Theme Song: Soundtrack by Bruce Broughton is not that exciting. Despite this, and because the world is obsessed with everything Disney, the soundtrack was released on CD as recently as 2017.
Interesting Dated References: I’m just discovering Touchstone was a division of Disney.
Social Context: Pitch meeting went something like “People liked Red Dawn, people liked Iron Eagle, and people liked Goonies. Let’s take those vague elements and repackage them as a new movie!”
Summary: A five-man SEAL team who are stationed in South Korea get captured trying to decommission a nuclear submarine just north of the DMZ. After bureaucratic nonsense, and despite having an insurgent ready to help and a whole plan laid out, it’s decided a rescue into North Korean territory is not worth it.
The teenage kids of these SEALs catch wind and decide to attempt the rescue themselves in a series of ridiculously implausible scenarios. The group of teens has an endless array of army gear and espionage skills that require a large amount of suspended disbelief.
There’s the jocular privileged guy who looks like Eric Stoltz, the tough guy with a chip on his shoulder who looks like Matt Dillon, the one dimension girl who looks like Phoebe Cates, the precocious younger kid who looks like Fred Savage, and the guy who looks like Skippy from “Family Ties.”
Marc Price gives one of the best performances in the movie, showing some nice acting skills and genuinely giving a good performance. The acting is good, with the kids stumbling through many different settings and scenarios.
Things conclude with a tense escape, fireworks, and a bumpy plane ride. Overall, it’s not a terrible movie, but it feels like such a retread of similar subject matter it becomes unmemorable. “What’s the movie where the kids cross into enemy territory on a rescue mission?” “What’s the movie where a group of ragtag kids plummet down a water slide to nowhere?” “What about the movie where the kid with the chip on his shoulder rescues his dad?”
Worth Mentioning:
– It was filmed in New Zealand, and the fake prison set, located near where the LOTR series had been filmed, was still standing as of 2015.
– When the kids are copying the secret military plans to rescue the hostages, they use a Porta-Copy. It is the most impossibly awesome ‘80s technology I’ve ever seen.
– Harkening back to when everyone viewed the internet as a giant database of encyclopedic knowledge, The Internet Movie Plane Database has a complete listing of aircraft featured in the movie.
– When the group re-enters South Korea via a ramshackle plane, they are besieged by aircraft. To prove who they are, the youngest kid gets on top of the plane and tears his coat open to reveal a Bruce Springsteen shirt, and, no joke, a blazing guitar riff is played.
Poster and Box Art: The Rescue had a few strong posters. The first version of the theatrical release had an awesome barbed wire flag treatment.
That must have been deemed not patriotic enough, and an adjusted red stripe version was released.
The home video ditched all that for a nice illustrated treatment.
