Detention

Dolph Lundgren has finally done it! He finally decided to school his enemies at, well, a school! Yes! A genius indeed, Dolphage played an ex-soldier named Sam Decker who taught at a less-than-continuation school where cussing is the only language the kids know and girls are pregnant everywhere. "Detention" is so bad, it's good! Stereotypes have never been used this much, but the director achieved major insult to teens. Decker wanted to quit since he finally realized that High School High was below him and that the kids stunk, but the principal demanded that he stay and watch one, final detention class. Pity. A group of maniacs who dressed like Billy Idol took over the school and 'locked down' the school property. Of course, the movie went into "Under Siege" mode and Decker became a one-man army. The children band together and unite! A girl goes into labor, a wheelchair bound teen goes into a flurry and manages to outrun a motorcycle, another boy lives his self-fulfilling prophecy of actually getting courage to fight back and the whole gang construct this metallic/spike/shield thingy and fight bad guys in the gym! What an extremely entertaining movie and Dolph Lordgren delivers high-caliber action once again. What a deity he is! Yes! Two hots, thumbs up, and ten toes up, all the way!

"Detention" is not a great movie. It is not within Dolph Lundgren's top ten, and it does not deserve this four-star rating by technical standards. It is, however, one of the most downright entertaining flicks Dolph has done since he got into the DTV game. It's reason enough why Lundgren and director Sidney Furie (Iron Eagle) should've done more work together. Implausibility and all-around goofiness run amuck in a flick that really has no business receiving any kind of acclaim (including its nomination from the Canadian Directors Guild) but steals it anyway with sheer moxie and funtime temperament.

The story: Special Forces operative-turned-high school teacher Sam Decker (Lundgren, The Expendables) expects to end his last day of employment by hosting an after-school detention session for a handful of delinquent youth, but when a gang of drug runners take over the school as the site of their villainous master plan, the children are put in danger and Sam must fight back.

This movie is filled with strange, strange characters. Dolph is presented as an upright sort of guy but thinks it's okay to make out with his secretary girlfriend in empty classrooms. The students are unruly to start with - escaping from detention through the ceiling of the classroom - but a couple of them are way too eager to take on the gun-wielding terrorists when they first realize they're under siege (this is before Dolph corrals them and all they have to fight with are knives). The villains themselves are led by a very odd duck (Alex Karzis, A Man in Uniform) and his femme fatale girlfriend with bubblegum-colored hair (Kata Dobo, Rollerball), both of whom occasionally cue classical music during their interactions to let you know how crazy they are. The movie is also filled with strange, strange scenarios and situations: the untrained schoolchildren mount surprisingly effective attacks against the criminals using papercutter blades, bows and arrows, and a Home Alone-style spike trap; Dolph outdoes them by crafting his own hand-driven tank; and at one point a bad guy mounts a motorcycle and chases a wheelchair-bound kid (Dov Tiefenbach, The Dark Hours) through a hallway before crashing into the school's pool. I almost hate to say it, but the "Die Hard in school" premise really couldn't have been pulled off any more bombastically, Toy Soldiers considered.

The movie isn't an action masterpiece and the characters aren't universally likeable, but the crazy setups and unpredictable nature of the film ensure that it's never uninteresting. Sidney Furie's direction helps a great deal: he's not the most distinctive director Lundgren's worked under, but he was definitely among the more talented ones when it came to maximizing limited resources and keeping a plot rolling so it never got old. Despite this one's many conceivable plot holes (e.g. was it really impossible for the kids to just break a window to get out?), its production values are sound enough to avoid any technical goofs and definitely make the production appear much richer than its $5 million budget. The action content is abundant, though limited to the weird kinds of scenarios I've described and a few shootouts, with next to no martial arts until one of the very last scenes. Amazingly, I don't mind this: the action-of-yesteryear feel is palpable even when no one is fighting, and what the scenes lack in traditional coolness they make up for in sheer fervor and gusto.

It's very probable that my genuine enthusiasm for this film is not shared by many folks beyond this review board, but I need to stand by my convictions. "Detention" is just plain fun, a quality which Dolph's output lacked then and now. It's a movie better geared towards general action fans who can forget to be serious for a while (or drink a lot of beer while watching) instead of traditional Dolph enthusiasts, though they too ought to check this one out ahead of garbage that takes itself too seriously, like Agent Red.

Detention is a movie where a veteran-turned-teacher is stuck watching four students in detention on his last day of work. Also in the school after hours is a wheelchair bound student and one security guard. Shortly after everyone is locked in, a band of drug smugglers break into the school and all hell breaks loose. The students are running from their teacher, their teacher is running from the murderous drug smugglers, and soon the drug smugglers are running from their targets! The students fight back using the school's archery equipment, while their teacher uses the school's metal shop to create a weapon capable of a decent amount of destruction, and time is running out with a bomb in the basement....Will the school still be standing on Monday? Will the students make it out alive? Sometimes the greatest lessons are learned in Detention!

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