Synopsis
After federal agents arrest a drug czar and put him on trial, the cartel leader's vicious son storms a prep school and takes its students hostage. They rebel against the armed intruders and try to take back their academy by any means necessary.
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Cast
- Sean AstinBilly Tepper
- Wil WheatonJoey Trotta
- Keith CooganSnuffy Bradberry
- Andrew DivoffLuis Cali
- R. Lee ErmeyGeneral Kramer
- Mason AdamsDeputy Director Brown
- Denholm ElliottHeadmaster
- Louis Gossett Jr.Dean Parker
- George PerezRicardo Montoya
- T.E. RussellHank Giles
Recommendations
- 70
The New York Times
Toy Soldiers is a crisp, suspenseful thriller well tailored to the tastes of teen-age audiences, who will doubtless appreciate such touches as the equivalent microchips found in one student's radio-controlled airplane and the chief terrorist's detonator, which is rigged to blow up the entire school. - 70
Variety
Toy Soldiers is a very entertaining action film that updates 1981's sleeper hit Taps. Seeing Sean Astin (son of John Astin and Patty Duke) and his pranksters turn into commandos who wipe out the nasty invaders makes for purely escapist, crowd-pleasing pleasure. - 70
Time Out
The kids' attainment of self-respect and adulthood through sabotage and risky business is achieved at considerable cost, with Petrie pulling no punches in his depiction of violence. The exciting action set pieces, likewise, are staged with a verve and skill above and beyond the call of duty. - 60
Washington Post
Toy Soldiers is hardly deep, but it's diverting and so are most of the actors. First-time director Daniel Petrie Jr. knows his way around this roughhouse terrain -- he wrote Beverly Hills Cop, The Big Easy and Shoot to Kill -- and while he keeps things taut, he has yet to display substance rather than style. - 50
Austin Chronicle
Toy Soldiers is little more than macho posturing for young men searching for their identities. As such the image of a beefy Astin sporting a machine gun is not especially healthy nor is it especially imaginative. There is an attempt at balance with the younger, nerdier intelligent kids having a role in their own salvation and a representative cast including kids of all colors. For those concessions and for directorial competence, I am grateful. - 50
Entertainment Weekly
It’s Dead Poets Society meets Die Hard. The movie is competent, smoothly photographed, and pretty much free of false, baby-Rambo heroics. It’s so inoffensive that you can almost overlook its central drawback — that the students don’t have much personality. - 50
Boston Globe
Petrie's directing debut - he had been a scriptwriter - is proficient and assured from the technical standpoint, but he's unable to overcome the essential preposterousness of his screenplay. [26 Apr 1991, p.74] - 40
Washington Post
If your teenage sons are looking for heroes, send them to Toy Soldiers. Even if they're not, send them anyway. They'll probably enjoy watching a judge being thrown out of a helicopter. Too bad the judge didn't take the script with him. Most reasoning adults will probably reject this far-fetched clash between American preppies and Colombian terrorists.
