The Warriors Gate

It's pretty obvious that the makers of this French-Chinese co-production were really trying hard to make this movie appealing to major Hollywood studios, what with most of the dialogue being in English, the casting of David Bautista in a key role, and the hero being an American youth. However, no Hollywood studio was apparently willing to release the end results to American theaters, and it's pretty clear why. Quite often the enterprise doesn't have the "oomph" of a major Hollywood studio production; it's not seriously cheap-looking, but all the same it's missing something many times. I could have overlooked that fact had the movie compensated in other areas, but the movie falls short in some key areas. The whole "American kid transported to a fantasy land" angle has already been done to death, and this telling doesn't really have many new ideas to add some freshness. It's more humorous this time around, though quite frankly I found most of the humor to be juvenile and embarrassing. The main problem with the movie, however, is that its storytelling style is often not very clear. The script seems to be missing key explanations in several areas, and also the direction/editing in other places makes it hard to follow what is happening. Kids may be more forgiving towards this movie than their parents, but why subject them (and yourself) to this movie when there are plenty of superior family movies that will entertain both kids and adults?

12 August 2017. Enter the Warrior's Gate is Matthew Broderick meets The Neverending Story (1984) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986). This entertaining coming of age adventure movie joins East and West in a nice cultural fusion. There are hints of comedy with the cultural clashes between East and West, between old and new as well as between magic and practical human endeavor. While not as epic or dramatic on scale as Yimou Zhang's Hero (2004) with Jet Li, Enter the Warrior's Gate offers breath taking landscapes, typical American commerce and juvenile bullying, and the martial art adventures of a young protagonist that at times seems to be pretty fumbling like Kurt Russell's character in Big Trouble in Little China but in a youthful, dumb sort of way like a younger Matthew Broderick. The movie script is stretched in a few places to make the pacing and the plot seem to connect and just manages to keep the entire movie intact. For an enjoyable, if not spectacular, feel-good movie, this is one of those movies to watch.

The word on the street was that this was a riff on one of my all-time favorite films, Forbidden Kingdom 2008, so I could not resist checking it out.

(Word to the wise, if you have not already seen FK, and you like MMA and/or Wushu and/or Fantasy and/or Adventure, check it out. FK has humble beginnings, features two of the greatest cinematic martial artists of all time - Jackie Chan and Jet Li -- a killer script, great scenery, and solid performances. Some reviewers, including this one, think it is one of the best of its kind ever done.)

Let's start with what Warriors Gate was intended to be, and work from that.

The production team clearly thought they would "improve" on FK by adding more "teen humor." Presumably they also felt this would more than compensate for the film's considerably lighter "feel" and the awkward void formed by not having ANY famous film martial artists at all.

Also, Forbidden Kingdom had a certain edge of malice and unpredictability in the script which, oddly, only increased its impact and its fan base. This film lacks those features as well and, on its best day in its best suit, comes across more as "Forbidden Kingdom Lite," or perhaps even a Disney knockoff of the original.

Which is not to say it is not worth a watch. A lot of effort was put into the humor aspect (as explained above) and this does keep things moving along.

(For example -- if you are film buff, you will remember fondly the famous tag line from Airplane 1980 - "Don't call me Shirley" which became a sort of iconic inside joke for years afterwards. This script contains a number of attempts to mimic that sort of dialog, my favorite being -- "KILL HIM! -- slashing noise -- "NO, NOT HIM. HIM.")

Bottom Line: One hour and 45 minutes of reasonable entertainment. However, it suffers from the "curse" common to all knock-offs. Unless you see the original, you will never know what you are missing.

Seemed like a kids film to me, so don't be too harsh on it. Bad things: some very artificial ADR, average casting, odd blend of language accents, lame bad guy jokes, average acting from the lead, which could have something to do will lazy actor direction. Great things: the concept, the music, the costumes and there would have been a good script in there somewhere.

Kids will love it. Not too much violence and very little blood seen. Has a gorgeous young lady that boys will want to fall in love with. Nice romantic escapism.

I saw previews for this movie and it originally caught my interest but I came with no high hopes of it being significantly good. While it's not the most amazing movie I've seen to date, it is an original story that includes martial art elements, comedy, action and overall fun. I thought the fight scenes were very well choreographed and they threw in some lol moments throughout the movie to keep the tone light and easy going while still having enough action to keep the pace going. I was very surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie. The lead actress is also stunningly beautiful and the main kid actor did a very good job holding his own with actors like Dave Batista also in the movie. Overall, a fun, lighthearted, interesting and original movie.