Angels Fallen: Warriors of Peace

When will I learn to check how many people have contributed to the average IMDB rating? I saw 6.5, which is comfortably above my tolerance threshold. I had also seen two pretty glowing reviews (in retrospect, I'm thinking possibly relatives of people involved in the making of the film?), so I dove. Three minutes in, however, I went back to see only 25 (at that time) people had rated it. More friends and family of cast and crew, I guess.

Sure the script was laughable, but the performances were wretched! The dialogue is painful, the main characters stare off vacantly much of the time (perhaps the actors were wishing they were anywhere but on the set), and the special effects weren't very....special. I don't think it's worth going into any more detail than that. Take your chances if you must, but I recommend a hard pass-unless you like that campy, it's so bad it's good, kind of thing.

The plot's been done a million times before so you know what you're getting here, but the execution of it is so bad it's hard to watch. To start with, they acting is bad, I mean really bad. The thing about acting is you have to make the viewers think that you're feeling what you're saying instead of sounding like you're reading from a script in a monotone. Stone-faced line delivery kills the mood. Denise Richards tries but I was so distracted feeling sorry for her from what must have been a hive of bees stinging her lips before she got to the set. "MEDIC, we need Benadryl here STAT!!!" Next the writing: I couldn't tell if they were trying to sneak in a religious movie under the guise of a sci-fi action film or if the script writer had ADHD and couldn't stay on point. Third: The editing is just frustrating. There's no flow here. The movie goes from long shots to quick (and I mean real quick) cuts so many times that it's distracting; add to that when they go to hand held shaky cam mode it can bring on nausea. There's no pacing here. I've never seen a movie so bad at piecing together scenes that don't go together so often. There's too many times in this movie where you ask yourself "Ok, who is this and what's going on here?" Fourth: Fire the fight scene choreographer. I mean they must have told Cuba Gooding 'Ok, just swing the blade in this direction and we'll add the demons in post edit". Denise Richards cuts the head off of a creature that just stands there taking it, and the mano a mano fights are almost in slow motion but you realize it's real time. This movie fails on so many levels that it makes Plan 9 look like a masterpiece. Some of these reviews were obviously written by people who either made the movie or are friends or relatives trying to keep the numbers up, because there's no way this rates above a 3. The only positive in the film is the CGI was done well. At least someone did their job right.

Fallen Angels: Warriors of Peace has the same vibe and spirit of those Universal direct-to-video films. It has more going on under the hood with its biblical references and at the very least, it isn't trying to be one of those terrible Christian propaganda films that no one watches and are only successful because of the grift from that sect of customers and creatives. This is just a middling action film with some decent action and a few recognizable faces that could be doing better, but have found themselves here like some chosen warriors to be the next batch of direct-to-video stars. It's a shame, because some of these actors have been in better stuff, but that's just how things go from time to time. If you like the vibe of those sy-fy channel original movies or are a specialist in direct-to-video schlock, then give it a watch. Otherwise, you can just go watch that 90s Arnold Schwarzenegger film End of Days or the Keanu Reeves-starred Constantine. This is easily a film I would watch once on a lark and then never again.

Although the acting isn't the best, it's not bad either in my honest opinion. The rest in this movie however is of a very low level. The flimsy story and especially the consistency is just awful.

Talking about the consistency: You jump from one scene to another scene without a good transfer or reason why. It just didn't make much sense to me, like they cut a lot of materials.

The CGI isn't even the worst, but the fight scenes are just ..... very bad, every move takes a second and just moves so slow.

Some positive words then: Denise Richards was fun to see again :)

Everybody has his own opinion, but if you ask me, you can easily skip this movie.

This is The Room levels of bad. So many cringe things happen that I started laughing at the acting and the editing.

Denisse Richards looks like she got a truck full of lip filler.

Cuba Gooding Jr is fat and his lines were just terrible.

You can really watch this with some friends and just have a blast over some pizza and how impressively bad this movie is.

I've said all I want but I have 200 more characters to fill. The main character had one expression on his face the whole time. The special effects were so bad they were funny. The demons they fight were honestly hilarious looking. Randy Couture's cameo has no consequences and no reason for existing.

Oh, and the villain can't fight, no matter how hard they tried to make him look like he could.