Warriors

Warriors is a Canadian production which follows the lead of most films from our northern neighbor in that you take one or two American actors for some kind of box office and then the rest of the cast is filled with Canadians. Could things have been that bad for Gary Busey and Michael Pare that this was the best offer they could get in 1994?

One thing I have to give the Canadians credit for, by making this an American story they don't have to explain why we've got an elite team of anti-social assassins who can only be housed in prison because all their moral sense of conscience has been driven out of them.

Of course when that happens even though you're treated as really elite prisoners, you do get a yen to see something of the outside world between killing missions. Which is what happens to Gary Busey the team leader. When he goes AWOL, the government uses a guy Busey trained in Michael Pare to bring him back, dead or alive.

Somehow some prostitute played by Wendi Fulford gets involved in the Busey hunt with Busey. And Pare in his attempts to get Busey was starting to remind me of Wile E. Coyote.

Another film acted by players who looked like they were hoping the paychecks would clear. Skip this one by all means.

Ignore all the bad reviews, they are making sound like the worst film ever made... If you like Parè and Busey then it's an easy hour and half to pass the time... Better then reviews make out.

CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP! Every shot reeks of the utter poverty the filmmakers were stricken with. Sometimes the photography is a little ambitious, but at these times it seems they are trying to put an epic look to what is a ludicrously simple (very simple) action story! Speaking of action, there's not much of it. Busey fans won't be entertained by their idol - by his stupor, it looks like this was made during his, um, high days. At least he's more lively than the near comatose Pare! I can't think of a single reason why to watch it, even if you were involved in the making of it.

This is in response to one review that claimed "Warriors" was bad "even for a Canadian film". First of all, yes, the film stunk to high heavens. The acting was terrible, the action was sub- par at best (you can't have a train chase like you can a car chase!), and the characters were awful. However, to suggest that this sort of fare can be expected from Canadian filmmakers isn't fair. I don't know if this was the intention of the reviewer, or not, but that's what happened.

Canadian films (and I know I'm generalizing here) are by-and-large strange, often unpleasant, and (like it or not) unique. It's also true that they are definitely not for everyone, because of their odd nature. Yet, we see cinema up in Canada that simply does not get made anywhere else. A good Canadian film typically has a very unique concept that can be done for very little money, or a unique take on a familiar subject (also done with very little money).

This dreck called "Warriors" fails utterly, in my mind, because it attempts to imitate and American form of action film. Because of this, it suffers from its low budget that Canadian films just about always have. Every attempt to imitate the Americans (that I've seen, anyway) by a Canadian filmmaker, has failed. I can only hope that the Canadian film industry can be judged by better examples than this. For some titles that have been well-received, check out "Last Night," "Hard-Core Logo," "Fubar," "Passchendaele," "Pontypool," "Eastern Promises," and "The Sweet Hereafter", just to name a few.