January 08, 2006
Purifiers, The
Kevin McKidd .... Moses
Gordon Alexander .... John
Rachel Grant .... Li
Dominic Monaghan .... Sol
Amber Sainsbury .... Frances
Robyn Kerr .... Sam
Jaime Cho .... Raz
Think The Warriors with martial arts and that's what you'll get with this film. In the indeterminite future, The City (it's not clear which city it is) is run at night by karate clubs who have divided it up into territories. While the other clubs have gotten into illegal stuff, John and his Purifiers roam their territories as good guy vigilantes. When the Big Boss, Moses, calls a meeting of all the clubs to discuss banding together and being one big "conglomerate," the Purifiers decide not to join. Thus begins the problems. Moses won't take no for an answer and he sends the other clubs after the Purifiers.
Be thankful that this is a short movie (coming in at 1 hr 15 min) because if was any longer it would be unbearable. As it is, it's slightly uncomfortable to watch. The acting is pretty much what you'd expect from a low budget, direct to video martial arts movie.
The director is in love with slow motion shots so there are A LOT of those throughout this movie. Shots of club members fighting in slow motion, shots of people walking in slow motion, shots of people running in slow motion. I'm convince that if more of the movie were in real time, it would be even shorter than 85 minutes.
The only things saving this from getting a lower rating are the pretty people and the fight scenes. Even when they've been fighting and getting beat up and all bloody, all the people in the clubs still manage to look pretty. I guess the future works that way. The fight scenes are all nicely choreographed and you don't even have to worry about slowing down a certain move to see how it's been done because the director did that for you already (LOVES the slo-mo!!).
Overall, I'd say don't bother with a rental unless you're really, really bored.
Posted by xinh at January 8, 2006 08:24 PM