Hello, you junk movie fans! I am here to talk about The Warriors Gate this week.

The Warriors Gate is a modern Wuxia movie. For those who don't know, Wuxia is the Martial Arts genre,
specially when loaded with superhuman feats. This movie has them in spades.

The plot surrounds your archetipical teenager nerd who is a total loser, but suddenly gets involved in a
plot to protect a Chinesse princess from an alternate Universe from a bunch of barbarians.

I don't want to introduce spoilers in this review, so I am nog going to give much away about the plot.
It suffices to say I have seen houses of cards more solid than the plot, but it is ok, because the movie
obviously does not take itself very seriously. The assumption is that if you are watching a movie such as
this one, you want some cheap laughts and to see the bad guys butchered by heroic heroes. I don't think
they completely succeeded, but they could have done worse.

When your plot is onnly ok, you depend on the actors to sustain the film. The male lead certainly manages
to portray himself as a nerd loser, so I will give him that. Here in Spain, we have a slang expression
for people who is always trying to please females and getting nothing in return for his efforts:
"Pagafantas", roughly translated as "Guy who pays Fantas". It is not that the male lead is doing that,
but for some reason the expression kept popping up in my head every single time he showed up in a scene.

The chemistry between the princess and the protector was a bit forced. In fact, the film devotes quite a
lot of time portraying the difficunty the princess has adapting to _our_ world after comming from her
Middle Age China one. I appreciate character development, but when you are making a film that is not
intended to be serious you should know better than getting clever with character development.

Also, the way the film tries to inject humor is a joke (pun intended). It actually succeeds at times -
like the scenes in which the barbarian leader commands somebody to be killed, and his lieutenant kills
somebody else by mistake. At other times, it is WTF humor, like when the lead tries to teach some
Chinesse bodyguard to dance in the middle of a critical mission whose failure means the destruction of
the Empire.

So, hmm, yeah, the movie is pretty much so-so at this point. If I was to mention its brightest highlight,
it would be the bad guy for sure. If you are tired of this modern trend of giving whimpy actors the roles
of barbarian warriors, this guy will ease your pain. Bulging muscles? Check. He seems beliveable when
commanding his armies to go somewhere and rape and pillage - plus, he loves his horses. If you have not
guessed by know, I was rooting for this guy the whole movie since he is more interesting than the main
characters. If only they had given him a sword that didn't look like it was mae of rubber...

Speaking of which, the production values could have been better. The CGI is not Assylum level because in
order to get to Assylum level, you need to be actively trying to be producing total crap, and The Warrior
s Gate was just trying to do something good and failing at it. I think they were aware of this and thus
didn't include a whole lot of CGI. Or, at least, they tried to make the film less dependent on special
effects.

My final veredict would be that the film is ok. Ok, not great. It would score 5/10 if it wasn't for a
tiny little detail...


The film itself screams CHEAP COPYCAT OF FORBIDDEN KINGDOM!!!!!!!

Seriously, guys, when I was watching my film with my father, he asked me after 10 minutes if I was sure
it was not a Forbidden Kingdom remake. I suppose it is not a rip-off but it ticks enough boxes to arise
suspicion. Western loser gets transported to alternate chinalike Universe in order to save the Empire.
This really sinks The Warriors Gate into the mud, because inevitable comparisons are bound to surface,
and let me tell you, Forbidden Kingdom is just better in every aspect. Forbidden Kingdom has 4 films like
The Warriors Gate for breakfast, spits their bones and them streamrolls them. This brings the question:
why does The Warriors Gate exist at all when Forbiden Kingdom is already a thing? Did the producers think
they could do better? I am sure they were clever enough to acknowledge they could not. The question as to
why this film was released will deprive me of sleep for years to come.

In conclussion, there is no harm in watching this film, so you can safely do so. It is gore-free so you
can also watch it with kids - another disapointment, I want blood in my medieval fighting scenes, damn
it! It is nothing to write home about, but it won't make your head burn from inside like Night Train to
Venice would.

However, if you are intrigued by this film's premise, I'd suggest you to watch Forbidden Kingdom instead,
and enjoy propper special effects, propper acting, and weapons that don t look like they are made of
rubber.


--
gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken

---
■ Synchronet ■ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL