User reviews

A friend of mine got me this little turkey for Christmas, because he knows I enjoy watching bad movies. Usually I do this as a group event, so my friends and I can all sit back and mock the movie together, but out of boredom I decided to check it out by my lonesome. Next time I watch something like this, I'll make sure to have a suicide watch on hand.

From the title, as well as the box, I assumed this would be a horror flick, with at the very least some cheesy death scenes. Sadly, I didn't even get that much. Ancient Warriors is a low-grade action flick with vague supernatural elements awkwardly shoehorned in. You got some characters with psychic abilities and a dying man looking for a miracle cure buried in a cave in Sardinia, which is guarded by the ghosts of, you guessed it, Ancient Warriors. In any other movie, this would have been the focal point, but in the case of this flick, you have to wonder why they even bothered putting it in. As the gentleman who did the previous review remarks, the eponymous warriors get maybe five minutes of screen time. Most of the rest of the movie consists of boring action scenes and ham-fisted attempts at character development.

I think one of the many, many problems with this film is there's so much going on that nothing gets accomplished. Perhaps that's because there were three writers. It certainly feels like it's trying to be three movies at once. They loaded the movie with about a dozen characters and tried to flesh them all out, which might have worked if they'd gotten decent actors. I mean, you know you're in trouble when Daniel Baldwin is the most gifted actor on the set. The movie seems to be pulling in at least three directions at once; one minute it's a buddy movie, the next it's a shoot-em-up, and for brief spurts it's a supernatural thriller. It's a textbook case of "too many cooks spoil the broth."

If this movie had come out 20 years ago and had at least one famous action star (Jean-Claude Van Damme springs to mind), this movie might have made it on the big screen as a summer blockbuster. As it is, it seems destined to be the kind of movie you find on cable at 3 am when you can't fall asleep. And that's probably where it belongs. If you happen upon this movie in the store at some point, do yourself a favor and leave it on the shelf.

You have to have a little patience with this movie, sort of like with the first season of ST:TNG. It gets a little better as it goes along, and the actors get used to each other and their roles. Franco Columbo looks great, for someone who's 60 (or even someone who's 40), but he's totally unbelievable running around with a couple of pistols. He doesn't seem to know just what to do with them. It's better when he's carrying a machine pistol, but he's "The World's Strongest Bodybuilder", not a martial artist or action hero. His performance varies from pretty good to less than average. He's more believable in the non-combat scenes.

Supporting cast is good, performance more even, overall better than average, but the script and plot are both a little weak. The dialog, and the action scenes, are mostly ordinary and unimaginative. You've seen it all before, but better.

If you're considering this movie because of a "supernatural battle against the ultimate evil" blurb (from the DVD I watched), you're going to be disappointed. Whoever wrote that has more imagination than the scriptwriters, and probably never saw the movie. Don't expect much from the 'Ancient Warriors' of the title. They seem more of an afterthought, and play a very minor role in the movie.

There's some entertainment value here, but, like I said, you'll have to be patient and let it dribble out.

Like another reviewer of this movie, I found myself fast-forwarding through this turkey. I rarely do that, because I like to watch the whole thing in order to write an informative review. But in this case, it was just so direly tedious that I gave up very quickly and skimmed through, watching a few minutes here and there.

Accordingly, I won't go into the plot, because I didn't watch enough to figure it out. But from what I did see I gather that a sick guy (Lynch) was searching for an artifact (possibly the Grail) in order to cure himself of some disease. Others, including Columbo, try to stop him. The "Ancient Warriors" of the title seem to appear only at the very end, in order to stop Lynch - literally about two minutes of screen time. Otherwise this is just a sub-standard action film.

And it is pretty awful. Mostly this is down to truly awful acting, the king of which is Columbo, but all are pretty dire. Columbo was a body-building buddy of Schwarzenegger in the before times and it really shows which of them got the acting talent. In fact, Columbo makes Lou Ferrigno look like a Shakespearean thespian by comparison. He really is awful.

Still don't believe me? Let's just say that Lynch is the subtlest of all the actors, many of whom look like they were doing their first job. And I never thought I'd ever say Lynch was subtle.

The action seems pretty standard - for a TV show. For a movie it comes well below expectations. Thank God for the Fast Forward button!

All in all, this movie is a waste of time. Don't bother.

PS: Normally when I say don't bother I kinda hope you'll watch and find the movie as bad as I told you it would be. But in this case I REALLY mean "Don't bother!" But hey! It's your lifespan. You can waste it if you like!

This is probably one of the most pathetic action flicks I've seen. I rarely hit fast forward even on the most sorry acting endeavors, but this just brought tears to my eyes. Columbo should never do another film, his pouty face and supposed sadness over the death of his father is a hilarious "gem" to watch. I've seen high school plays with more drama than this. Baldwin, at least seems to be laughing at himself in his role which makes it easier to see him as the lothario that his family is famed for. Let's see what else, plot....um yeah....don't even bother listening it will save you from having to make up alternate scenarios in your head. I mean who wrote this script!! I'm angry at even having rented and spent time watching it. The ancient warriors were wholly unnecessary and take up literally about 8 minutes of the entire movie. It's not scary, not thrilling and I found myself wanting to grab a pistol to shoot my screen to get the violence moving. You have been warned!!

From the moment you hear that first gunshot, you feel an air of cheesy action crapfest ahead of you. Then you hear that second gunshot, then another, and another...And another....And yet another. They should have called this shoot people the movie. Pretty much the entire film centers around shooting guns nonstop and killing everything in sight.

The one time the films stars aren't shooting their guns, is when they're polishing them...And the one time they're not killing people with their nicely polished guns is when they're having target practice. Yes, you read that right. You get to actually watch the low grade b movie action stars target practice. You get to watch all kinds of guns being fired too, not just machine guns, but 9mm handguns too. One of the b movie stars even pays homage to Chow Yun Fat with his duel wielding 9mm's style of shooting people.

Now don't get me wrong, when I say these guys shoot people, they don't just wing them or nick them...They fu**ing kill them...Dead mind you, deader than 4 o'clock. I don't think I saw even one person recover from the shooting they got. I saw guys taking shots in the head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. And at one point I saw a man get shot in the a**, either that or he had two a**holes.

That reminds me, the actors in this film were like a collective of a**holes. Or, the big stink as I like to call them. They were very wooden, almost totem-like. They somehow made their way from scene to scene, and shot people. I could imagine the director carrying each actor from scene to scene and posing them for each shot given the woodocitificationess of the actors in question.

I didn't hate this film, and for the price of $1.00 I would have to say it was worth it. It was worth a dollar just to see the heavy machine gunner do a Rambo yell while he slaughtered dozens of mindless villains. I couldn't stop laughing during that part of the film either. Going into Ancient Warriors thinking it would suck made sitting through it much easier as well.

All in all, I'd give this film a 2. Just because it's so over the top with gunplay and sets a new standard for bgrade action films, plus there's a Baldwin brother in it, so hey...I'd give it the extra point for that alone. For bad movie lovers only, all others please avoid this at all costs. Even at a dollar.