Boot Camp (2008)

Directed by: Christian Duguay | 95 minutes | thriller | Actors: Mila Kunis, Gregory Smith, Peter Stormare, Alejandro Rae, Christopher Jacot, Tygh Runyan, Matthew Smalley, Colleen Rennison, Regine Nehy, Barbara Gates Wilson, Lexie Huber, Grace Bauer, David Haysom, Serge Houde, Tyrone Karius, Pete Seadon Joe Norman Shaw, Peter Skagen

‘More than two hundred re-education camps house tens of thousands of children worldwide. They operate without any form of government regulation or control’, is the picture before the film. ‘Boot Camp’ promises you a look behind the scenes of American re-education camps (‘boot camps’). In these institutions, nicknamed ‘tough love’, derailed young people are often corrected with a heavy hand. So hard that in the past there have been regular deaths. Incidentally, this is not about the film adaptation of the book of the same name, despite the fact that the storylines match and they are both based on true events. Sophie (Mila Kunis, here mainly known as Jackie from ‘That ’70s Show’) is a rebellious teenager who makes life miserable for her mother and her boyfriend Carl. Carl is active in politics and is on a crusade against drugs, as evidenced by his strong talk to visitors at the family’s home. When Sophie interrupts the company by waving a joint in the air and asking if ‘this was what Carl and her mother were looking for in her room’, the two of them are full.

At a party that evening, Sophie discusses with her boyfriend Ben (Gregory Smith) her plan to run away together and live on the money her late father left her. But Carl and her mother have already come up with another solution for Sophie. She is drugged and taken away by a bunch of burly figures. When Sophie comes to, she’s on a boat heading for the Fiji Islands in the Pacific Ocean. After a warm reception, where she and two other newcomers are chained to a concrete block on the beach for a night, founder and director Arthur Hail (Peter Stormare, ‘Prison Break’) welcomes the three ringleaders to Camp Serenity; a re-education camp where troubled youth are sent by their distraught parents.

Together with his sister, Hail subjects the young people to the Advanced Serenity Achievement Program (ASAP). The program aims to “help derailed teens avoid the negative influences of society that can destroy your future.” That sounds promising. In practice, Camp Serenity is more like Guantanamo Bay for American youth, with corrupt staff that could use some proper re-education themselves. While Sophie is subjected to bullying and all kinds of dirty jobs, Ben comes up with a plan at home to help her. Feigning a drug addiction by injecting saline into his arm, he plays the teenage junkie until his parents send him to Fiji after Sophie. If that’s not a sign of true love? Perhaps it would have been less effort to convince Sophie’s mother that Arthur Hail isn’t completely kosher, after Ben read on the internet that one person has died in one of Hail’s camps. He manages to be admitted to Camp Serenity nonetheless. and the two soon attempt an escape. This goes wrong; the couple ends up back in Hail’s camp, where they spend a few weeks in a deep, closed pit on the beach contemplating their sins.

Meanwhile, the discontent among the teenagers on the island continues to grow. As soon as one of them drowns in the sea during the daily drill, the bomb explodes and a revolution breaks out in the camp.

After the TV movie ‘Human Trafficking’ (2005), ‘Boot Camp’ is the second film in a row by director Christian Duguay in which he brings real-world malpractice to the attention of the public. The director knows how to portray the despair of teenagers who are sometimes trapped in a ‘tough love’ camp for a year or more.

The name ASAP (the English abbreviation for ‘as soon as possible’) is a well-found reference to real re-education camps, which use catchy abbreviations such as ‘PURE’ (‘Parents Universal Resource Experts’) for their self-invented programs with a wafer-thin psychological basis to to teach unruly offspring decency.

As the otherworldly Hail, Peter Stormare is the epitome of boot camp leaders who rule American re-education camps with a heavy hand and self-proclaimed titles such as ‘colonel’. With the subplot about the relationship between Sophie and Ben, the script is a bit too superficial to actually do anything against the abuses in boot camps, while they have been a bit too enthusiastic with slow motion in the editing room. This makes dramatic scenes seem cheesy. ‘Boot Camp’ is, however, an entertaining thriller that at the same time gives you a disconcerting look behind the scenes of American boot camps. An eye opener for those who think that re-education camps are glorified school trips.