THE STORY: I had a really f***ing bad day today. The kind of day that makes you want to go around smacking all of your bosses in the head and saying "You're full of ***t, you know that!!!?" The last thing I need after a bad day is more headaches. I wanted to go to the movies to see the X-men. But the line oat the theater was going all the way down the street...and full of obnoxious teenagers, screaming children and bored parents. So that was a no go. To top it off, my neighbors are leaving for Fort Benning in a week. My wife, who really likes them (I like them too, don't get me wrong) told them they could use MY VCR until they leave since their stuff is in transit to Benning, but they have a rental TV. Yep, my droogies, I said MY VCR. Now, I have more VCR's than I need...or I would if they all worked. I have a nice new Panasonic VCR, two cheap-ass Hitachi's that will eat tapes and three...count 'em three, older Hitachi's. I use one of them as a receiver for the cable and nothing else. The other two are pretty f***ing useless. They'll eat a tape in two seconds. But since my wife promised them a VCR to use...meaning MY VCR, I handed one of them over. They only needed on to use as a cable receiver. No problem. Its not like my wife promised them HER VCR in the living room. Noooo, she said  I wouldn't mind giving mine up. (Grrrr....you can see where this is  going can't you?) Well, the VCR I donated didn't work at all. So my wife asked me to give up my old Hitachi and use the Panasonic as a cable box....and to do it fast.( dammit, she promised them, I didn't...I was busy having a s****y day!) So I unplugged the Hitachi. Unfortunately the damn thing was plugged into my power strip which also has this computer plugged into it. (Keep in mind the power in Germany is 220 so I have to keep almost all of my stuff plugged into surge suppressors which are in turn plugged into transformers.) For some reason, my unplugging the VCR caused the power strip to shut down, and stopping power to this computer. The same computer that I just finished...FINISHED writing the review for this movie on, but hadn't saved yet. So I lost all of that [unwrite]. GRRRRR. Why?....because my [unwrite]ing neighbors couldn't rent a goddamn two bucks a day VCR for three days and my wife promised MY VCR to help them out without really even asking me first!!!! Dammitt!

The worst thing is I know its really not a big deal and I need to calm down, but for the love of God, I had a really s****y day! I just wanted to sit down, have a beer and relax tonight without having to do any extra [unwrite]. That's all. Four or so hours until I went to bed. Then I'd sleep all night and wake up ready for another day of unending torment. This my friends, really is the Divine Comedy.

Anyway, since my witty remarks on the Reagan Years of the eighties and the movies that came out because of them are gone, I'll get on with the review. This flick stars my old Michael "Used to be on The Greatest American Hero" Pare. Pare is Sergeant Youngblood a true blue marine serving in the embassy in Paris. He receives a call from his sister, Kim, who is living in Madrid, Spain. She needs help and begs him for it. Youngblood, of course takes leave and heads for Madrid, even though in a few days he's to be transferred to Tokyo. It doesn't help that Youngblood's idiot roommate, Sheldon, puts a pistol in his luggage. This gets Youngblood arrested at the airport in Spain  until he's bailed out by Major Davis, a marine serving at the embassy in Madrid.

Kim is in trouble. she's actually working as a high price whore for two scumbuckets called Silke and Dutch. She did something to piss them off so they kill her. When Youngblood arrives at her apartment he finds out about her death from one of her friends, a photographer named Jake. (Damn lot of Americans in Spain.) The only other major character is Virginia, a new 'ho' that Silke and Dutch hire. Virginia is no angel. She's seen clearly negotiating her fees for basically screwing guys with Silke. Yeah, she's the movies heroine. I know prostitution is legal in Germany, but I guess it must be in Spain also. Either way, this doesn't make Virginia my choice of women to shack up with.

With Jake's reluctant help, Youngblood tracks down Silke and Dutch to exact revenge for his sisters death. This is the kind of movie that only makes sense if you believe in some of the fantastic bull[unwrite] about the marine corps. (keep reading until you get to Code 42 section 10...geezuz that is unbelievable in its idiocy) You also have to be aware that as the audience you know things that Youngblood couldn't know to make sense of this. Like, Youngblood really only has Jake's word that Kim was murdered. The police and the Medical Examiner say it was an accident. We know she was murdered, but Youngblood doesn't. He's not a doctor, but he can tell from one glimpse at her body in the morgue that Dutch killed her. Also, Youngblood attacks Dutch at their first meeting...but he can't know what Dutch even looks like. So how does he instantly know that Dutch is the culprit. All this happens without Youngblood finding or producing one atom of any proof that Kim was murdered.

In due course Youngblood hooks up with Virginia and kind of out of left field she becomes the love interest. You know, I've met some pretty hot babes in my life and I've learned the hard way that they can be hot and skanky in the same time. Virginia's just a pricey whore! One that Youngblood has little reason to trust! Yet, she ends up being the movies default heroine. Ick.

