Troma's War

Troma's War, about a group of refugees from a plane crash stranded on an island with wild Commandos led by a two-headed politician planning the extinction of America... is some ridiculous s***.

But for the first two thirds Kaufman and Herz and company manage to find a balance between the one liners and gags, and the more serious elements (or at least as serious as a goofy cartoon like Troma can get) such as the commandos on the island who are, behind the jokey Schwarzenegger captain who is funny every time he speaks and the (Jesus Christ!) AIDS guy who is out to rape women so they get it, its a war movie that is intentionally BIG and MANIC and just nuts, but with a purpose.

When Troma's War is at its most impressive and eye catching when Kaufman skewers 80s action movies and Regan era militarism. As an ex hippie it's clear he didn't like what he was seeing, in bloated B movies and over the top spectacles, so... why not make his own, the Troma way? Where it lost me a bit was in the last third. There is what feels like a natural climax like two thirds into the movie, where some of the heroes (like Lost they're not all likable but their bond is a plane crash) save the others from being killed and raped and maimed by the commandos. and then it just keeps going. And the acting doesn't get better.

And not that one should be looking for a totally consistent tone in this junk food, but there was a better grasp of what the film was and trying to do for a while. By the time it nears its real climax, there's still some more mayhem, relentless violence, all shot and edited with flair even as its with little to no budget (outside of the special effects - the highlight for me is a montage of soldiers in trees who all get shot down and fall off the same way, tree after tree). But it kind of devolves into dumb antics and one liners (and I mean DUMB for a movie by these f****rs), though it's almost saved by a side characters stunt from a truck onto a boat.

I want to like it more - it's shot with more competency than other Troma movies, has ambitious and exciting stunts and effects, and up to a point has some really good music (up to a point as in not too much but still there crappy 80s songs put over scenes unnecessarily) and though some of the acting is cheesy and over the top, some of it really works for it being a ludicrous mockery. There's even some arcs for characters, like the guy who gets his truck onto the boat at the end. And yet there is a line that, sometimes, Kaufman and Herz have to not cross but do a lot of the time which is the film being the same carnage extravaganza with bullets flying and guts spilling and squibs popping like there's no tomorrow and became something like Commando.

But... if you wanna get some buddies together, and are in the mood for some comic book characters and set ups and pay offs (including a British dude who talks like Peter O'Toole and has a shtick with poison darts), this ain't bad. It's just not AS memorable as Toxic Avenger and Nuke em High.

Author: plazma_dragon wrote 'The makers of this film tried to combine a comedy movie with an action movie'.

no, that's not what they did. what the wonderful folks at troma did in this film is to take all the conventions of all Hollywood action films set in the contemporary era, and push them to their logical extremes.

the action film is inherently illogical - that's exactly why we watch them. in the action film you identify with the hero and blow away a criminal as soon as you can, and move on to the next criminal to blow away.

in real life, if you shoot someone you think is committing a crime, you may miss and get shot; you may only wound him, in which case you have to listen to his squeals of pain, and later, in most states, he has the right to come back and sue you for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon - no joke. and if you do kill him, then you have to justify it to the police, and sometimes to a judge, and you have to listen to his mom weep in agony, and then she sues you for 'wrongful death' and you have to wonder - was causing so much pain to others and one's self really worth it - a question that may haunt you the rest of your life. finally, there's the possibility that he may shoot you - setting aside your possible demise, there's the problem of getting crippled for the rest of your life. you can sue the criminal, but if he's just the corner thug, you'll never see a penny.

this doesn't mean that you don't shoot the criminal - you may need to - if he's threatening a loved one, and i got a good shot, i certainly would. but what all this does mean is that you're stuck with all kinds of consequences that never happen to Stallone or snipes or Jackie Chan.

troma takes this basic principle - shoot the guy and move on, hero - to the extremes. any of the airliner survivors who show compassion are deemed wimpy and abandoned. the Rambo-wannabe wades into a whole regiment of enemy soldiers and doesn't get shot. the pacifist priest is sadistically tortured and shot in the goriest fashion, condemned to die by a neo-Nazi for being Jewish - even though he's clearly not - simply because the Nazi thinks everyone he kills must be Jewish, since he's a Nazi and Nazis kill Jews.

as for the nudity - it is rumored that steven seagal actually used to have it in his contract that there would be at least one female nude scene in any movie he made. nude scenes are pro-forma to the genre - but since this is troma's war, of course they need to be done as ineptly as possible.

one can say that 'this is not my kind of comedy', and leave it alone. however, don't for a minute think these people don't know what they're doing.

personally i think this movie is a jaw-dropping, over-the-top satire of the best kind. i hold back one star because there's no doubt the editing could have been a little tighter.

