Young Warriors

It begins with a couple of disgusting sex-comedy gags, but soon it reveals its true colors: it wants to be a "Death Wish" clone. I say "wants to" because the script gets so increasingly laughable by the minute that it ends up looking like an absurdist "Death Wish" spoof! From a love scene in a room inexplicably filled with candles, to "heroes" who dress up as commandoes and wave their machine guns because they don't want to attract attention to themselves(!), to bad guys who drive around the city in a black van long after it has been recognized as their vehicle, this film has too many ludicrous points to fit in a list. The other major problem is that you can't tell most of the characters apart; of course, you know who Borgnine and Roundtree and even James Van Patten are, but all the other roles could have been played by different actors in various scenes, and you wouldn't know the difference. (*1/2)

Trying to have the time of your life, only to have tragedy to ruin it. That happened when a group of punks attacked a young couple, killing the boyfriend, and the girl getting gang raped. That causes the brother and his friends since high school to take action against crime. Angry with all the "red tape", the group became vigilantes. Since they couldn't wait to get justice for his sister murder, the quad-squad go on a manhunt to find the murderers, only to become murderers themselves. During a robbery at a liquor store, they kill the culprits which one of them is a girl who was carrying a toy gun. It was a tragedy, but she was hanging out with the wrong people, and look what it got her. Standing up to crime is good, but going too far has its consequences. Another 80's cheese, and enjoyed it very much. Has Ernest Borgnine, "Shaft" star, Richard Roundtree, Tom Reilly who was fresh off from "CHiPs", and the star, James Van Patten of the Van Patten family. Good for a rainy day. 2 out of 5 stars.

this ain't no "regular" movie, i mean, there were some fu*ked up scenes in there.... a cannon release with the Golan/Globus on the production, that's have to be bad, in some strange good way. i think it's 30% fun and 70% torture/boring. still interesting though. plot is on a young and a bit high temper student called Kevin, who like to party a lot with his college boys friends, drinking beer, picking on the freshmen, getting drunk girls to bad, a typical 80's student.. everything is really nice but one day, his high school sister get raped sliced and killed, and then Kevin getting nuts. driven by revenge he decides that the gang (with the really cool van!) should be punished. slowly he's taking his friends and they all start playing - "justice league". the movie has early eighties colors and that means DARK, i saw it in complete darkness and still some of the scenes were pretty dark, it does some strange/o.k mood. i pretty much liked it.

If you`re not old enough to remember Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan here`s the rundown : They`re a couple of film producers and finaciers from Israel who set up the Cannon film company in the early 1980s . The only Israeli to get a worse press than these two was Menachim Begin . Begin probably deserved the bad press but Globus and Golan were a god send to film makers because no matter how bad your script was they`d happily fund your movie and would normally employ directors who couldn`t direct and actors who couldn`t act . In fact you often got the impression that people would just walk up to Yoram and Menahem ask them for some money and they`d oblige without seeing the film maker`s resume . If only producers nowadays were so trusting.

THE YOUNG WARRIORS isn`t a Cannon film but Globus and Golan did finance it and it has their signature all over it . It`s badly directed , badly acted , badly edited but it`s the script that jumps out and attacks you with its awfulness . It starts with a bunch of high school jocks getting involved in all sorts of zany pranks , in fact the first 20 minutes of the movie plays out like a sex comedy and it`s something of a shock when THE YOUNG WARRIORS turns into a vigilante movie . But it`s not just any type of vigilante movie like EXTERMINATOR 2 or DEATH WISH 3 ( Notice a connection ? They`re both sequels and they`re both vigilante movies made by Cannon films ) , no siree this is a laughably bad vigilante movie about pretty boy high school jocks and their poodle going on a mission to wipe out scumbags . This film is proof that Globus and Golan were giving money to people regardless of their film making abilities and you have to worry about people who seem to spend their entire reserves on making movies set entirely around vigilantes

One line angrily spouted from an acting great, in this enjoyable typical 80's pic, is that 'Violence Only leads to more violence'. Words were never, any more true, than in Young Warriors, a film could be a great anti vengeance movie, as pretty much this message is telegraphed through the duration. Granted YW is a well made action film, but just seems very 80's cliched now, with some predictability, the main one from a character who provides one of the sickly bloody demises YW is very violent, and the bad guys are real dredgy scum here. But the standout is Van Pattern. Whose character is a repellant, hyped up teen psycho, and oxi moron, hellbent on avenging the brutal rape and murder of his younger sister, another violent scene. I hated his character so much, I'll never be able to get the name, Kevin out of my mind. And what is Ernest Borgnine doing in this, as Kevin's very wisen Dad, who is, get this, a Detective, where angry, adrenaline fueled Van Pattern and mates, are interrupting and sabotaging their case with their wild, and amateur antics, but the latter is who you would call, if you really wanted the job done. Borgnine ,must of really been desperate. Get this, the sexy Lynda Day George plays Borgnine's wife. Very 80's, but Kevin's non fetchng persona brings the film down a bit, and very much resembles the cop character, in the b movie, Deathflash.