Before Youngblood goes into movie hero revenge mode he first meets with Major Davis and resigns his status as a marine. This is due to Code 42, which, really, you have to see it to understand how completely retarded it is. I' ve spent time on bashing it in the following points so I'll just slide past it right now. Suffice it to say that when Youngblood finally confronts his enemies he kills them, which is murder...but he kills them in a dramatic way, with explosions and car chases so Major Davis tells him that he can be a marine again.  Yeah, I'm sure a marine Major in a foreign country has enough pull to get a guy off of all the charges that Youngblood must have racked up. Murder. Taking the law into your own hands. Breaking into an embassy. Impersonating a senior NCO. Oh, the list goes on, but Major Davis makes this deal with Youngblood. Damn, I'm going downtown to firebomb some buildings. I mean, my boss can pull some strings with the German government and get me off can't he? He's a colonel!

Even though I found this movie to have ZERO logic, it was kind of fun to watch. You really can't expect much more from a lot of movies made in the eighties. That's back when   Hollywood was giving a giant blowjob to the military. Virginia was Tawny Kitaen. (like that's her real [unwrite]ing name) I never liked her. I had a buddy who thought she was so hot, but she reminded me of a lot of chicks I hated back in the eighties. Mostly because I knew they'd never go out with me, but hey, I have feelings too! Major Davis was Charles Napier, who I always chuckle at since I know he played one of the hippie guys in the corny classic Star trek episode with the space hippies. (I can't remember the title of the episode which at least shows I'm not a total Trek nerd)

Best Lines: "Yeah, I'll help you, but God help me if you're not Captain America!"- Jake who obviously hasn't seen the movie Captain America, tells Youngblood he'll help him even though it puts his life in peril.

"Have a drink on Uncle Sam!" -Youngblood after he kicks the [unwrite] out of some thugs in a Spanish bar.

1.)  These marines have the longest hair I've ever seen on a marine. I could mention that the colonel with the ambassador is kinda fat, too. I've never seen a fat marine...or a marine with a lot of hair. Its unthinkable. Marines don't gain weight or grow hair without orders. Well, on with usual uniform mistakes; The colonel is in his dress blues, but has a white belt. Marine OFFICERS have black belts. The major that springs Youngblood from the Spanish police wears his hat indoors. That's a no-no and I don't buy a marine officer doing that.

2.)  Nobody ever told Youngblood that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. He's really close to plain f***ing rude when he sees the Spanish policeman about Kim's murder. He becomes downright belligerent when the policeman tells him the report says his sister wasn't murdered but killed in an accident. Then he has the gall to tell the policeman "I want a copy of that report...IN ENGLISH....by tomorrow morning!" Yeah, right. As far as the policeman is concerned, Youngblood, you're just a tourist. What makes you think he's going to take orders from your rude ass? To further show that Youngblood has no social graces he bursts into Jake's studio during a photo shoot and when Jake gets upset about it he bellows "I don't have time to apologize...I NEED YOUR HELP!" Gosh, Youngblood, maybe if you were nice to him he'd be a little more receptive. Man, what a jerk.

3.)  What the hell was the scene for with Youngblood watching some Marines drill outside of an embassy? I don't care too much that he was watching them, but the Platoon Sergeant's orders were ridiculous. It went like this "Attention!...Parade Rest!...Attention!...Present arms!(salute)...Order arms!(drop the salute)....Parade rest!...Attention!....Present arms!...Order arms!" etc. He did that a few times, marched the squad a few feet and started over again! They couldn't possibly have been practicing any drills. For Pete's sake, those marines should know all of those movements after the first few days of Basic Training! It just looked stupid.

4.)  I'm not a marine, (I'm a soldier...Hooo-ahhh) but I really really am tempted to look up Code 42 Section 10. According to Youngblood this regulation says that any marine can basically resign from the corps 48 hours before their current tour of duty is up to any officer anywhere in the world. That's tour of Duty...not enlistment. Oh-kay...I'm going to tear this baby apart. First of all, Youngblood was slated to PCS (Permanent Change of Station...be reassigned, in essence) to Japan. So he must have reenlisted. The Marines, the Army, the Air Force, the Navy...none of those branches are going to pay for a servicemember to move from Paris to Japan if the servicemember doesn't have enough time in their current enlistment to do a full tour! Hell, I had to sign a document extending my current enlistment just to get this assignment! So using actual military knowledge applied to this Youngblood must have at LEAST three years of service left on his current enlistment. Do you really think the marine corps would let someone just up and get out 48 hours before they're supposed to go to a new duty station!? Do you realize how much havoc that would cause? And apparently no paperwork needs to be filed with this magic Code 42 Section 10! Youngblood gives Major Davis his ID card and dogtags. Davis then tells "You're no longer a marine!" That's it?!! What the F***?! That's so moronic I'm astonished that no one in this movie said "Hey, that's bulls***! We've got to rewrite this crap! No one is going to buy that!" You can't just hand over a military ID card! Its a controlled item! And why give Davis your dogtags? They're relatively unimportant. Heck, any Joe Six-Pack can go to an Army-Navy surplus store and probably have some made. The only good thing I can see about Code 42 Section 10 is that Starfleet must use it quite a bit, considering how many Star Fleet officers on the Trek shows sometimes just up and resign their commissions on a whim. (and I thought that was stupid, too)

