Film
Michael Dudikoff stars in Louis Morneau’s 1995 action movie Soldier Boyz. The author is Darryl Quarles. The movie centers on a gang of prisoners who are sent to Vietnam to save a wealthy man’s daughter.
Plot
In the movie, a girl is abducted by Vietnamese Hmong insurgents from a charity plane in Vietnam that carries U.N. goods, such as food and medicine. After that, we are transported to a correctional facility in Los Angeles, California, where the center’s warden and six of the most resilient inmates are employed to save the girl, Gabrielle Prescott, the daughter of millionaire and CEO Jameson Prescott. Butts and “Monster” (black adolescents), Lopez and Vasquez (Latino teens, with Vasquez being a girl), and Brophy and Lamb (white youths) are among the inmates (by last name only; their first names are never disclosed) and Warden Toliver. To save Gabrielle, the team has three days to get to Vietnam.
After winning a battle, the group stays at a village brothel and celebrates a little, but when they wake up, they discover that the rebels have Brophy as a hostage and are requesting that the villagers turn over the other Americans. The group decides to try to save Brophy and is successful, but Lopez and Monster are killed in the process. The group flees into the jungle and is marching wearily when Lamb steps on a landmine, and while Toliver is trying to disarm the mine, some rebels are gradually approaching the group. Brophy sneaks away once more but gives his life, causing the group to die again.
The group is discovered after laying all the charges, and a fight breaks out. Despite killing a large number of rebels, the squad is forced to flee because there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. A stolen armored truck carrying the group is being driven away when a rocket bursts only inches from the vehicle. The rebel leader followed the group of “soldiers” in a helicopter. However, back at the base, Butts had surreptitiously placed a device in the helicopter, which exploded, killing the rebel commander. As the gang makes their way home, the camera captures a helicopter soaring into the Vietnamese sunset.
Soldier Boyz Review –
The American Ninja, Michael Dudikoff, is back, although not as a ninja in this weak made-for-TV action film. Instead, he plays an ex-Marine hired by a wealthy businessman to rescue his kidnapped daughter from Vietnamese bandits. Vietnam films were pretty played out by the time this films was made, so I’m not quite sure why this was a story that needed to be told, especially since essentially same story was told much better in the 1983 John Milius produced “Uncommon Valor” (which incidentally Dudikoff had a brief non-speaking role). Dudikoff assembles his own Dirty Dozen out of a bunch of criminals and reprobates to carry out their predictable and dull mission. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, an actor too good for this tripe, does as much as he can with his ridiculous villain role as the bandit leader. Overall, this is a pretty low rent Vietnam themed action film that’s about 10 years too late.
