Kids play "war" (capture the flag) in the woods using sticks as guns and red-dye-filled balloons as grenades.
Rules of War:
1 - Each general picks their team, and their base. Bases cannot be moved once picked.
2 - If you are shot, you must lie down for a count of 10 steamboats.
3 - If you are hit with a grenade, you are dead. Go home.
4 - The game is over when one team has handed the enemy flag to their general.
There are two ways for me to look at this film:
The first is to look at the film that COULD have been and that I WANTED to see...I wanted an over-the-top bloody action movie that functions as a dark comedy, where the kids play their injuries straight and we pop in and out of their imaginations to see that as they think their limbs are getting blown off, they are just action out a fantasy in their heads. This is not what the movie is at all and in that light, it's a little disappointing. To me, that would have been a really fun, cool, different movie.
but like I said, that's not what this movie is, so we look at the second way of reviewing it, and talk about the movie that it actually IS.
It's a dark, grim, HEAVY movie about how even kids games can take sharp turns towards bringing the worst out in people, and the desperate ends to which deranged minds will go to gain respect. It's good at what it does there, for the most part, but a lot of the flaws that would come off as charming or might go unnoticed had it gone the 'dark comedy' route end up glaring a little bit, because the movie plays itself so straight. It also toys with some ideas that it drops by the wayside, specifically the popping into and out of the imagination and the world of fantasy. One kid has a difficult time getting into the game and there's a scene where he shuts his eyes and concentrates hard and suddenly all the sticks are advanced weaponry, but for the most part, we see the kids walking around with guns all the time and get very little insight into what their sticks look like.
Overall, I liked it, but I long for the movie that might have been. I think this is available on some VOD services, so I'd recommend checking it out, but it's probably not gonna blow you away except maybe by surprising you with how heavy it is, even though I've given you the heads-up that it's got a dark side.