This movie is in hindsight one of the movies that started the careers of Sean Penn and Tom Cruise. It is about the cadets of a military academy who want to save their academy from real estate promotors. On the positive side, there is some drama and some half way intelligent one on one discussions. But for the rest, I do have my problems with so many aspects of the movie. Apparently, in this whole academy with kids from 10 to 18 years old, there is just one adult person and when he gets sick, the kids are on their own. They have though full access to a whole arsenal of military grade weaponry with live sufficient rounds to start a war. Then, the best reaction to this situation from the authorities is apparently to send the real military with helicopters, tanks and fully armed soldiers against the kids. Well, if you do not think too much about it and you just want to see how Cruise and Penn started their careers, it a decent watch.

A group of cadets defending their academy.

Nostalgia may have bumped my rating a bit, so keep in mind I must have watched this movie 20 times or more the first few years it came out when I was a kid. That being said, while the premise comes across as pretty absurd some 37 years later, there are plenty of solid performances by some young actors who went on to have very successful careers. Cruise before Risky Business; Penn before Fast Times at Ridgemont High; Timothy Hutton, Giancarlo Esposito, and Evan Handler all very early in their careers. Well worth revisiting all these years later. A solid 'good, but not great' flick.