The Purifiers

Got this film along with a couple of other direct to DVD martial arts films.

This film showed great promise but, alas, it sucked. The cast were good but most of the most talented guys seemed under used and McKidd and the hobbit were seriously miscast (come on guys cast fighters as fighters not actors as fighters and fighters as actors).

The biggest flaw about this was it's use of slow motion... god if they'd taken all that out the film would have been 5 mins long!!! Everything about this film is wrong... the direction, casting, shots, production... it just feels cheap and fake.

Strangely I ordered another UK action film at the same time that shared cast members like Gordon Alexander, Brendan Carr, Chirs Jones, Ashley Beck, Oliver Hollis and others called 'Left For Dead'. Whilst that has a seriously reduced budget in comparison, for all it's faults, it was head and shouters above this piece of tosh! 'Left For Dead' used the action stars to the best of their abilities and whilst the Purifiers attempted to rip of the Warriors (and looked cheap doing it) 'Left For Dead' ripped off everything from payback, Fist Of Fury and others and whilst it does occasionally look cheap at least the story, action and way it embraced its budget far exceeded this film.

I rated 'Left For Dead' as a 8 whilst this gets a 2. What does this mean? Occasionally all you need is talent, invention and excitement rather than budget, names and sloooooooooooow moooootiiiiioooon! In brief : if your gunna watch one Uk martial arts film this year don't get this. get 'Left For Dead'.

I really wanted to like this film. On one hand, the idea of a 'Glasgow kung fu film' had the alarm bells ringing, but Jobson's enthusiastic introduction and plea for more genre movies in Scottish film- making assuaged my fears, albeit temporarily, as he went on to say 'story isn't so important' (it's EVERYTHING, imho). I've read the other reviews to try and find the positives, to see if I missed anything. Apart from Dom's sexual magnetism, I don't think I have missed anything. The story, when it appears, is a rip-off of The Warriors, the dialogue is stilted (McKidd's Moses spouting the most clichéd guff), the fight scenes hackneyed (far too much slow- motion). It wouldn't be fair to comment on the acting as the writing gave the actors nothing to work with. There are some scenes where the director is tipping his hat to famous kung-fu movies (e.g. the fight in the restaurant), but instead of the intended tribute, they smack of insults.

I know this was low budget, but with a script as bad as this it should never have been made in the first place. I like Jobson and I want to get behind Scottish filmmakers; I'm hoping 'Sixteen Years of Alcohol' will be a better film. It can't be worse.

This movie is so horrible, it makes Rollerball with Dean Cain look like a masterpiece. In an over-stylized and underacted martial arts debacle, Richard Jobson manages to torture the audience for an hour and twenty minutes with slow motion fight sequences nobody cares about but him. I won't get into the plot since it speaks for itself. Not a lot of thought went into it and can be summarized as follows: in some city run by rival karate gangs, only one gang has the guts and morality to stand up to the evil Moses, the gang boss bent on uniting the gangs for evil purposes. I don't exaggerate when I say that's as deep movie went into it as well.

With some of the worst martial sequences ever defecate onto film, this movie is sure to leave you kicking the DVD out of your player long before the final credits. The fight sequences are at times shown on a split a screen, with so much cutting and slow motion, you can't tell who's fighting who. Luckily, you don't really care. There is actually narratives by the main character, an inside look into his philosophical musings, that are actually so cheezy and out of place, it's sadly comical. I think SOMEBODY takes themselves too serious. Definitely not worth using a free rental for.

To say that this filmed sucked would be an understatement. This film was dreadful. Supposedly, this took place in the future...though I'm not sure when in the future. There was never any mention of the year. There was a little cheesy acting and a lot of unnecessary martial arts. Apparently, in the future, we will resort back to ancient Asian fighting tactics. No weapons but our hands and feet. There were several times where there would be two different sequences taking place on split screen, which makes it impossible to see everything that's happening. And, again, I must mention the unnecessary martial arts. The story had no structure to it, so to fill in the void...fight sequence. The acting was mediocre at best. The story was completely absent. The fighting was crap. All in all...2/10.

This film is pretty bad. Directed by 16 Years Of Alcohol's Richard Jobson this film tries hard to be a modern retake on The Warriors but ends up more like a film version of the ZX Spectrum computer game Renegade (but with worse graphics).

Getting past the glaringly obvious inaccuracies in the story, the films biggest flaw is the fact the every action scene is in slow motion. The logic behind this is baffling. It takes what would be a 40 min film and makes it clock in at a rather boring hour and a half. And even then what is left is badly put together and brings back memories of poor 80's action films (step up Don Wilson) But beyond even that no one seems to care.

Alexander sleep walks through the film, 'Lord Of The Rings' Monaghan just looks bored and the talented support cast hardly get a look in.

In short this film is just appalling and has the privilege (in my opinion) of being the worse film funded by the UK lottery fund yet… and that's saying something!