors and marbles and this is why you need to see the film. unfortunately it doesn't go all the way by actually having the skateboard lying on the floor for the evil Mexicans to trip on but its halfway there you have to give it above 7 for that but not a 9 because it didn't go crazy enough. Pity, its seemed like it would be comical cheesiness, well worth a cult status

I recently rented this movie as part of a nostalgic phase I'm going through. I was born in 1980, and so film from mid-80s to mid-90s has quite an important place in my growing up.This particular movie was one of my favourites, and so I was thrilled when it became available in the UK. It hasn't become worse with time, it is still a great fun film, with plenty of excitement in its own way. Sure, it pales in the shadow of bigger, larger budget films, but don't let that stop you enjoying this.Worth a rent, or even a purchase at the discount prices you'll find it for.