Invincibles

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.

I got astonished to see my own patience for watching this film till the end i.e. for one and half hour... maybe because I rented it. However, the only thing that is worth is Billy Zane's famous geek-like appearence that is present here in full fledge. Actually it's better not to have any comment on the other 'actors'. The screenplay is horrible; the visual effects, childish; the action sequences, intolerable and the story, laughable. There were some nice colorful images to attract other geeks among the viewers. And direction? Given production, even I can direct such a movie. Truly invincible... in the measure of how bad can a film be.

This charming telemovie (co-pro'ed by Mel Gibson & Jet Li!) features all the stereotypical trappings of a "Good v. Evil" movie, replete with characters you know virtually nothing about, Eastern philosophy & mysticism, & a healthy dose of (admittedly stunning) martial artistry & SPFX, yet for some reason, it works in spite of itself.

That reason is BILLY ZANE.

Zane portrays "Os", a "Shadowman" who renounces his Immortal life of Darkness & Evil when he is shown The Way. He gathers together the four Chosen Ones (there WERE five, but Os killed the fifth immediately before his redemption), all rough-n-tough misfits in one way or another, to train them to battle the evil "Slate", Os' former Shadowman boss & running buddy. Slate's desire is to gain possession of an ancient tablet, which will allow him to (dare I say it?) rule the world!! The main point of conflict comes in when the two former friends must face-off against one another in mortal combat.

As I stated earlier, despite the fact that this film is filled with cliches & either over-the-top or forced performances, Zane's gentle portrayal of Os somehow makes everything gel rather nicely, holding any absurdities together like a well-woven garment. I honestly don't think this guy's capable of turning in a bad performance, regardless of the material he's given.

Not necessarily a "must-see" movie, but an entertaining popcorn-muncher for a cold night in.

This movie wasn't as good as it could have been. The potential was there, with a decent plot and a few good actors, but it was just not done well.

The idea of a group of different individuals putting their differences aside and coming together to achieve a common goal is not new, but it can be done well. Here it was not. I didn't watch the movie for the story, which was good as it was not real good. The whole "love will overcome all" is a good idea, but Os runs it into the ground to the point that he comes across as one of those fake happy lovely-dovey Mormon missionary types that makes most people nauseous.

Judging from the commercials and the packaging, I expected this to be more of a martial arts movie. Sadly, where most martial arts movies use the story to connect the fight scenes, this movie apparently forgot that it was a martial arts flick and concentrated on a really weak story at the expense of the fighting. One could count the number of fight scenes in this movie on the fingers of one hand and still have plenty of fingers left. The fights that it did have weren't all that great, either. The fighting relied a lot on wires, which is okay for a fairy-tale or a wuxia movie, but it just looked silly here. Also, it wasn't hard to tell that the actors trained just long enough to pull this movie's few fight scenes off. The actions weren't crisp or particularly fast, and they tried to hide all of this via flickering lighting, jerky camera shots and slow-motion. It was just not good from a martial arts perspective.

Unfortunately, most of this 90 minute snoozer is only worth fast-forwarding through, which I did for most of the last thirty minutes, and I'm kicking myself for not fast-forwarding earlier through the totally inane temptation scene. Fast-forwarding through a movie is something I almost never do, but I couldn't take it after an hour of drivel. This movie may have worked as a children's cartoon or some sort of kids live-action movie, but not as a movie aimed at a post-adolescent audience. Mel Gibson I can forgive for being involved in this silly movie, but Jet Li ought to know better. Hopefully he did it as a favor or lost a bet or something.

Bottom line - avoid this one.

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.