5.)  *sigh* The whole breaking into the embassy thing in this movie is going to eat up a LOT of bytes. 'Cuz there's a lot to rag on about. First of all Youngblood needs to steal a marine uniform to sneak into the embassy. (I can believe he didn't bring his own...after all he was just going to Spain to see his sister.) But they steal one from a dry cleaning store. Fine. So where'd the medals, hat and shoes come from? Last time I took my uniform to the cleaners I damn sure didn't bring all my medals, my shoes or my freaking hat! ...( and the bastards lost my pants! God, I was so mad! I had a freaking ceremony to be in the next day! Luckily they found them. And you wonder why I'm so cranky.)

Okay...Youngblood has a uniform of a Gunnery sergeant or a Master gunnery sergeant (I couldn't clearly tell which, but I was sure it was at least one of those ranks). The Marine at the gate asked him for ID and Youngblood bluffs him by berating his uniform and telling him that he's the new NCOIC ( Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge )and that he wants to see him in his office first thing in the morning about his uniform being dirty with ketchup stains. The marine (who was a sergeant) is so completely downtrodden by being yelled at by a high ranking NCO lets Youngblood just walk through afterwards. So, this guy guards an embassy? It doesn't matter who the freaking f*** you are, if you don't have the proper ID you ain't getting into a secured area. I've stopped officers from going into places without authorization...I have an MP friend who almost shot a Captain for trying a stunt like that. Not to mention, wouldn't this sergeant know if he was getting a new NCOIC? Its not like you just wake up and go to work and notice "Oh, Master Sergeant Smith is gone...his new replacement Master Sergeant Jones is in his office now!" .

Youngblood bluffs his way past a corporal in the embassy hallway. Funny thing is the corporal salutes him. Indoors. How many people out there know anything about military courtesies? If you do you'll know you don't normally salute indoors and that a corporal doesn't SALUTE A SERGEANT!

The embassy has the most easy access arms room I have ever seen. Ever. Youngblood just opens the door and goes in. I have yet to see an arms room that didn't have a steel door so thick that Superman would break a sweat getting into it. But, hey, in this movie universe marines are allowed to have pistols in their barracks so maybe I oughtta roll with it.

6.)  Remember those big-hair bands from the 80's pretending to be playing Heavy metal but really it was only "Candy-rock"? The fright wig Virginia has on when Youngblood chases after her into the bullring is...well, hilarious. Looks like she auditioning for a Poison Video.

NUDITY AND SEX:  A few naked chicks are seen.

HUH? :  Youngblood didn't see the big freaking gun Sheldon snuck in his bag? He would have had to! For that matter why was the gun in his locker in the barracks. You can't keep firearms in the barracks, even if they're legally yours. They have to be locked in the arms room. Think about it. Given the normal stress in military life how long do you think it would take someone to snap and start blowing guys away if you could have pistols in your quarters?

Youngblood doesn't know what Dutch looks like, but when Dutch opens the door to the "[unwrite] pad" Youngblood just attacks him straight out. How the hell does he know that's the man behind the door is Dutch. For that matter, Youngblood doesn't have any real proof that Dutch is the killer or even knew Kim. Can you imagine if Youngblood had accidentally gone to the wrong house? He could have beat up some poor innocent stock broker or something.

This guy just made Sergeant? Youngblood resigns from the marine corps and an hour later he tells Jake he needs a marine corps uniform to sneak into the embassy. Gosh, sergeant, do you think maybe you shoulda got that first and then resigned?

Major Davis is in a local bar that seems to have a lot of marine customers. All in uniform. Hmmm.....no one told them that maybe some terrorists might decide to blow them away? You don't just juant around town in uniform in a foreign country! You definitely don't go out drinking in Uniform! Heck, you ain't  supposed to be in uniform in the clubs on post usually...so its by default that the military doesn't want personnel in civilian owned bars getting sloshed in uniform.

THE FINAL JUDGEMENT:  Its a blast from the past! The Inferno gives it four devils for being entertaining! This movie is so eighties its hilarious. Enjoy it while you can. because your kids are going to make fun of you because of it someday. Especially when you see Virginia's hair. I think Tawny must have had it done just before she was in that Whitesnake video. Definitely worth a rental if you need a laugh and a little action.