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catscradle Feb. 7th, 2006 09:36 am)
catscradle Feb. 7th, 2006 09:36 am)Without spoiling it too much for anyone, I think it's safe to say before the cut tag that Dominic Monaghan owes me big for this one. Probably not as much as Elijah Wood owes me for Ash Wednesday, but still. A lot. Okay. Beyond this point is spoilage. More for plot rot than me actually revealing anything, but spoilage regardless. Read at your own risk.
Review: The Purifiers or How to Remake the Warriors on Even Less of a Budget
This review contains spoilers. You've been warned.
I'm not sure if they ever billed this as a remake, sequel, tie-in to The Warriors, but it's quite obvious that's where the idea came from. The Warriors, however, works, where as The Purifiers makes you wonder if Dom was paying off a debt to Satan for getting him that role in Lord of the Rings. And by the way, if you rent the movie from Netflix, you'll see on the jacket blurb that it stars Dom. He has about 15 minutes max of screen time and most of it appears to be him being bored and just hanging out. I kinda wonder if he was actually in the film or maybe just picking up a friend on the set.
Anyway. If you've seen The Warriors you'll know they had a tiny budget and that most of the budget went into those three beer bottles that the bad guy kept clinking together with his three fingers to freak the Warriors out. But still. What they saved on in special effects and acting talent they made up for with a stylized concept and creative filming. The cheese of the Warriors actually helps boost it to cult status. The cheese in the Purifiers is just used to make the noodles stick to the wall in the super lame stop action cut sequence in a Chinese restaraunt. I may or may not explain that later.
Taking the concept of The Warriors and running with it is not a bad thing per se. But taking The Warriors and stripping it of it's extra quarter in the budget is begging for disaster. I will have this to say; the acting is better in The Purifiers. But the writing took a turn for the way worse as did the directing, so it really doesn't matter if the actors are capable, and this is sad.
Okay. The Warriors is set in the not too distant future. The city is divided up into districts that are run by gangs. The gangs each run their territory as they see fit and the people that live there are pretty much at the mercy of the gang. The Warriors are a pretty cool bunch that are hip to honor, so if you live in their district you've got a better life. This is pretty much the same set up of The Purifiers, but they specialize in karate and they're co-ed instead of all male. In both movies each gang has a gimick or theme. Like one gang will dress all in hockey uniforms and another is on roller skates. In Purifiers, a group know as the Angels wear these funky electic disco age crosses on their chest, which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
battlemistress claims is where .23 cents of their .25 cent budget went.
Where the movies differ is the part where the charasmatic leader rises to unite all the gangs into one powerful super gang. In The Warriors, the charasmatic leader is actually strong, benevolent, and looking out for the best interest of the gangs. In The Purifiers, the charasmatic leader is actually just another thug who rules with an iron accent. In the Warriors, the charasmatic leader is assasinated by the psychotic bottle clinker who then blames the Warriors, who in turn must now survive a night of everyone trying to kill them till they can get back on their home turf and clear their name. In the Purifiers, the Iron Accent is deceiving the gangs and the Purifiers decide they're just going to go home and not deal with any of it. They are then pursued by the Iron Accent and betrayed by Dom, who at this point can't be blamed.
Lots of psuedo drama happens in Purifiers and is expressed in agonizingly boring karate scenes. I once thought that the Agent Smith fight scene in Matrix: Reloaded was the longest, boring, most tedious fight scene ever. I was wrong. In fact, the fight scenes in this movie are longer than the movie itself. If I hadn't shut off the DVD player and mailed the movie back to netflix, it'd still be playing the last fight scene.
And while I'm on the topic of fight scenes, I need to mention the women in this flick. Two of them are strong and capable unless it isn't convenient. Their dialogue is stilted and rather insipid, but they can fight. One in particular, the Christina Ricci look-a-like, is pretty kickass. Until she meets up with another rival woman. Her moves turn from expert killer karate moves to a pretty standard silly catfight technique. If there was a way to lose more points in a movie this bad, it'd be for that. There's another scene where Dom pushes one of the chick's up against a glass encasement on a building. Somehow this glass slices through her, defying the laws of physics.
It all comes down to a finale between the Purifier leader and the Iron Accent. To be honest, I still don't know what the fighting was about. Dom's just standing around, get's bored and leaves. The other Purifiers then gang up on him and strangle him to death. One assumes for abandoning them to deal with the plot holes by themselves. Then the leader of the Purifiers goes home to set up a karate joint for kids. I'm not sure what happens to the other Purifiers. Maybe they went to jail for killing Dom.
Back to my point about the budget - I'm all for low budget films. But The Warriors was a low budget film. If your're going to remake it you need to beef up the budget or just leave it alone. If you make the flick for even less money, you strip away the few things which made the first one worth watching. Don't have money for F/X? Fine. Hire a writer that, you know, writes dialogue and narration and stuff. And pay the director. The lighting bill too for that matter.
