BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Aedonerre I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

timothyhugine There are some mild spoilers in this review. Here we are in a seemingly American family, besides the mothers British accent, with a young boy named Alex played by one of my favorite actors Fergus Riordan. It starts at the beginning of the film with 10-year-old Alex as happy as any child can be while also expecting two younger twin siblings. The moment the twins are brought into the home kind of presents a problem for young Alex as he finds that he can no longer do what he did before having them there thus emitting a burst of rage from him when he can not watch T.V. I thought it was quite humorous when he dropped hints to his dad that he wanted to have his own T.V. in which the dad relented, talked to his mother about it, and ultimately buys him one.It takes a twist when he switches on the television to be greeted with scenes of war, death, and pure sadness. He then sees the army who are handing out cases of water and other provisions. That is where the Army Captain imaginary friend is born and the Astronaut Harry pretty much dead. He gains an all-out fascination with the violence of war, cuts his hair like an army recruit and wears his dad's army uniform.In general, I think that this film's message is pretty much this: When you bring in two new babies and show them more attention than what you showed the one before them and the father is having an affair with the mother, it's going to end pretty nasty for any child. The child begins to lose touch with everyone around him primarily focusing everything within, happiness, anger, sadness, frustration. All this pent up emotion tends to erupt and who did it erupt with? Poor little Max, whose brother (a teenage boy older than either of the kids in the film) gets upset, beats the crap out of Alex who whips out a knife and is ultimately stabbed by the teenager and left to die on the street....I know, pretty brutal right? A saddening film indeed.

raisingd Me, i'm 45.. young for my age in mind yet insightful to life, the universe and anything you may wish to add.I was pointed in the direction of this movie buy a friend of mine who laid the table with the trailer.. the trailer says deep..heavy..sad, and in parts the film is that... however.. This film isn't about plots or twists or acting, although i thought the parts played by all were believable... I think to some degree we measure believability of the role by how drawn we are into the story and our own experiences of real people and situations... growing up on a council estate say.. as opposed to a largely sheltered "middle class" community, will throw you into situations that others may consider unbelievable but are nonetheless true. This story rings true across many a household... in part. don't try and disassemble this story like many reviewers do, a film is meant to take you on a journey.. a journey of emotions and thoughts, if a film achieves that... then the film is good...regardless of the "holes in plot" etc.. who cares... you see.. a reviewer tends to make the mistake of over analyzing a film rather than remembering its to take the person on the journey i mentioned earlier...if u want a more complete reality.. leave films alone and watch documentaries.... there are no glaringly obvious holes, there is no poor acting or bad scripts..it will touch you, maybe move you.. it drew a tear.. i could relate to things that were unfolding.. in places.. as i'm sure you will when you see it. There is a message in the movie..and to be quite honest its a very poignant message... watch it.. you'll like it, but it has that thing Schindler's List has... where its a good film but it feels wrong saying its good..if you know what i mean. Very worth the watch...ignore the over critical analytical yuppie reviews... its a film... a good film.

jeigan "I want to be a soldier" is a wonderful movie for all the wrong reasons. The general plot follows the vicissitudes of Alex; he is a child who wanted to be an astronaut and had an astronaut imaginary friend, up until his parents bought him his own TV. Since the TV shows lots of violent acts like shootings, murders and war movies, Alex is now a violent 10-year-old who wants to be a soldier (and has a US officer as his new imaginary friend).The direction is quite poor in and of itself. A good portion of the movie consists of the main character monologuing about being a soldier so he can kill people, torture prisoners, make Nazi-like experiments on his victims, become a dictator and so on, while a collage of violent stock footage runs on the screen. This happens quite often, too, and I think makes at least 25-30% of the whole movie.The characters are about as stereotyped as possible, what with Alex hanging around with the geeky kid when he's "good" and then with some bullies who smoke and have knifes after he switches over to the "bad" side. Alex's family is about as cliché as possible, with the mother being obsessed with the newborn twins, the father having an affair and both dismissing their kid's behavior as "a phase".The "imaginary friend" concept is sort of nice and adds an interesting layer to the movie as both friends (astronaut and officer) are played by the same actor, and they switch roles depending on the phase Alex is currently in. It's not enough to save the movie from its silliness, though."I want to be a soldier" is quite enjoyable to watch for its "so bad it's good" wackiness and its unending stream of dumb plot devices that ultimately end up in Danny Glover stating how "TV is evil". However, it's far from a good movie if taken seriously. I can only suggest you rent this film if you're smashed and/or in for a laugh with some friends.

rspeedyrider The start of the film seems to set up the film as a good child gone bad due to TV/computer violence. The end of the film narrator implies that children copy adults. But the child has dillusions via an imaginary friend so he must have mental issues, right ? Doesn't this render the childs perceptions of the world invalid ? This makes the whole film invalid in its approach to the media/parenting producing violent offspring or children copying adults. The film itself is okay to watch if you you forget that a young delusional child that doesn't get its own way to watch TV, finally watches TV and then becomes violent because he listens to his imaginary friend after seeing TV programs showing violence.