First thing you are going to notice is that there are a total of only five bad guys. That's bad. The reason being that you know that the action scenes are going to be few or many and unimpressive. DETENTION has many action scenes. Almost every action scene goes like this: Bad guy enters room. Bad guys shoot at nothing for five minutes. Dolph Lundgren dodges bullets and escapes. There really isn't much of Dolph kicking butt. He is either great at dodging bullets or all the villains are expert shots shooting silouettes around moving targets the size of Dolph Lundgren.
The five bad guys (one is a cop and former soldier that toured with Sam) use the school as some kind of base of operations to steal a van full of drugs being transported by the police. If you really think about it that really isn't very smart. In fact it takes a lot of work to take over a school even if you are only expecting one security guard. I understand that they use the school garage to transport the drugs into a different vehicle but couldn't they just use an empty warehouse somewhere instead of school that has alarms and cameras and such. They actually steal the drugs with ease but instead of driving away with the merchandise they all stick around so they can be killed by Dolph and the bratty kids still trapped inside the school. The bad guys plan on stealing the drugs and selling them to the secret service. That don't make no sense, Yo. I guess the secret service is big into the whole drug dealing scene. The movie shows the bad guys lining the seats of a van with the stolen drugs but the drug exhange is done by helicopter at the school. That don't make no sense either. Why not go to a different location with the drugs, tell the secret service that you are changing the place of exchange and then blow up the school? They were going to blow it up anyway. Another thing. What is all this buisness about being trapped in a school? Have you ever heard of emergency exits? They are never locked and they sound alarms to notify the authorities of bad stuff going down. Or how about breaking a window or glass door? I know one thing. If you and I were trapped in a DIE HARD situation I would break out the nearest window and leave your butt behind. I'm a nerd on the Internet, not Rambo.
Chester Lamb played by Alex Karzis is an eccentric theatrical muderous mastermind that is having trouble keeping his simple stealing the drugs from the coppers plan together. He is a little over the top at times but he keeps you interested in what is going on. Often playful in a mean spirited way Chester Lamb is really the only other highlight in DETENTION besides Dolph. But even he and his cohorts are a little too colorful in their appearance and behavior. They are a bunch of eighties looking punk rockers, two of which are from Hungary. I guess that would explain why they look like they are from the eighties. They are a little out of place in this modern action movie for adults. If they weren't so big on killing and cussing you could easily transport all the bad guys in DETENTION into HOME ALONE 5. The kids that Dolph is trying to save are loud, annoying and constantly getting in each others faces. The less said about them the better. One kid is in a motorized wheel chair and you instantly hate the little puke the second he scoots down the hallway almost running over everyone in his path not willing to slow down for anyone. Granted at the end they all become good people (or dead good people) learning their lesson that being jerks doesn't pay but I still don't like them. I was kind of rooting for the bad guys in this one.
DETENTION wastes Dolph's potential. This could have been about Dolph being more of a mentor to these kids showing them there is a different way of life besides being a jerkola. Then halfway through the film after establishing a bond with his class bad guys show up and Dolph kicks their butts. I was actually expecting this movie to be more like THE SUBSTITUTE. What a great movie that could have been. Dolph could put his wisdom into the character teaching punk kids about responsibilty and not doing drugs and whatever else teachers do. But no we get a standard half assed DIE HARD complete with exploding helicopter at the end. Not much imagination here.
Despite not being very good I did enjoy DETENTION. I can only recommend it to die hard Dolph Lundgren fans. He doesn't kick that much butt and you do get tired of seeing him run from the fight but it is nice to see Dolph in a teacher role. I hope he does more movies as a mentor type. He certainly taught me a valuable lesson. It takes more than five bad guys to take down Dolph Lundgren.
Jason
Nice Post, Dolph is like water... it doesn't matter how it taste, we still need it.
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