10 Massively Underrated Movies From The 1990s

2. Toy Soldiers

Strange Days Ralph Fiennes
TriStar Pictures

Is it any surprise that a movie from the writer of Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Panic Room, and Spider-Man is pretty darn entertaining?

1991's Toy Soldiers is one of the earliest flicks on Lord Of The Rings star Sean Astin's filmography, revolving around a group of delinquent teens who choose to fight back against a gang of terrorists who've taken over their school.

It's the machine gun-wielding Astin who steals the entire movie, with the young actor displaying the determination and spirit that made him such a great fit for Samwise Gamgee roughly a decade later. He also gets to spit in the terrorists' sandwiches when he brings them lunch, so extra points for that too.

There are obvious shades of Die Hard and Home Alone incorporated into the plot here, and while Toy Soldiers is neither as good nor as beloved as those two classics, it's a confidently-made action-thriller that takes a silly premise and treats it with a surprising amount of seriousness - leading to a highly enjoyable end product.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.