If you begin to watch a Troma offering, you know you're in for basically deliberately inept, silly (lazy? Never!) film making to the extent that it's 'so bad it's good' is expected, since because that is surely the intention of the Troma oeuvre, anyway:

So, if not to be another why waste ya time to watch, then first I would suggest you set it up as a fun billing along with others, not of the classic Arnold/ Sly more serious war is macho genre, but rather those of similar - but unintentionally so, though - dross of the likes of the S. Seagal and/or C. Connors entries into the genre.

Then as settling in for the inevitable ineptness, parts I found fun were the constant jewellery wearing air crash survivors (dangly spangly earrings especially) and the fact that the island army is surely made up of extras who were told to bring their own approximations of military outfit gear: the incongruities displayed are legion.

Of them, you can then also get a fine appreciation of the stunts people in executing their chops, be it jumping (mostly backwards) over objects (sandbags, oil drums, other 'dead' compatriots) or putting themselves in the correct position to plummet, 'shot and dead', from high places, trees especially: and, around the middle an amusing Arnold accent take rant in favour of the corrupt (US!) system… but then soon after a quite rather prescient almost 'conspiracist theory' the terrorist threat is really from inside from the system elite rejoinder from the hero (i.e well written scriptwriters): Then, throughout the interminable battles, there is a great wailing guitar background soundtrack to enjoy, too by which to get you finally to the end, at which point having so sat through such deliberate tosh, I would implore you wait around until the last end credit has rolled: it's a great denouement to the 'seriousness' of all that's gone before, making it, really, inarguably, surely one of Troma's best entries.

Forget Coppola´s "Apocalypse Now" and Spielberg´s "Saving Private Ryan" because this film is the ultimate contribution to the genre of war movies! Typically Troma, you´ll find lots of cheesy F/X and bad acting in it, however this shot is not as awful as many other flicks produced by this company: "Troma´s War" is REALLY entertaining, what´s absolutely no guarantee for the other works of Lloyd Kaufman´s firm. The humor is not too silly this time, although there are many politically not correct jokes about Aids or Siamese twins. The violence in this film is business as usual, so prepare for cut off ears and fountains of blood! With its exaggerated patriotism "Troma´s War" is also a nice parody on all those soldier-movies like "Rambo" or "Delta Force", which were very popular in the Reagan-ruled 1980s. And some nudity of pretty silicon-chicks doesn´t hurt either..! I liked this movie even more than "Combat Shock", that is alleged to be a touching anti war-drama, but after all only a cheap and boring film! This one doesn´t take itself too serious and that´s no mistake!! So if you´re going out tonight to rent a Troma-flick... take this one!!!

TROMA'S WAR isn't a great film by any respects but this highly cheesy war movie is certainly the best Troma film I've seen to date. This is because the majority of Troma films are cheap, gross-out comedies with rubbish acting and effects. This has the cheapness and the rubbish acting, but in some places it's actually quite decent.

You could call TROMA'S WAR a camp classic if you were feeling charitable and it's certainly an '80s film through and through. It's an over the top cheese fest about a group of people stranded on a desert island where they discover an evil guerrilla army is running rampant. Inevitably it's up to them to stop it which they attempt to do in the most violent ways imaginable.

There's no real plot here after the initial set up, just a bunch of random action and war sequences joined together. The film is marred by horrible over acting and more screaming than in a dozen horror flicks, but it does have a wealth of war action and violence to recommend it. Seen uncut it's a gruesome film with some surprisingly explicit moments like the excruciating tongue extraction scene and plenty of bloody squib hits. There's also plenty of topless nudity and explosive stuff going on. A masterpiece it isn't, but I found it oddly watchable and enjoyable and in high definition it at least looks good.