Warriors? Stay Inside Today!

So many action films from the 80s built their macho mythos on the concept that those who violated the peace of the main character(s) no longer deserved the common decency of civil rights or due process. The hero’s need for vengeance trumped any legal roadblock. Face it, who’s gonna complain when another murderin’, rapin’, stealin’ douchebag is blown away with a shotgun, stick of TNT, and/or a rocket launcher? Certainly not the middle-class audiences such fare catered to.

I’m not attempting to apply our current state of politically correct blaming to things done and over with ages ago. Most of the bad guys in those action movies were evil to a ridiculous extent. It is not a stretch to accept that there are far worse examples of humans as feces in the real world, but in the cinematic world, they often represented the endless assault the white male ego was going through with the rise of the women’s rights and civil rights initiatives in the fallout of the 60s and 70s. Seriously, how many of them were written by and/or directed by women? Yeah, that’s what I thought. (Note: I happened upon a film in this genre called “Maximum Breakout” that was directed by Tracy Lynch Britton, as well as cowritten by Britton and Michelle J. Carl. Oh my! It deserves its own review.)

What would happen if Dirty Harry paused to consider the consequences of blowing someone’s brains out? Would John McClane have found a way to stop the theft without blowing up half of the building and endangering everyone inside and out if he had considered his options? What about the moral dilemma of slaughtering 20% of Vietnam’s population when Braddock went back to rescue troops?

That seems to be the angle anti-director Lawrence D. Foldes takes with his remarkable “Young Warriors”. When I say “remarkable”, I don’t mean that in a good way. It is one seriously confused movie that wants to be all things to all people and in the end, it achieves a fever dream-like insanity that bad movies fans can only pray for.

Meet Kevin Carrigan and his buddies. We see them make a lame spectacle of their high school graduation. This tells us how incredibly cool they are and that they don’t play by anyone’s rules. These are our heroes. These are also the guys who are douchebags in real life. You will have a difficult time figuring out which side they belong on.

Needlessly, we jump ahead a couple of years so our awesomely cool heroes can be the head guys at their frat in college. This way, the audience can see what a bunch of crazy, fun-loving guys they all are. Of course, they are extra cool because they have a mascot dog who wears baseball caps and mirrored sunglasses; because that dog is a white poodle, we all know they are confident in their testosterone levels.

Kevin wants to be an animator. For his animation class, he repeatedly ignores the assignments because expressing all the “stuff” inside him is more important. Get used to this aggressively infantile emotional state as nearly every character revels in reacting to most everything as if they are 13-year-old boys on a sugar binge.

At home, Kevin explains to his longtime cop father, played by Ernest Borgnine in an almost bored fashion, that they plan to run the initiates through the usual rites, including “raping and pillaging”. Remember that for later; there will be a test.

We get a bunch of silly hijinks from the so-cool frat brothers while Kevin’s little sister goes to her first formal. We learn nothing new about the mental or emotional capacity of our heroes, and we have to wonder why we are having the kid sister suddenly shoved in our faces. Is the director attempting to show the vapid nature of the frat brothers’ activities when compared to – the younger sister being a bit of a buzzkill at the formal?

No. It is a lame attempt to build tension. The little sister and her date head home, but her date decides to take “the scenic route”. Out of nowhere, a black van full of stereotypical 80s thugs rolls up from the darkness. They smash into the rear bumper to amp up the tedium before running the couple off a convenient drop into a stream. The girl climbs free, but the boy is trapped when the car explodes. While still in shock, she is beaten and gang-raped by the thugs. (Wanna bet Kevin regrets his flip comment from earlier?)

She dies. Kevin butts heads with his father about the lack of police action to bring in the guys responsible. You can see where this is heading, and it does. 

After a long and painful section of macho posturing, our gang heads out to stop crime as it happens. First stop? Why, in the ghetto part of town, of course! After beating up a group of African-Americans dismantling a car, everyone is arrested, but our frat boys are released while the black guys get processed. White privilege!! Holy shit! Borgnine’s partner is Richard Roundtree! Fucking Shaft, man! And he’s okay with this? I guess he just shook his head and grabbed the pay check. I would have.

Another thing that just doesn’t jive here is that the “heroes” say that they don’t want to be recognized (as the worst vigilantes, maybe?), yet, even when they smear camo paint on their faces, they tool around in the main character’s rather singular open-top, slightly jacked-up Jeep. With their frat mascot right in the windshield. I should just give up at this point as it is obvious that Mr. Foldes knows less than Jon Snow. (That’ll be a dated reference that will require explaining in about 5 years.)

The gang progresses from assault and battery to murder as they decide to pack guns. After one such gun fight, the gang finds a cache of assault rifles, sub-machine guns, ammo, and a case of hand grenades. Instead of calling the cops to dispose of the stuff, they figure that a batch of upper middle-class kids know better how to use such things. Again, remember this as it will appear later in the course.

Want to be surprised by the end of the film? Skip down to the last two paragraphs, as I will continue to poke the end of this movie like the dead body it is.

As you can tell, our guys are losing their grip on right and wrong as well as slowly dwindling in number as characters with minimal dialogue are blown away. (Yes, the dog dies, like that comes as a shock? Come on.) Yet they spend so much time shooting random bad guys and then feeling guilty about it that we almost forget that this whole mess started because of the van full of sweaty thugs.

After Kevin uses an assault rifle to mow down two kids robbing a liquor store with a toy gun, his addled mind decides it is time for the final showdown with the thugs who killed his sister. The likely truth is that the finances for the film would not allow more pointless scenes of random shooting.

Like any cliched Western, the two groups face off in a saloon – sorry, bar. What could have mercifully been about 45 seconds of blinding gunfire is turned into a slow-motion drag that I am sure the director felt was an homage to “The Wild Bunch”. This is why we still talk about Peckinpah and you have most likely never heard of Lawrence Foldes.

Everyone seems to die except for Kevin and one of his buddies. Given what is about to happen, killing everyone during the climatic fight would have been the best option with Borgnine showing up at the last minute to kill the first guy to rape his daughter in an effort to save Kevin. Unfortunately, Kevin would die after uttering some inane crap, like, “Felt right, didn’t it, Pop?”

This did not happen. 

Instead, the already unhinged Kevin drives his buddy back to their frat house where Kevin is haunted by sound bites from earlier in the movie. At this point, he has his first adult realization: His life is utterly fucked. Like a tween in a melodramatic seizure, he pulls the pin on a grenade and blows himself and his friend to pieces. Didn’t ask if his friend wanted to die. Didn’t stop to think about the damage to the houses on either side of their frat house. His only thought was that since he had no reason to live, fuck everything and everyone else.

Thank god the film ends in such a way as to discourage a sequel. It’s been over 30 years, and Foldes hasn't threatened a follow-up. I think we are safe.

“Young Warriors” is bad. It showcases nearly every trope from the 80s action films whether they had a place in the film or not. Yet, the film does not keep you watching because of the action, pacing, characters, or plot. You keep watching because you know that, as bad as the film is at THAT moment, it will only get worse. In that respect, “Young Warriors” does not disappoint.