Rating: Summary: Billy Zane gave a good performance Review: A film with a decent story line but the acting wsn't that good. The only one that stood out for me were Os (Billy Zane) who added charm and interest to the speech and altogether stole the show. The fight scenes were well choreographed and decently performed, though the slow motion became rather too much after a while. There wasn't enough action in this film, or if there was there was way too much sitting and talking inbetween. The part where Os is telling the elements how Slate will try to trick them and that they musn't hate him for this lingered on a little too long leaving me quite bored at the end of it. The characters Os and Slate where well introduced at the beginning making it pretty simple to go along with though the elements weren't actually properly introduced although it was quite easy to see who they were anyway. Altogether I think this film could have done with a little less talking and had more action in. Billy Zane gave a good performance which added more interest to the film and made me want to keep watching. If the other actors had given as good as performance as him, then the film would have been of much higher standard.
Rating: Summary: Boring Dialogue, Good Message Review: As I read the movie summary and seeing Matrix-like action and martial arts, I have to rent this movie. When I placed it into the DVD player, that is different.First let me start by saying that the final mixing of audio dialogue is messed up. The music becomes domineering that I could seldom hear the dialogue. I had to activate the subtitle to ammend this nuisance. Second, the cinematography is similar to the style of "Black Mask" and "Black Mask 2" staring Jet Li in the first and Andy On in the second. The movie is dark most of the time and then with flashes of light...kind of annoying. Third, the movie script poorly written with corny lines. The actor from "John Doe" does not convince me as an AusSie. The only part of the movie I sort of enjoy was the message of hate breeds hate and love breeds love and that love can conquer everything. I gave this movie 3 stars just for this message. I think this movie has something to do with Buddhist philosophy with the whole circle idea. One scene, the actor who plays Ryu in "Street Fighter," dies. The other people whom Os (Zane) found carried their dead comrade and placed him in the center of the circle and did some mystical magic thing and poof! The dead comrade is alive. Everyone in my family thinks this movie is silly and not worth to buy. I agree. Rent this movie instead.
Rating: Summary: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers meets Touched By an Angel Review: Funny story: I didnt mean to rent this. I had heard about this cool movie, something with a one-word title, but knew absolutely nothing about it. So while walking down the aisle Invincible caught my eye and I was sure it was the one I'd heard about. I dont want my money back, because I believe people must pay for their mistakes. What I do wish I had back was the two hours I wasted. The movie I'd intended to rent was Equilibrium. Billy Zane is Os, an evil demon-like guy turned into a good guy. When Os turned good he went bald, but thats ok; apparently when youre bad you're compelled to wear Liza Minelli's castoff wigs, so he got the better end of the deal. The end of the world is coming and Os has to train 4 superhumans to help him stop it. The fact that they have birthmarks shaped like temporary henna tattoos has never seemed unusual to them; the fact they all have the same one seems even less so. These 4 include the cocky but charming australian; the tough-as-nails lesbian cop; the asian kung fu master; and the angry black man. Being superhuman has taught the other 3 martial arts, but the angry black man never gets past the boxing stage; I'd call this stereotyping if they didnt turn stereotyping on its head by having him use classic WWF moves like the pile driver and body slam. When they're fighting together they pose as if a photographer from Black Belt magazine is just out of sight. There's so much Go Team! and high-fiving that I expected them at any moment to join hands and form Voltron (believe me, if that'd happened my review would have been much better) or whatever it is the Power Rangers do. The Christian message of love and redemption is pounded into your brain from beginning to end, which is laudable but certainly gets old quickly (of course, any fundamentalist worth his pillar of salt would blast this movie as having a little too much witchcraft-type stuff in it. So be it). The ending is predictably bad. In short: the dialogue isnt cheesy-bad, it's just plain old bad. The action is blurry, dark, and ordinary, with lots of slow motion. The special effects arent very special. The message is overemphasized. This movie is bad.
Rating: Summary: WORST FILM EVER?????? Review: I can usually stand bad films. This i couldn't. American TV Movies are usually completely terrible, but this film lowered the bar by quite some distance. X-MEN meets the Matrix?? Power Rangers meets TAI BO more like it!!
This film was stupid, the acting was terrible and corny. the dialogue was trying to be witty and thought-provoking - it failed.
Half the time i was wondering what the hell was going on (like the scene with zane riding a bike in a pool of water) It makes no sense and looked ridiculous!!
I've seen better special effects on 1980's BBC programs!!
and the martial arts, mostly non-existant, and when it is there, its like watching a tai-bo video! the actors have no martial arts skills so the camera just slows down when they try to land a hit and quickly moves them out of shot just at the point of contact of the hit. My gran could shoot fight scenes better and she's been dead for 12years!
The only redeeming feature of this film (besides the end credits) is watching it with your friends drinking some beers and just ripping the piss out of this film!
In conclusion, this film sucks more than u can imagine. Its your typical american tv movie OTT dialogue that fails on every level it strives for.
Rating: Summary: Painful Review: I cannot say enough bad things about this movie. I thought the fact that Billy Zane was the main character would be enough to make it a good movie. If I had any doubts then, they were put down by the words at the top of the case: "Produced by Jet Li and Mel Gibson." How can it be a bad movie? THEY FOUND A WAY! This just goes to prove that you can't judge a book by its cover. I never liked the Power Rangers. Why would grown men, all of whom are famous actors, want their names associated with a movie like this?
Rating: Summary: Vanquished Review: I love corny action movies. They're a guilty pleasure of mine. This, however, went beyond bad. I have never seen a worse movie. Normally, in a good action flick, the dialogue is bad, the plot is lacking, but the action is amazing. In this movie, the dialogue was so bad that my friend and I were gaping at each other in astonishment, the plot was ludicrous and the action was pathetic.
