Young Rebels

The third film I've seen by Iranian-born action director Amir Shervan, following on from his later-made KILLING American STYLE and SAMURAI COP. Sadly, YOUNG REBELS lacks the so-bad-it's-good quality of those two movies, the inherent entertainment in their cheesiness, although it is very similar in look and feel. Somehow, this one lacks the edge and subsequently is just a poor B-movie.

The action-focused storyline is very similar to those of Shervan's two other movies. A group of bad guy criminals go around wasting rivals and innocent people caught up in their crimes. Robert Z'Dar is one again a hulking henchman. The nondescript heroes give chase and attempt to ambush the villains, resulting in plenty of shoot-outs and cheesy action violence. Old-timer Aldo Ray shows up in support.

Needless to say this is a film affected by the curse of the B-movie: awful acting, badly scripted dialogue, and just a couple of locations in which to set the action. It's a particularly weak film in terms of story with around half of the running time made up of striptease sequences from various actresses you don't particularly want to see nude in the first place. There are also an inordinate amount of sex scenes included to pad out the running time although most of them get interrupted before anything happens. The action is over the top but not as well staged as in, say, KILLING American STYLE. One other thing I have to criticise is the sound design. The gun fights are accompanied by ridiculously loud cannon booms every time a handgun or shotgun fires, so you have to turn the sound right down and end up missing most of the dialogue, which annoyed me.

It's an Armin Shevran film allright.

It's what you'd call good-bad. There's some unintentional laughs in there, whether by dialogue or the way it's edited.

Grab a few friends, some drinks, and you'll have a wonderful time.

If you've seen the movie Gypsy, then you've pretty much seen the movie Young rebels. Pretty much the only thing they seem to change instead of gypsies they had Mexicans doesn't seem like they changed much else between the movies. It kind of played out the same way. PS on IMDb. There is a character name. Liz the character is actually Kim. If you had a choice between watching gypsy or young rebels, I personally would watch gypsy multiple times. It's a better movie even though the actress that's in gypsy is in this movie if you're going to watch this movie, watch it for the character of Kim played by Christine Lunde. Who is by the way never mentioned in the end credits. Along with a slew of other actors. Though Dahlia Shepard is who again played a bit part. My only guess for that is at the time she was better known.

While there seems to be a lot more going on here story wise, this thing is really all over the place, quality wise it's pretty much on par with Killing American Style. I will say though Amir has no problem putting beautiful woman in front of the camera, and I definitely appropriate that, as with the lack of rape this time around and thankfully we get Robert Z'Dar back goofy hairdo and all to. Also cheers to Cinema Epoch for making this thing look brand new.

As others have mentioned, this is not as inspired a piece of dreck as the same director's "Samurai Cop," though it does have many of the same basic elements, from WTF screen presence Z'Dar (has any actor's face ever been QUITE so square?) to the incessant lame "martial arts" to actresses with implants who were probably discovered as strippers, and in fact largely PLAY strippers here. (And they're not even impressive in that mode.)

In fact most of the cast appears to have been cast for their bodies, male and female--maybe they found their "talent" between gyms and strip clubs. So, needless to say, the acting is highly variable, and the certifiable professionals (like Aldo Ray, who yells his way through a couple scenes) are not at all reliably on the "better" end.

I guess what most distinguished "Cop" is that the dialogue was just jaw-droppingly awful at times--I can still quote some lines. It's bad here too, but not quite memorably so. There's also a greater monotony to the "plot," which is pretty much just one shootout after another, each killing off a dozen or so extras introduced solely for that purpose. So, not a great bad movie. But still, an entertaining one if you're not too choosy.