All hell breaks loose in Lincoln Memorial High School at the end of a long day when a group of armed thugs take over the premises as a part of their elaborate plan to hijack a shipment of narcotics destined to be incinerated by the police. Problems arise when the thugs discover that they are not alone in the high school. Former military man Sam Decker (Dolph Lundgren of "Rocky IV") is spending his last day as a teacher when the principal persuades him to supervise detention. Sam is fed up with teaching school and getting nowhere with his students. He calls the high school a 'prison' rather than a school and has no regrets about leaving. Meantime, the thugs thought that they would have only one man, the school security guard, to contend with but they have to clash with a group of high school teenagers and their indestructible teacher. The memory of losing a child in a hostage crisis in Bosnia still lingers in Sam's mind so he cannot just escape by himself from the high school, he must free all the kids, too.
"Iron Eagle" director Sidney J. Furie and scenarists Paul Lynch of "Prom Night" and John Sheppard of "Bullies" have contrived a preposterous potboiler set primarily in a high school with the villains wasting more bullets than people in their futile efforts to kill the kids and Decker as well as getaway with a large amount of narcotics. They have set things up so that the local authorities believe that the vice president of the United States is going to arrive the next day for a speech. The Secret Service man pulls all available policemen off the narcotics convoy to protect the vice president so the villains can strike the van when only two cops are in it. The biggest surprise is that the cop on the beat patrolling the area is one of the bad guys, too, but he informs his trigger-happy accomplices that the teacher served on his A-team in Bosnia and knows his stuff. The villains wing Dolph at one point. In "Rambo" style, however, our resourceful hero cauterizes his wound with a blow-torch. Naturally, one of the teenagers trapped in the school is pregnant and is about to deliver when all the shooting starts. When the head thug, Chester Lamb (Alex Karzis of "Direct Action"), sees that he is getting nowhere with his own guys, he calls up Sam's girlfriend Margo Conroy (Jennifer Baxter of "Land of the Dead") and lures her onto the premises so she can serve as his hostage. Mind you, none of this is remotely believable, but Dolph emerges triumphant and decides not to quit on his pupils. Essentially, "Detention" combined elements of "Die Hard" with "The Breakfast Club" with mediocre results. The helicopter crash looks particularly phony. Director Sidney J. Furie has done better, but considerably how low-budget this melodrama is, it is tolerable compared with most of the junk out there. There is one good scene when Dolph's ex-military buddy turned policemen hands him a flask that he took off a suspect. Later, when the cop shoots Dolph in the chest, the bullet bounces off the flask and our hero survives to keep on fighting.
"Iron Eagle" director Sidney J. Furie and scenarists Paul Lynch of "Prom Night" and John Sheppard of "Bullies" have contrived a preposterous potboiler set primarily in a high school with the villains wasting more bullets than people in their futile efforts to kill the kids and Decker as well as getaway with a large amount of narcotics. They have set things up so that the local authorities believe that the vice president of the United States is going to arrive the next day for a speech. The Secret Service man pulls all available policemen off the narcotics convoy to protect the vice president so the villains can strike the van when only two cops are in it. The biggest surprise is that the cop on the beat patrolling the area is one of the bad guys, too, but he informs his trigger-happy accomplices that the teacher served on his A-team in Bosnia and knows his stuff. The villains wing Dolph at one point. In "Rambo" style, however, our resourceful hero cauterizes his wound with a blow-torch. Naturally, one of the teenagers trapped in the school is pregnant and is about to deliver when all the shooting starts. When the head thug, Chester Lamb (Alex Karzis of "Direct Action"), sees that he is getting nowhere with his own guys, he calls up Sam's girlfriend Margo Conroy (Jennifer Baxter of "Land of the Dead") and lures her onto the premises so she can serve as his hostage. Mind you, none of this is remotely believable, but Dolph emerges triumphant and decides not to quit on his pupils. Essentially, "Detention" combined elements of "Die Hard" with "The Breakfast Club" with mediocre results. The helicopter crash looks particularly phony. Director Sidney J. Furie has done better, but considerably how low-budget this melodrama is, it is tolerable compared with most of the junk out there. There is one good scene when Dolph's ex-military buddy turned policemen hands him a flask that he took off a suspect. Later, when the cop shoots Dolph in the chest, the bullet bounces off the flask and our hero survives to keep on fighting.