Bullet Points: Young Rebels

1989’s Young Rebels was written and directed by Iranian born Amir Shervan. Shervan, who is probably most known for his 1991 cult classic Samurai Cop, was either a certified genius or just plain certifiable. It really depends on who you talk to. Shervan made many films in his native Iran before migrating to the United States in the late 1980’s.

Young Rebels tells the tale of two brothers named Ben and Charlie. Ben is a young man that is about to be married to a beautiful woman named Jennifer. Ben and Jennifer have their whole lives ahead of them, but a foolish decision Ben made in the past comes back to haunt him. Ben had borrowed money from a nefarious criminal named Mr. Vincenzo. Vincenzo cuts a deal with Ben, if Ben can get his brother Charlie to fly in some drug kingpins from Mexico, then Vincenzo will absolve Ben of all his debt and even throw in an extra $25,000 for Charlie’s troubles.

Charlie, who has a reputation for being the best chopper pilot around, agrees to help out his younger brother. But when things go south south of the border, Vincenzo ends up wanting both Ben and Charlie dead. Vincenzo gets half his wish, when Ben and his bride-to-be Jennifer are killed by Vincenzo’s son Joey (played by Robert Z’Dar) . Now Charlie wants Vincenzo and his crew dead as much as Vincenzo wants Charlie dead. Something has gotta give.

I found Young Rebels to be much more than a low budget revenge flick made by a man who was possibly bat shit crazy. Young Rebels was a movie that backed up the knowledge and the wisdom that we have been given through various idioms over the course of human history, for example…

• One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure: Young Rebels features so many elements that I’ve chastised other movies for. There is the story line that goes in circles, not unlike American Cyborg: Steel Warrior. Here’s the Young Rebels loop,  1. Bad guys looking for Charlie, 2. Bad guys find friends of Charlie and intimidate them, 3. Charlie takes out some of the bad guys. This happens over and over again until the movie runs out of bad guys for Charlie to take out. Then there is the horrible sound quality, at times all the voices are dubbed, the volume levels are all over the place. It gives the movie a really cheap feel, kind of like Ironheart or American Commando Ninja. Did I mention the acting in this movie? The performances in Young Rebels were on the same level as such films as Hammer Down and Reflex Action. The locations and sets they shot the movie in were some of the most unappealing and uninspired that I’ve ever seen. I want to make special note of  the “police station” in the movie. Then there was the scene where Charlie gets shot in his lower back. There is absolutely no sign of blood, not even a hole in his shirt when it first happens. But for some reason as I was watching Young Rebels, I gave all the faults and all the gaps in logic a pass. It is like all the things that would make any other movie bad, made Young Rebels some sort of avant garde masterpiece.

• Clothes Make The Man: One of Charlie’s friends in the movie is played by Tadashi Yamashita. While that name may not be familiar to some, for those of us who are die hard American Ninja fans, we know that Tadashi Yamashita played the Black Star Ninja in the original American Ninja movie and that he still ranks as one of Dudikoff’s all time great movie foes. But as badass as Yamashita was in American Ninja, take the man out of the ninja outfit, like they do in Young Rebels, and he seems like the friendly Asian neighbor that lives down the street and not one of the most dangerous men on the planet. No wonder he was constantly using a gun to fend off the villains and not just his sweet martial arts skills.

• Love is Blind: That is is the only explanation for a woman giving the cherub faced Robert Z’Dar any sort of attention. Well either love is blind, or everyone has a price. If you ever wanted to see Robert Z’Dar getting it on with a cheap slut, then this is the movie for you. Z’Dar’s character, Joey Vincenzo is apparently into the rough stuff. Fortunately we don’t get to know how rough Joey likes it because one of the goons who works for Joey’s dad shows up and in a badly dubbed voice says, “Yo Joey, your daddy wants ya!”, before Joey could really gets things going. Later Joey gets a different cheap slut to become his private dancer (a dancer for money? Any old music will do?)  Joey enjoys the show while lounging on a bed and sipping some wine and giving the stripper some positive words of encouragement.  This stripper really enjoyed using her over-sized pearl necklace as a prop but before Joey could give her a different kind of pearl necklace, Charlie shows up and Joey uses the stripper as a human shield so he can escape. If it wasn’t already dead, chivalry officially died at that moment.

• Don’t Hate The Player, Hate The Game:  It is established early on that our hero Charlie is shacked up with his girlfriend Kim. Kim disappears at one point in the movie, and I don’t mean Vincenzo has her kidnapped, I’m saying for a good chunk of the movie she isn’t there without any sort of explanation. She does reappear for the movie’s grand finale with a shooting style that says “I’ve never held a gun in my life before, nor has anyone else on set, so they can’t instruct me on the proper way to hold and shoot a firearm”. But somewhere in the middle of the movie we see our hero Charlie in bed with a different woman, the sister of his sister-in-law-to-be Jennifer to be exact. I guess the two were mourning the loss of their respective siblings, so we really shouldn’t judge. This scene was another example of the gratuitous female nudity that Young Rebels has to offer and it was another scene where the potential love making is interrupted. Was this intentional? A running gag designed by the mad scientist known as Amir Shervan? If Mr. Shervan was alive and on Twitter, I would totally ask him.

Everything about Young Rebels screamed What Not To Watch, yet I found myself unable to stop watching. I would go so far to say that Young Rebels may be the best worst movie I’ve ever seen.

And speaking of worst, Young Rebels is a movie filled with “worsts” and I can’t think of a better place to share some of the “worsts” with you than in some bonus Bullet Points…

• Worst Phone Etiquette Ever:  “Shut up! F*ck You! God Dammit!” then slamming the phone down is not the most professional way to end a phone conversation, but who is going to tell Mr. Vincenzo that.
• Worst Union Boss Ever: Jackie Presser is rolling over in his grave thinking about the way Mr. Vincenzo handled the labor relations with his Mexican and Filipino migrant workers. Both groups, who apparently have historically hated each other, came together to strike and demand the minimum wage from their boss Mr. Vincenzo. His negotiating tactic was to have them all killed and then tell the cops they killed one another due to their long standing rivalry. Who is picking the vegetables now?!?!
• Worst Homage To Scarface Ever: Remember I told you earlier about the Young Rebels loop, well thing get extreme when Mr. Vincenzo and two of his goons interrogate one of Charlie’s friends using a chainsaw in what I can only imagine was some sort of attempt to honor the classic chainsaw scene from Scarface. I’ve never killed a man with a chainsaw, but I imagine that violent process would spray more blood than what we see unfold in Young Rebels.
• Worst Dive Ever: We get to peek in on a Mr. Vincenzo pool party which featured one of the worst dives I’ve ever seen. If I were a judge I’d be holding up my 1 card after seeing that dive. This pool party also features the worst poolside wet bars I’ve ever seen. Here he is this big time crime boss and the booze and glasses are just on a card table that Vincenzo was probably using to play Tripoley on the night before. There wasn’t even a table cloth on the damn thing.
• Worst Sign Ever: I spotted a “Free Puppies” sign outside one of the homes in Young Rebels. What is wrong with that you are probably asking? The problem was the sign was shaped like a tombstone. Were these puppies dead? That would explain the price.
• Worst Editing Ever: The final fight scene between Charlie and Mr. Vincenzo appears to either feature some of the worst editing ever or the fight was taking place in two parallel universes at the exact same time and the movie was just flipping back and forth between the two universes.