Let's start with the dialogue. Os (Billy Zane) kept waxing poetic, spouting utter nonesense for hours. It was supposed to sound deep. It sounded contrived and fake. There was no emotion to back up his words. What emotion any character tried to show us seemed out of place, fake and there was rarely reasons that they felt anything. Os once is crying with joy. We have no idea why, but it happens.
The plot is very typical. I must admit, I was not expecting wonders here and I was not surprised. It's the same old shtick about how four people must band together to save the world with their magic powers from big bad guys with nefarious evil magic. In itself, this lack of originality wouldn't matter if the acting, dialogue and action were better.
I was really, really disappointed when it came to the action scenes. There was way too much slow motion. When used sparingly and artfully, slow motion can be beautiful. When half the movie is like this, you just want to fastforward through the whole thing. When it wasn't slow mo, it was a strobe effect where everything was cutting and restarting. It was awful and confusing. It also didn't let us see the actor's movement. The moves that we did see were of poor quality and irrealistic.
Other things I didn't like were the very predictable ending and the terrible wig that Billy Zane is wearing in the beginning. It was more frightening than the bad guys. Actually, that wig probably could have been the bad guy. The movie might have been more enterttaining.
Rating: Summary: Pathetic Review: I really, really wanted to like this movie, but it was pure crap. The story was overly complicated without making any sense. They introduced each part of the movie with text and there was excessive use of voice-overs, which added to the cornyness. The only redeemable quality the movie had was its positive message, but the pure stupidity of most of it made the message seem like it was coming from a source which didn't quiet understand the message it was projecting. My advice, see The Matrix and Equilibrium first and you will realize how empty (besides the message) this movie actually is. There is nothing unique about this movie what-so-ever, and whoever says the fight sequences are well-done has never seen THe Matrix, Equilibrium, Crouching Tiger..., and Drunken Master. Go rent a quality movie, instead of this poorly done dribble. And note the cool original gunplay idea in Equilibrium, truly fantastic. *A note: Another reviewer said that the guy from "John Doe" isn't convincable as an Austrailian, when in fact he was born in Austrailia. He is acutally a well-known Shakespearian stage actor there. So HA!
Rating: Summary: A new twist on a n old story - stylish work! Review: I recently bought this DVD and was especially amazed about the nice effects and very stylish camerawork. Good slow-motion, nice angles and good play with light, shadows and water. The editor and cameraman are really topnotch tryng to envision the the idea of the director with a wealth of innovative work. The story itself is a rather old one: good vs evil in an epic battle over the unsuspecting little planet known as earth. Combining mythical- and science fiction-elements we are told the story of Os - Billy Zane - a former member of the Shadowmen, dark entities stalking the universe and destroying whole planets. Exiled on earth there is only one way out: Finding the vortex to destroy earth and shattering the grounds of space. But Os is turned good by an entity of pure love. And so his quest to destroy the shadowmen along with their leader has begun. By gathering four special protectors, unique hyper-humans, each representing an element he is willing to save earth from his former allies. Very cool fighting-sequences occur. One of the best is delivered in the beginning of the movie, when we are told about the clash between Os and the White Lady who's turning him into a protector force of earth. Sparks fly, energies explodes and we see Zane running on walls, weilding his sword like he's done this since he was baby. Very good choreography indeed. The real good CGI-effects are doing their best to convince us of the existence of superpowered warriors fighting over earth. And they surprisingly succeed. In the middle of the movie there are some slow moments, but those are filmed in a nice way, bringing the story and the charácters further than simply letting them fight every thirty seconds. We learn more about the mystical ways of Os and how he mentally trains his fighters preparing them for the really impressive, wireworked and effect-ladden showdown! There are similiraties betweenn the movie and some videogames. take Mortal Kombat or Tao feng for example. If you like cool action with a twist, modern filmmaking with the use of good postproduction you will like this one a lot. Innovative action sleeper hit.
Rating: Summary: I've seen better; save your money Review: I saw it on TV last night. I didn't see "The Matrix" or "Crouching Tiger", so I can't compare it to those. To me it was more like "Highlander" meets "Mutant X", but in a bad way. The repetitive voice overs had to go, but the special effects were cool. Maybe it should have been anime.
Rating: Summary: Nice Action Flick-My rant and rave Review: I saw this movie when it was first shown on TBS and I thought it was pretty good.This movie definitely has a "Matrix" feel to it.Although it's not the best action movie out now it's still pretty good martial arts/fantasy movie. THE KEYWORD BEING FANTASY.Billy Zane did a nice job with his role as Os(given the fact that I have never seen him do any type of martial arts movies ever) who is tasked with training 4 different people from different areas around the world..A thief,a cop,a soldier,and bodyguard. Now here's a point I wanna make about this movie.
What most of the people who gave this movie bad reviews never understood about the "Element's abilities" is...their powers only enhanced the abilities that they already had...NOT GAVE THEM NEW ONES.Michael & Serena were martial arts experts,Grady had a few moves from when he was a thief, and Ray is a streetfighter so their newfound powers were not meant to turn them all into Jet Li or Jacky Chan.
The swordfights were nice and the martial arts fights were sweet.Although many of the faces in the movies were basically new I seen Byron Mann(Michael Fu)in the Stephen Seagal's Belly of the Beast.Now if you like action/fantasy then I recommend this movie.If you are one of those people who look for realistic things and to make sure everything makes sens in a movie(when in most movies not too much makes sense)then this movie is not for you.Most fantasy were not meant to make sense or to be real
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