Wonderfully offbeat film!
... View MoreThe performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
... View MoreWhat begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.
... View MoreThe joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.
... View MoreA friend of mine got me this little turkey for Christmas, because he knows I enjoy watching bad movies. Usually I do this as a group event, so my friends and I can all sit back and mock the movie together, but out of boredom I decided to check it out by my lonesome. Next time I watch something like this, I'll make sure to have a suicide watch on hand.From the title, as well as the box, I assumed this would be a horror flick, with at the very least some cheesy death scenes. Sadly, I didn't even get that much. Ancient Warriors is a low-grade action flick with vague supernatural elements awkwardly shoehorned in. You got some characters with psychic abilities and a dying man looking for a miracle cure buried in a cave in Sardinia, which is guarded by the ghosts of, you guessed it, Ancient Warriors. In any other movie, this would have been the focal point, but in the case of this flick, you have to wonder why they even bothered putting it in. As the gentleman who did the previous review remarks, the eponymous warriors get maybe five minutes of screen time. Most of the rest of the movie consists of boring action scenes and ham-fisted attempts at character development.I think one of the many, many problems with this film is there's so much going on that nothing gets accomplished. Perhaps that's because there were three writers. It certainly feels like it's trying to be three movies at once. They loaded the movie with about a dozen characters and tried to flesh them all out, which might have worked if they'd gotten decent actors. I mean, you know you're in trouble when Daniel Baldwin is the most gifted actor on the set. The movie seems to be pulling in at least three directions at once; one minute it's a buddy movie, the next it's a shoot-em-up, and for brief spurts it's a supernatural thriller. It's a textbook case of "too many cooks spoil the broth." If this movie had come out 20 years ago and had at least one famous action star (Jean-Claude Van Damme springs to mind), this movie might have made it on the big screen as a summer blockbuster. As it is, it seems destined to be the kind of movie you find on cable at 3 am when you can't fall asleep. And that's probably where it belongs. If you happen upon this movie in the store at some point, do yourself a favor and leave it on the shelf.
... View MoreThis movie is just incredibly bad. It's not even "nice mindless action".Horrible action scenes, no matter if it is clumsy fourth grader wrestling style looking hand to hand combat or slow, plodding gun fights.I didn't expect this to be a well written story or anything, but I have never felt so much disdain for the "heroes".The dialogues are scandalously dumb.Without giving away too much of the movie: There are NUMEROUS scenes where the heroes act DOWNRIGHT stupid and incompetent, plus quite often they run away like scared little girls when having an advantage in numbers during the "fights". Anyone who will find him-/herself rooting for the "good guys" must have the patience and love for good only a buddhist monk can have, because the script and the acting aren't helpful in any way to feel for those guys.The subplot gives you a mentally disabled daughter of the hero whose role is downright offending AND annoying it made me BEG she would get killed or something like that.If you still want to watch this: 1. Make sure you have a soft spot for bad movies 2. Make sure you like to comment a lot during bad movies 3. Make sure you have people with you who fulfill 1 and 2.Worked for me to a degree. But don't even try watching & analizing this in serious fashion, it is THAT bad.
... View MoreFrom the moment you hear that first gunshot, you feel an air of cheesy action crapfest ahead of you. Then you hear that second gunshot, then another, and another...And another....And yet another. They should have called this shoot people the movie. Pretty much the entire film centers around shooting guns nonstop and killing everything in sight. The one time the films stars aren't shooting their guns, is when they're polishing them...And the one time they're not killing people with their nicely polished guns is when they're having target practice. Yes, you read that right. You get to actually watch the low grade b movie action stars target practice. You get to watch all kinds of guns being fired too, not just machine guns, but 9mm handguns too. One of the b movie stars even pays homage to Chow Yun Fat with his duel wielding 9mm's style of shooting people.Now don't get me wrong, when I say these guys shoot people, they don't just wing them or nick them...They fu**ing kill them...Dead mind you, deader than 4 o'clock. I don't think I saw even one person recover from the shooting they got. I saw guys taking shots in the head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. And at one point I saw a man get shot in the a**, either that or he had two a**holes. That reminds me, the actors in this film were like a collective of a**holes. Or, the big stink as I like to call them. They were very wooden, almost totem-like. They somehow made their way from scene to scene, and shot people. I could imagine the director carrying each actor from scene to scene and posing them for each shot given the woodocitificationess of the actors in question.I didn't hate this film, and for the price of $1.00 I would have to say it was worth it. It was worth a dollar just to see the heavy machine gunner do a Rambo yell while he slaughtered dozens of mindless villains. I couldn't stop laughing during that part of the film either. Going into Ancient Warriors thinking it would suck made sitting through it much easier as well. All in all, I'd give this film a 2. Just because it's so over the top with gunplay and sets a new standard for bgrade action films, plus there's a Baldwin brother in it, so hey...I'd give it the extra point for that alone. For bad movie lovers only, all others please avoid this at all costs. Even at a dollar.
... View MoreLike another reviewer of this movie, I found myself fast-forwarding through this turkey. I rarely do that, because I like to watch the whole thing in order to write an informative review. But in this case, it was just so direly tedious that I gave up very quickly and skimmed through, watching a few minutes here and there.Accordingly, I won't go into the plot, because I didn't watch enough to figure it out. But from what I did see I gather that a sick guy (Lynch) was searching for an artifact (possibly the Grail) in order to cure himself of some disease. Others, including Columbo, try to stop him. The "Ancient Warriors" of the title seem to appear only at the very end, in order to stop Lynch - literally about two minutes of screen time. Otherwise this is just a sub-standard action film.And it is pretty awful. Mostly this is down to truly awful acting, the king of which is Columbo, but all are pretty dire. Columbo was a body-building buddy of Schwarzenegger in the before times and it really shows which of them got the acting talent. In fact, Columbo makes Lou Ferrigno look like a Shakespearean thespian by comparison. He really is awful.Still don't believe me? Let's just say that Lynch is the subtlest of all the actors, many of whom look like they were doing their first job. And I never thought I'd ever say Lynch was subtle.The action seems pretty standard - for a TV show. For a movie it comes well below expectations. Thank God for the Fast Forward button!All in all, this movie is a waste of time. Don't bother.PS: Normally when I say don't bother I kinda hope you'll watch and find the movie as bad as I told you it would be. But in this case I REALLY mean "Don't bother!" But hey! It's your lifespan. You can waste it if you like!
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