Not necessarily a bad film, but "Toy Soldiers" comes across as reasonably underwhelming..., basically it's premise is to be a top quality action flick but drowns in its own childishness.
The cast of kids is fearful, you can see the anxiety seeping through in every character, instead of taking back the school and disposing of the terrorists, it looks as though all they want is their mommy's; fair dues they put a semi-confident effort in and eventually the terrorists do get their comeuppance, but the whole story comes across as a little flat.
Wil Wheaton is particularly terrible as the wannabe 'Rambo' Joey Trotta, the guy suffers from an inability to act, even as he aged and got older, his acting hasn't improved and sadly he's been cast aside, being labelled as another Hollywood failure.
Sean Astin fared little better, but he was in fact better, his character Billy Tepper has more about him and at least has a level of credibility, something that Wheaton's character sadly lacks..., he's clearly the 'bad-boy' of the school and seems to have grasped the idea of being cool.
The remaining cast played their roles suitably but none of them managed to put that extra something into their performance, a simple case of going through the motions and getting the job done rather than taking pride in their work and making their characters stand out; any emotional attachment to any of the characters was missing and this made emphasising with anyone an impossible task.
Something of a cult classic these days, "Toy Soldiers" isn't a particularly great film by any means, but anyone you speak to seems to have watched it so it must have indeed garnered a reputation somewhere along the line, making this an incredibly overrated film.
It smacks of 1980's, even though the film was released in 1991, giving the impression that the filmmakers hadn't moved on with the rapidly moving times.
A disappointment to the nth degree, how it's lasted this long and how it's still chugging along is a mystery, but it does and will continue to do so, obviously someone can see something in it that I can't, so fair play to them they must be brighter than I.
The cast of kids is fearful, you can see the anxiety seeping through in every character, instead of taking back the school and disposing of the terrorists, it looks as though all they want is their mommy's; fair dues they put a semi-confident effort in and eventually the terrorists do get their comeuppance, but the whole story comes across as a little flat.
Wil Wheaton is particularly terrible as the wannabe 'Rambo' Joey Trotta, the guy suffers from an inability to act, even as he aged and got older, his acting hasn't improved and sadly he's been cast aside, being labelled as another Hollywood failure.
Sean Astin fared little better, but he was in fact better, his character Billy Tepper has more about him and at least has a level of credibility, something that Wheaton's character sadly lacks..., he's clearly the 'bad-boy' of the school and seems to have grasped the idea of being cool.
The remaining cast played their roles suitably but none of them managed to put that extra something into their performance, a simple case of going through the motions and getting the job done rather than taking pride in their work and making their characters stand out; any emotional attachment to any of the characters was missing and this made emphasising with anyone an impossible task.
Something of a cult classic these days, "Toy Soldiers" isn't a particularly great film by any means, but anyone you speak to seems to have watched it so it must have indeed garnered a reputation somewhere along the line, making this an incredibly overrated film.
It smacks of 1980's, even though the film was released in 1991, giving the impression that the filmmakers hadn't moved on with the rapidly moving times.
A disappointment to the nth degree, how it's lasted this long and how it's still chugging along is a mystery, but it does and will continue to do so, obviously someone can see something in it that I can't, so fair play to them they must be brighter than I.