Warrior Angels

This is probably one of the worst movies I've watched this year. Nothing seems to be interesting during the film. The story doesn't make any sense. Come on, this movie claims to have somewhat of a historical background, but seriously.....a group of women taking on an entire bandit camp!

The only thing that kept me watching was Arnold Vosloo's performance and that was even way below his average....

Just don't go and rent this movie, it's a waste of your money and your precious time!

Well, I am a Joanna Pacula fan, so I did enjoy this film. While the whole plot was very predictable, the action and adventure were great. To see women in the Crusades actually fighting, even if it is fiction, is great! There should have been some romance rather than just a bunch of sex between the men of Grekkor's army and the ladies that they kidnapped, but that was the only real problem I had with the film. It was interesting enough and it had it's moments of being really funny, especially Eve's scenes, she was a total ditz! Luke was hot, need I say more? Grekkor hasn't aged as nicely as I think he would have liked to. And the kid, oh the kid...Well, he was just plain boring, and the whole movie is about him. So is the movie boring? Not entirely. The kid, Peter, is very cowardly and he has no idea whose side he should be on. His mothers, or Grekkor's...Grekkor begins to teach him how to fight and how to "be a man" while his mother abandoned him for a year to go fight in the crusades. When she gets back from fighting, her son is gone, she panics, and then goes on a quest to find him. The woman in the woods, Hunter, she seems like she is attracted to the ladies, which makes for a kind of funny feeling at moments. While Eve, the prostitute, is just stupidly funny the whole way through. Yes, it is a B movie, but it is worth renting if you need something interesting to watch just one night.

I saw this movie under the DVD title "Crusade of Vengeance" it was shot in Europe and has an authentic look and feel, despite some bad CGI. Joanna Pacula stars as Elizabeth of Cooke, who fought the crusades for God, only to return to England and find her son is captive of the evil and greedy warlord Grekkor, wonderfully played by Rutger Hauer.

Assembling a rag-tag group of women warriors, Elizabeth sets out to stop Grekkor and reunite with her son. This isn't Shakespeare, but its well played by a professional cast and the movie has its fair share of humor too!

Rutger Hauer plays a great villain and he imbues Grekkor with style. Arnold Vosloo,who I'm not familiar with, plays Luke, a down-cast knight who ends up aiding Elizbeth. Molly Culver is perfectly cast as the loner Hunter, who manages to be ultra-tough and yet completely appealing.

Its great from start to finish and never gets to serious or too silly.

The defenders surrender and open the gates of the castle. Their enemies are riding into it. Only one person is left to fight them, a woman about 40 years old with a broadsword in her hands. The leader of the enemies, a huge guy in black armour, looks down upon her and says: `I've never seen such bravery – and foolishness.' She is staring at him, ignoring the whole army behind him, and replies stonily: `I'm going to kill you, Grekkor.'

Great idea to open the movie with the final confrontation, as it makes every watcher curious. How did these two characters get into such a situation? The rest of the movie is a flashback which explains why it had to happen. Cheaply produced in Lithuania, `Warrior Angels' is a movie with pros and cons. On one hand, the idea to make Elisabeth, a woman over 40, the central character, is brilliant. Instead of the cute princesses you know from countless other fantasy movies or those Charlie's Angels (remember the title!) kind of girly fighters, we are introduced to a tired, but very experienced fighting lady here who goes into her last battle for personal reasons, trying to rescue her abducted son. The cast is marvellous. First we have Rutger Hauer as Grekkor (he looked old to me for the first time – but then I realized it was 20 years ago I saw him at the cinema in `Blade Runner', so I wouldn't mind him saying the same about me), a villain with a cause, not just evil for the fun of it. He explains how his land was taken from him and he wants to use the time while the king is abroad to steal it back. His motivation for the kidnapping of Elisabeth's son is plausible as well, since he wants to teach a boy how to become a warrior, which his father never did for him, he thinks. Second, we have Arnold `The Mummy' Vosloo who gets the best part. A permanently drunk loser at the beginning, he becomes Grekkor's right hand man, but then realizes he may be on the wrong side, so he thinks a lot over his loyalty, his duty, his inner feelings, torn between despair and reborn courage – not a plain cliché role at all! Last not least, we get a team of 4 ladies when Elisabeth teams up with a huntress, a thief and a witch. Their totally different characters make the movie entertaining.

On the other hand, `Warrior Angels' makes a few mistakes. Every historian will burst into laughter at the introduction of Elisabeth as a woman who has been fighting as a knight in the crusades with Richard Lionheart. Just like Ivanhoe or Robin Hood, they are trying to give her a certain historical background. Now, a woman as an equal fighter in a Christian army didn't even exist 1890, let alone 1190. The writer must have watched too many Xena episodes and thought female warriors are a normal part of life in the middle ages. They should have omitted that reference to the year 1190 and make `Warrior Angels' a timeless fantasy movie. Also I wonder why the villain is named Grekkor, not George or James, as he is supposed to be British. Where did he get that typical fantasy name from? Apart from these inconsistencies, I also wonder why the people of the towns around (who outnumber Grekkor's bandits by far) never attack him. The movie simply suffers from the budget limitation, I suppose, hence there are a few not so spectacular battles and obviously cheap set design. Nevertheless, I think `Warrior Angels' is definitely a better choice than `Amazons And Gladiators' for example, since there are good actors involved and a couple of original ideas along the way. Voted 7/10.

Joanna Pakula as the leading warrior angel, home from the third crusade with Richard the Lionheart, finds herself at home bereft of her son, who has been abducted by the wicked Grekkor (Rutger Hauer), a perfect Hollywood villain, with no mercy and nothing but scheming cruelty. It is all made up, like a fairy tale, touching both fantasy, Tolkien, medieval romanticism and Hollywood swashbuckles and with a regular happy end, although the film is littered with casualties, mainly on the bad side, while Eve (Charlotte Avery) is a regrettable loss. The fighting is fierce and regular, while as usual in modern films like this it is impossible to grasp all details, since everything just keeps wildly flowing by like a fierce flood of havoc. Nevertheless, it is worth watching although but once, and the boy Peter's constant change of loyalties is not quite logical and understandable, which character is the only flaw of the film: a better director would have been needed. Another confusion is the many different titles the film has been shown under, like "Vengeance of War", "Crusade of Vengeance", "United in Vengeance" and others still, making it difficult to find it and look it up; but the best role and actor is Arnold Vosloo as Luke, who has a constant bad time surviving many hard blows.