O Dragão Invencível

OK, if you've got the chops to put "matrix-like action" on your movie poster then you either have a really incredible martial arts film or you have "Invincible". Now my college roommate and I got such a kick out of this movie, we did our best to put it into out monthly movie line-up just so we could make fun of it. Billy Zane is classic Billy Zane in this movie. He has the quality of making dialogue that is incredibly inane seem incredibly important. At no point during this movie was there anything that even remotely resembled "matrix-like action" and the actors who play the martial arts studs all look like Ralph Macchio could probably stuff them in a locker. Like most "martial arts" movies the plot is stodgy at best but this is hidden by the fact that the special effects were created by hamsters. If you are a fan of train wrecks and mine cave-ins, this is a movie for you.

This movie does not seem to be perfect because it requires to be set in more locations so this movie should be given 4 marks out of 10.

I'm going to try and keep this as brief as possible, so please bare with me.

Well for a start the film had potential, it really did. And the first scene with Os fighting the White Warrior was pretty cool. In fact Zane looked like a cross between the Joker and the Crow. He actually looked cool. But then the film takes a quick u-turn into the world of luvvy duvvy and cute little bunny rabits, and we learn that in fact we must over power our enemies with..... No not a really sharp sword, no not even a bazooka..... LOVE!!! We must use love against our enemies.

Honestly people, I've never a known a line invoke so much violence and anger in me as that one. What a load of crap!! This is supposed to be a martial arts movie, not the follow up to Care Bears. In fact the ending to the film does have similarities with the ending of Care Bears.

Which brings me onto my next point, the look of the film reminds me so much of Mutant X, with it's wannabe SFX and slow motion fight sequences. If you were to delete the slow motion and Zane's constant preachy waffling narratives the film would be over in 5 mins flat. And I wish that was an exaggeration, I'm afraid however it's not. The film also seems to have stolen ideas from the likes of Highlander, Mortal Kombat and even a little bit of Tomb Raider.

I wouldn't usually get this upset about a bad movie but after reading some of the other reviews for the film I discovered that my American Brethren got to see it for free on TV, were as here in England the gits brought it out on DVD and I paid £3.75 to watch it.

Stay away from this film, all that preaching about love and how it will set you free seems to encourage violence.

I thinks that all I have to say. Except how on earth did the name Jet Li and Mel Gibson appear on the front cover of the film? Isn't that place usually reserved for the stars and director? They were executive producers the pair of them. Does that mean they sat down on the set for one day so the could get paid to plug the film? Talk about name dropping!

Well that's it. For now at least.

When this was being advertised on TBS back in 2001, every single ad featured Mel Gibson and Jet Li's names. They were only producers, but you wouldn't know it by the extent to which their names were featured.

I thought the film looked good back then - some kind of "Matrix"/"Highlander" clone, maybe, but it still looked kinda interesting. Well, I was wrong.

From the opening - with this angelic warrior being pursued by, and then fighting, Billy Zane - the film only becomes worse and worse. It copies "The Matrix" mercilessly - from the wannabe philosophy that stems throughout every scene to the slow-motion sword fights.

Billy Zane gives an embarrassingly dull performance and the rest of the cast - mostly B-movie actors or TV actors - don't help any.

The plot is silly to begin with. The Shadow Warriors are trying to bring an end to the world - replace "Shadow Warriors" with any other bad guy name from another psycho-baddie movie and you've got the exact same plot.

Billy Zane assembles together a group of warriors to help defend earth against the Shadow Warriors.

The ending of the film is so laughable it's almost painful to watch. I would never sit through this again and certainly would never recommend it to anyone else.

"Invincible" to criticism it is not.

Okay, from the begining the very nature of the movie baffles me. A movie co-produced by Mel Gibsen and Jet Li? I know Mel Gibsen is into film makeing, and Jet Li's directon some of his own films, but for them to team up on a project is the last thing I'd expect. One could assume that Jet and Mel met on the set of Lethal Weapon 4, except that Jet Li didn't speak a word of English untill almost six months later.

Yet another thing: Billy Zane as a wise, sword-weilding martial artist? It's not like Billy boy douns't pull the part off well, it's just how in the world could someone look at Billy Zane's past roles and say "Hey, that scummy rich guy with David Warner, he would be perfect to play an immortal swordsman who saves the world!" Who even guessed the guy was the Jackie Chan type? It's like seeing Jon Clude Van Dam in a romantic comedy, deep inside you know it's not right. . .but your still seing it on screen.

This movie wasn't bad, it just didn't quite live up to it's potential. The action was adequate, the characters were somewhat likable and the story was interesting to say the least. The biggest flaw with this movie is just plain poor storytelling. One has to pay very very close atention to this flick to get any sence out of it whatsoeve. The dialogue is thin, the directing os comepltely off the wall, and the plot seems to just go by the wayside as the director seems to think you just don't need some vital parts of the story explained to you.

Overall I think this films prooves chos theory, there was no way one could predict this twisted masterpeice would even be produced. For better or worse it was, and it's at least got novelty value.