The Lords of Discipline is a slow-moving, dull, boring, and badly acted 1980s film. The characters come off as cartoonish. David Keith is likable enough, and does a fair job considering what he has to deal with. The rest of the cast overplays their parts and none of them come across as real. The Southern accents are terrible, and it's hard to figure if this is a military college or a high school military school. Regardless, everyone in the cast is way to old to be students in either case. The worst scene is when Keith and his room mates kidnap a lawyer and tie him to a railroad track. The whole scene came across like a cartoon and the actor playing the lawyer gave a junior high school acting performance. Forget the Lords of Discipline.

A movie about discipline, the Lords of Discipline is the wrong title to what could have been a great movie. David Keith stars in a Taps like movie where a coming of age drama turns into a thriller. Some interesting characters, that end up not going anywhere, the movie has a plot but no real story that drives the audience to keep watching. Issues of race and equality take a back seat to the overall story of discipline. Military schools are looked upon as either a wrong idea run by the wrong people, or the only real justice left. These questions are not answered as David Keith tries to lead his cast. Instead, a nice movie, but far from anything great. Much like David Keith's performance, the movie falls short of anything timeless.

It's hard to put into words how great this film is. I read the novel by Pat Conroy, and it became one of my all time favorites. Then, i rented the movie, somewhat afraid that it might not be as good.....or even good. But i was very wrong.....the movie was excellent....great chemistry of the actors, great direction, great screen writing. *Spoilers* Powerful seen when Pig is exiled from the Institute, they did a very good job with that.A few changes in the story line, but great still. The acting's great, I'm a fan of Rick Rossovich and David Keith. I give this movie a full 10 out of 10 stars.....watch this movie, and read the book.....

It's a shame that the greatest book of all time turned out to be the worst movie...The acting was horrible, they took out major plot lines from the book (Will falling in love) and in general ruined just about everything...I feel sorry for Pat Conroy.