Warriors of Virtue (1997)

Sadly Over-hyped

One of my all time favorites.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I stumbled upon this one basically by accident. While channel surfing at midnight, this came on, and saw an ordinary world kid in some pretty ancient looking forest, exploring it with a "where am I?" face, so I pretty much could tell this was some outsider boy who lives adventures in a fantasy world.If you haven't noticed from the mere cover of the movie, this is no Lord of the Rings. Even worse, it doesn't live up to cult classic fantasies like Krull, Willow or Dark Crystal.I'm a big fan of fantasy movies that deal with what I like to call "the outsider myth": some kid magically travels to a distant land and lives adventures (who wouldn't like to?), so I was left hypnotized with the potentially entertaining story and, (forgive me) the Elysia character.However, one of many flaws with this movie are the Warriors of Virtue themselves. They're kinda rat or kangaroo-looking people with great martial arts knowledge. Rather out of place for this type of fantasy, and when you see them in action, it just doesn't work. It's like watching sports mascots practicing kung fu. Much more laughable than exciting.This can be a turn off if you expected classic sword and sorcery swashbuckling, for instead, it delivers martial arts in flurry costumes.The sets are awful, with no variety. No exploration of this fantastic (sarcasm) land is ever done, and all you see is a forest, an evil palace lair, the same forest and huts on trees in (you guessed it) the forest.The main villain, one girly, over-the-top emperor, is both campy and not so evil. There appears to be a major battle to occur between his soldiers and the good guys, but no real sword fight ever occurs. Instead, you see more fluffy karate. The Evil Emperor inexplicably splits into five guys and fights all five warriors. If you thought that would be boring, they even show it in blurry vision, just another sign of the movie's inappropriately low budget. And by the end, the bad guy somehow has amnesia, forgets he was so cruel and joins the good guys (to make things even more yawn inducing). Like you could actually care. An underrated score by Don Davis helps the movie from falling completely into oblivion, but not an entirely new sound.The mythology might sound good, so maybe a remake some decades later could squeeze some more juice to the premise. But, until that happens, you can keep "Warriors of Virtue" on the shelf and pass it on.

My kids were acting like little monsters, so I was going to just have them sit down and watch Spykids, but are DVD player wasn't working, so I turned on the VCR and made them watch a video from my best friends VHS collection. I never saw the movie before and neither did my kids it took about 20 mins before the kids realized how bad this movie truly was! I said, "fine don't watch", but then they were acting up again. So, I sat them on the couch and told them they are going to watch the whole movie, til dinner was ready.Lets just say from now on, when I really want to punish them, I put them in the basement and make them watch the movie as punishment. My kids have never been so well behaved.

WOW -- this thing is so weird, so bad in many ways that it is a cheesefest for bad movie lovers. Now, Ronny Yu is a talented director - his magical fairy tale THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR is beautiful and wonderful. I also know many horror fans enjoy his FREDDY v.s. JASON (I haven't seen it) but this film - an odd attempt to mesh a kiddie film, an adventure, martial arts, evil villains, music video art direction AND KANGAROOS that can kick butt with karate and ninja moves - has to be seen to be believed. There is a mopey kid with a bad leg who longs to play football - he is teased by the jocks who convince him to try a physical dare and he falls into a sewer plant's whirlpool (you with me??) and sucked into a magical world where HIS LEG IS OKAY - and gosh, once you have a group of kung-fu kangaroos, life is sweet. The make-up or masks - whatever they did to make the kangaroos' faces - well, its just plain creepy. And the villain in the fantasy world is played by Angus MacFayden who has gone on to be good in Braveheart and as Orson Welles in Cradle Will Rock- but, um,,,Angus gives a performance that is so over the top it is jaw-dropping. Major ham and cheese sub job. It's funny how an actor will know he's in some trainwreck and many times will just sleepwalk through it (or drink through it) and just mumble their way through it dead-eyed BUT sometimes they figure, Aw - what the hell - I know the movie's crap but I'm gonna have fun! And he does - made up to look like the lead singer of The Cure, he screams and pouts like a fey King Lear. It's wild. The movie has so many strange things in it that I highly recommend it for fans of cinema oddities.

This movie was actually very good for what it was trying to do, which is give a summary (very simply) of the VERY esoteric chinese philosophy of Taoism. Those who know nothing of Taoism will definitely find that this movie does not make much sense in some places.All of the characters are embodiments of the virtues and faults presented in the Taoist Philosophy. Yes, this makes for quite the challenge to present it in childrens movie no less.The movie is fun if you dont take it to seriously. It would seem that some of the people posting here thought they were there to see Gone With the Wind or some other Epic or adult piece. Take it as lighthearted and as a possible education on a foreign way of thought, if you are into that new things. (Then again you could just read books on Taoism to get a somewhat clearer view)3 out of 5 for production, 4 out 5 for accomplishment