Guerreiros da Virtude

Like most users here commented, Warriors of Virtue had wonderful production design, but the story leaves something to be desired. Maybe it's because of how the writers "kiddy-fied" the story. The action is typical of what you may see from some Hong Kong movies. There's the incredible feats of stunts like jumping tall buildings in a single bound, running over water, and high-powered martial arts. You should especially see the beginning of the movie how chef Ming cooks. It's all done with a semi-slow mo technique. Unfortunately, someone must have a terrible obsession over this technique because you see this way too frequently and in the presence of many falling leaves. Thus, after a while it really gets tiring. The production is pretty good for indoor sets. The production people creates a convincingly large army. It's too bad the story just lack the punch and simply relies on action (slow-mo action at that).

The verdict: 2.5 of 5 stars.

I watched "Warriors Of Virtue" with my 9 year old son a few nights ago, and I can only say that this is easily one of the worst films of any kind I have seen in my 50 plus years of avid film consumption. I enjoy kids movies, martial arts movies, action/adventure movies, fish-out-of-water movies, and just about any genre of film that "Warriors Of Virtue" could possibly belong to. Hell, I like a lot of just plain bad movies, but this was just dreadful. It may have been Shakespeare or perhaps Benny Hill who observed that comparisons are odious, but I couldn't help noticing the similarities between "Warriors Of Virtue" and your average episode of "Power Rangers"(my kid, god bless him, was a big fan in the first grade).

Half-baked and tone-deaf in conception, amateurish in execution, I can imagine simpletons the world over drew figurative lines in the sand in solidarity over their collective objection to the use of the word simplistic to describe this film. Half-wits would look at "Warriors Of Virtue" and wonder just where in hell the money went. It certainly wasn't spent on developing a narrative that makes any sense, three-dimensional characters, professional acting, staging, or direction. "Warriors" was pre-CGI, so I can accept that the special effects work was corny, but...kangaroos? Seriously? This movie is resolutely and resoundingly grind-your-teeth-into-nubbins stupid.

Warriors of Virtue is a rather strange movie, but I find it a great bore. While the idea of martial art marsupials seems goofy and stupid, but at least it would be entertaining. This movie, however, seems to have a consistency of dragging dialogues, confusing setups, and poor delivery. It takes forever for the action to start up, and when it does, the cinematography is unnecessary and often hard to make out. The very idea of the movie may sound silly, it had promise to at least be ridiculously entertaining, but the slow route it takes and the basic "nothingness" it envelopes kind of makes it not so much a good movie. However, the one thing that always brought me back to this film was the villain. The acting in the villain's case is just so over-the-top and enjoyably hilarious that he makes the film worth watching. Give him props because he was starred in other movies like "Titus."

This movie is like the little girl with the curl - when it's good it's very very good, when it's bad it's horrid. The sets are great and there are some neat effects, but for some reason whoever produced this decided to use five Ninja KANGAROOS as the heroes. I can just see the production meeting: "Hedgehogs? Noo. How about beavers? Noo. Kangaroos? Yeah, kangaroos!!".

The guy who plays Komodo (the head baddie) seems to have some talent and presence, but the director has him alternately mumbling, whining and screaming in a random pattern. The rest of the actors are an odd mix of caricatures and straight acting.

The plot and "message" are good but have been done before many times. Mr. Miyagi, oops I mean Yoda, er Obi-wan Kenobi, no I mean Master Chung keeps cropping up to spew some platitudes and even comes back after death to encourage Luke Skywalker, oops I mean Ryan, the boy hero.

This movie is not all bad and there's worse ways to waste an evening. The viewer ends up wishing, however, that the producers would have shifted some of their money away from sets and special effects and into a script and direction.

This movie was actually very good for what it was trying to do, which is give a summary (very simply) of the VERY esoteric chinese philosophy of Taoism. Those who know nothing of Taoism will definitely find that this movie does not make much sense in some places.

All of the characters are embodiments of the virtues and faults presented in the Taoist Philosophy. Yes, this makes for quite the challenge to present it in childrens movie no less.

The movie is fun if you dont take it to seriously. It would seem that some of the people posting here thought they were there to see Gone With the Wind or some other Epic or adult piece. Take it as lighthearted and as a possible education on a foreign way of thought, if you are into that new things. (Then again you could just read books on Taoism to get a somewhat clearer view)

3 out of 5 for production, 4 out 5 for accomplishment