Reviewed By

Christopher Armstead
Dear Jesus who is in Heaven, why do you allow me to keep doing this to myself.  At this point, 40+ years into this game that is my life, it should be clear that I am not capable of governing myself when it comes to the movies I choose to watch.  Take this TV Kung-fu epic from 2001 calling itself 'Invincible' for instance.  Here this movie was, completely obscure, not bothering anybody, begging to be watched by nobody, but like the Shadow Wolves hunting Al-Qaeda, I tracked this movie down even though it didn't want to be found, and I watched it.  And my soul died just a little bit more.  But the worst part about that… is that it kind of felt good.  I'd almost call the pain 'exquisite'.  Help me Jesus who is in Heaven… please…

Billy Zane will narrate for us as the 2000 year old Super Human named Os.  If you happen to have a fetish for the voice of Billy Zane, then my friends you absolutely have to get this movie.  Anyway, for 2000 years Os has been walking the earth killing people just for fun, until one night in a dusty alley he the met the Bride with the Blonde Hair (Michelle Comerford) who showed him the light via a very nice wire fu sword fight.  I'm thinking after seeing that nice little wire fu display, while the whole 'showed the light' thing was hokey, that maybe this movie is getting a bad rap.  I'd be wrong, of course.

Os needs The Light because his former BFF Slate (David Field) has grown weary of wearing silk suits, walking the earth like Kain and murdering humans, and has come to the conclusion that if he destroys the Earth he can go back home.  Wherever home is for this cat because I thought it was Earth.  Clearly I missed something.  Os cannot let this happen, but to stop Slate and his boy band crew of The Four Silk Suit Wearing Madmen, he needs his own crew of meta human super warriors.
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Who are these four warriors chosen before they were even conceived (?) to do battle to save the earth?  There's Angry Black Dude and soldier Ray Jackson (Tory Kittles), Long legged angry cop Serena Blue (Stacy Oversier), Angry professional bodyguard Michael Fu (Byron Mann) and finally the not so angry international thief Keith Grady (Dominic Purcell).  Those aren't their real names by the way, just the names Os gave them since their old identities have to be tossed away.  But their faces remain the same which kind of makes the new names a little silly.

You know the routine.  The Warriors aren't ready, they don't get along, they need to work together, yada yada yada.   How are they going to work together?  By Os talking.  A lot.  I mean A lot.  It's almost as if the geniuses behind this film saw this film, determined that all the talking by Billy Zane was losing the audience, then came to the conclusion that to bring the audience back, they should bring Billy back in the studio so he can record more talking.  It's just like that.

Eventually our heroes will listen to what the sage Os has to say, like they have any real choice in the matter, put on their own silk suits and kick some ass with their 'Matrix Inspired Martial Arts'.  That's what the DVD box cover said.  A DVD that I own.  The fact that I own the DVD to this movie makes less sense that the movie itself.

A couple of things about 'Invincible'.  First is that it seems the original plan was for this to be a pilot of a TV show.  Heck if I know what they would do every week since they killed the silk suit sporting bad guys and Slate was pretty much rendered inoperable.  Maybe they'd just stop bank robbers and stuff, not that it matters because this movie with the names of Mel Gibson and Jet Li pasted prominently on the box as Executive Producers couldn't have thrilled anybody enough to warrant a follow up episode.  Besides, Billy Zane bowed out at the end, at least physically, so in future episodes all we would've heard is more of his voiceovers.

So what's not so good about this movie?  Pacing… pacing… pacing… pacing.  True enough, we did enjoy that battle with the Bride with the Blonde hair, but starting out the movie with a decent fight and then following it up with a bunch of yak, massive slowness and a few lame fights sprinkled in between might not have been the best cinematic move.  Instead of Os and slate fighting, what we got was a lot of panning, slow moving close up shots of their eyeballs.  I'm no film director, but that's probably a cinematic move I wouldn't have gone with.  It's too bad really because 'Invincible' is a really nice looking movie with a fairly solid cast of actors on board for this nonsense.  Billy Zane was at his sardonic best and his fake sword fighting looked pretty decent, and we've been a fan of Byron Mann ever since 'Crying Freeman' back in '95.  Tory Kittles?  Frankenfish?  Come on now.  While this movie for Dominic Purcell was pre-'Prison Break' we could still see some of the Aussie's charm fighting to get out.  Apparently the lovely Stacy Oversier decided that acting wasn't her cup of tea after this movie as this was the end of the woman's two film career.  Guess what?  That other film is 'Guardian' with Mario Van Peebles and I purchased that too.  Tell me I don't need help.

So what we have with invincible is a terrible kung fu movie, a terrible action movie, and a terrible drama that blew the majority of its budget on silk suits. 
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