Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 7:2	Budget Medium

Cleavon Little helps save the day? Did anyone mention to him this was NOT a comedy?

The movie starts with a small village's population being killed by bandits and then moves on to a sailboat with Sarge babysitting a bunch of spoiled rich kids. When the kids maroon the Sarge on a raft so that they can drink excessively and make fools of themselves, one of them manages to fall and sustain a concussion. Not knowing what to do, the kids load the dufus into the other dingy and go ashore to look for help where they run afoul of some local bandits. Sarge returns in time to save one of the girls, but the others are left behind. Feeling guilty and pissed off that the authorities are not doing anything to help, the girl convinces the Sarge to help her rescue her friends, with mixed results.

Every now and then you run across a movie that makes you wonder what the casting director was thinking. In this case I also wonder what the wardrobe designer was thinking as well. Here is the problem, Jason Miller was about 45 when he took on the role of Sarge and not in great shape. He was somewhat barrel-chested with rather spindly legs and we really don't need to see him in short shorts quite so much. Unfortunately he lacks the qualities that we expect in movie heroes, like muscles.

On the plus side we do have Tim Robbins and Tracy Scoggins. Scoggins always gives overwrought performances and this is no exception. While everyone else seems to know that the film is a bit of a lark, she hits her lines pretty hard. Robbins did get the memo and plays the entire movie with the same style he would later show in "Fraternity Vacation"; the party dude, the guy who always seems to have had one too many, always looking for a high five, and never understands the seriousness of the situation. When being shot at by mercenaries with machine guns, he stands around looking slightly confused.

When we first meet the Sarge he is watching over Amy, a rich man's daughter,on a boat somewhere near Central America. While the Sarge is concerned about their proximity to some rather dangerous country, the kids just want to party. For some reason the kid's decide that the Sarge is cramping their style and manage to get him off the boat for a while. At which point they proceed to drink a lot of alcohol. As this seems to be what they had been doing while Sarge was on board, I am a little unclear as to their motivation here, but what the heck. Of course once the Sarge is out of the picture, one of the kids slips and slams his head. Not sure what to do but sure that she needs to do something, the daughter shames a couple of the kids into putting the guy with the concussion into a boat and going immediately ashore to seek medical help. Clearly this is a bad idea. First of all moving someone with a head injury is risky, especially when your trip includes a ride in a small boat, stumbling through one mile of jungle and catching a ride in an old truck to try to find medical help. Secondly abandoning a good mode of transportation (the boat) which could take you to an actual city where there would be an actual hospital in favor of taking a rowboat into the jungle, is a questionable choice.

Once the kids are ashore they are quickly picked up by a helpful priest who brings them to a local village just in time for it to be attacked by a local group of bandits/revolutionaries. The kids identify themselves as Americans to avoid being killed and they are immediately taken hostage. At about the same time the Sarge makes it back to the boat and after giving the kids who remained behind strict orders to stay put, he heads out after the girl. He manages to rescue his charge and return her to safety, but the others are left in the clutches of the evil Cornel Perez. Amy (Terri Garber) tries to get her parents to pay the ransom and they do make the effort which ultimately turns out to be futile. This is one of the places where "Toy Soldiers" shows a bit of intelligence and introduces some interesting developments. First of all, everyone tries to do the right thing. The State Department contacts the local government and makes an effort to retrieve the hostages but are ultimately thwarted when it turns out that the evil Cornel Perez is also a trusted aide of the country's president. Because the US is trying to help the country, they allow its President to make the call. She decides to pay the ransom, but assigns Perez to handle the exchange. I think I can see how this is going to work out. Perez wants to take the money, kill the kids and embarrass the president. Not a bad plan all in all.

Unfortunately for Perez, Amy convinces the Sarge to go back to the jungle with her and free her friends. She even manages to convince Sarge's war buddy (Buck played by Cleavon Little) to go along for the ride. The gang flies a small plane down to Central America, jumps out and takes on the bad guys with no real problems. I know what you are thinking; "How can five punk kids from Santa Barbara take out a whole camp of experienced fighters?". Well, they trained. Three of the five ran about 200 yards on the beach just before Amy kills the assassin that Perez sent to kill her. I am not sure why he thinks that he needs to have her killed but he does and once again a trained, experienced soldier is taken out by an 18 year old girl.

Because it is from 1984, you do get subjected to some pretty bad music. And men's clothing. The girls pretty much just wear skimpy outfits which never really go out of style; shorts and wet t-shirts are timeless.

Worth watching? Marginally. While there is a plot in this one, it plods from point to point with out any real originality. The only kid who dies is the fat drunk oaf who started all the problems in the first place by falling down and hitting his head. The action shots aren't really exciting and the hand to hand fights are pretty bad. At one point a guard has his arms wrapped around Amy holding a knife to her chest. She slips out of his grasp and the guy stabs himself in the chest and dies. This makes him the second bad guy Amy takes out unarmed. But then, as the Sarge points out, she was on the college swimming team. Yeah, that explains it.

Got a comment or different opinion? Send a message.