Never did explain the Chinese stop-action segment, did I?
Review: The Purifiers or How to Remake the Warriors on Even Less of a Budget
This review contains spoilers. You've been warned.
I'm not sure if they ever billed this as a remake, sequel, tie-in to The Warriors, but it's quite obvious that's where the idea came from. The Warriors, however, works, where as The Purifiers makes you wonder if Dom was paying off a debt to Satan for getting him that role in Lord of the Rings. And by the way, if you rent the movie from Netflix, you'll see on the jacket blurb that it stars Dom. He has about 15 minutes max of screen time and most of it appears to be him being bored and just hanging out. I kinda wonder if he was actually in the film or maybe just picking up a friend on the set.
Anyway. If you've seen The Warriors you'll know they had a tiny budget and that most of the budget went into those three beer bottles that the bad guy kept clinking together with his three fingers to freak the Warriors out. But still. What they saved on in special effects and acting talent they made up for with a stylized concept and creative filming. The cheese of the Warriors actually helps boost it to cult status. The cheese in the Purifiers is just used to make the noodles stick to the wall in the super lame stop action cut sequence in a Chinese restaraunt. I may or may not explain that later.
Taking the concept of The Warriors and running with it is not a bad thing per se. But taking The Warriors and stripping it of it's extra quarter in the budget is begging for disaster. I will have this to say; the acting is better in The Purifiers. But the writing took a turn for the way worse as did the directing, so it really doesn't matter if the actors are capable, and this is sad.
Okay. The Warriors is set in the not too distant future. The city is divided up into districts that are run by gangs. The gangs each run their territory as they see fit and the people that live there are pretty much at the mercy of the gang. The Warriors are a pretty cool bunch that are hip to honor, so if you live in their district you've got a better life. This is pretty much the same set up of The Purifiers, but they specialize in karate and they're co-ed instead of all male. In both movies each gang has a gimick or theme. Like one gang will dress all in hockey uniforms and another is on roller skates. In Purifiers, a group know as the Angels wear these funky electic disco age crosses on their chest, which
battlemistress claims is where .23 cents of their .25 cent budget went. Where the movies differ is the part where the charasmatic leader rises to unite all the gangs into one powerful super gang. In The Warriors, the charasmatic leader is actually strong, benevolent, and looking out for the best interest of the gangs. In The Purifiers, the charasmatic leader is actually just another thug who rules with an iron accent. In the Warriors, the charasmatic leader is assasinated by the psychotic bottle clinker who then blames the Warriors, who in turn must now survive a night of everyone trying to kill them till they can get back on their home turf and clear their name. In the Purifiers, the Iron Accent is deceiving the gangs and the Purifiers decide they're just going to go home and not deal with any of it. They are then pursued by the Iron Accent and betrayed by Dom, who at this point can't be blamed.
Lots of psuedo drama happens in Purifiers and is expressed in agonizingly boring karate scenes. I once thought that the Agent Smith fight scene in Matrix: Reloaded was the longest, boring, most tedious fight scene ever. I was wrong. In fact, the fight scenes in this movie are longer than the movie itself. If I hadn't shut off the DVD player and mailed the movie back to netflix, it'd still be playing the last fight scene.
And while I'm on the topic of fight scenes, I need to mention the women in this flick. Two of them are strong and capable unless it isn't convenient. Their dialogue is stilted and rather insipid, but they can fight. One in particular, the Christina Ricci look-a-like, is pretty kickass. Until she meets up with another rival woman. Her moves turn from expert killer karate moves to a pretty standard silly catfight technique. If there was a way to lose more points in a movie this bad, it'd be for that. There's another scene where Dom pushes one of the chick's up against a glass encasement on a building. Somehow this glass slices through her, defying the laws of physics.
It all comes down to a finale between the Purifier leader and the Iron Accent. To be honest, I still don't know what the fighting was about. Dom's just standing around, get's bored and leaves. The other Purifiers then gang up on him and strangle him to death. One assumes for abandoning them to deal with the plot holes by themselves. Then the leader of the Purifiers goes home to set up a karate joint for kids. I'm not sure what happens to the other Purifiers. Maybe they went to jail for killing Dom.
Back to my point about the budget - I'm all for low budget films. But The Warriors was a low budget film. If your're going to remake it you need to beef up the budget or just leave it alone. If you make the flick for even less money, you strip away the few things which made the first one worth watching. Don't have money for F/X? Fine. Hire a writer that, you know, writes dialogue and narration and stuff. And pay the director. The lighting bill too for that matter.
Never did explain the Chinese stop-action segment, did I?