Disc Reviews
Toy Soldiers Blu-ray Review
Billy Tepper (Sean Astin) is a rebellious youth and the ring leader of a group of 80s/90s era stereotypical students at a prestigious boarding school – His last chance at academic achievement after an adolescence filled with reprobate behaviour and expulsion from several schools. Although, he isn’t alone in his roguish past. Indeed, Tepper’s best friend is the son of a prominent mob boss and several other cronies are sons of lawyers and doctors but all with parents who couldn’t care less. However none of these guys are quite as anti-authority as Tepper’s in built desire to rock the boat. Of course; lovable terror he is! And this is none so clearer than in his relationship with sympathetic tutor Dean Parker (Louis Gossett. Jr) that aims to somewhat hearten the character of Tepper to the audience. Naturally, this disc being a re-release of a classic (in my view) early 90s ‘anti-teen-movie’, any discerning viewer born before 1980 will no doubt need that reassurance that any role played by Sean Astin and wing-manned by Wil Wheaton (playing Joey Trotta) isn’t that of a complete bastard.
It’s almost laughable to think now, after Wheton was also portraying at this very time the most hated Star Trek character ever and Astin being most recently remembered as a lovable and loyal Hobbit! This is even after his outing as lovable geek alongside Pauly Shore in 1992’s ‘Encino Man’ (or simply – ‘California Man’ for us less ‘geographic’ Brits). So, what do we have here? Well, the lads’ boarding school, ‘The Regis School’ is attacked by a Colombian gang led by Luis Cali (Andrew Divoff) who plans to take the son of a judge in charge of a case against his father hostage. After learning the heritage of many of the other students Cali decides to go full-tilt and take the whole place hostage leaving it up to Tepper and his rebellious gang to save the school with Guerrilla tactics.
Ie. “Die Hard in a school”.
Hell, we’ve had ‘Die Hard on a boat’, ‘Die Hard on a Train’, even ‘Die Hard on a Mountain’ so why not this? Plus, this doesn’t cheapen the film for me at all, there’s some real enjoyment to be had here. Some of the more thriller style scenes featuring Divoff are a real riot as, are the more comedic moments early in the movie. A personal favourite is the boys’ ‘smuggle booze into the school in mouthwash bottles’ scheme. Production value hasn’t aged particularly gracefully either and with the exception of Astin, Gossett and Divoff many of the performances leave a lot to be desired. There’s also some pretty nasty, bloody violence on display which was surprising, even back on my first watch in the 90s. With that all said Toy Soldiers will be a total nostalgia trip for anyone who grew up watching movies in the 80s and 90s mostly down to the familiar faces and stylistic themes.
Disc-wise, Toy Soldiers is bereft of bonus material but is presented in 1.85:1 1080p with a solid digital transfer. Colours are nice and vibrant and the tracking stands up well during the more chaotic moments of the film. The DTS Stereo sound mix is also decent and remains the same as the original release with the exception of the digital re-master.
Sean Kennedy