Invincible (2001)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written by Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes, and Jefery Levy
Directed by Jefery Levy
Starring Billy Zane, Byron Mann, Stacy Oversier, Tory Kittles, Dominic Purcell, and David Field

Features:

• Trailers
  

Released by: Buena Vista Home Video
Region: 1
Rating: NR
Anamorphic: Yes, surprisingly enough

My Advice: Stay away

Behind the scenes of the everyday world, there is a war on. The dark and vicious Shadowmen seek the destruction of the world as we know it, held back only by scant forces of goodness and the mysterious White Warrior. It is this enigmatic hero that converts Shadowman Os (Zane) to the path of right, and he is tasked with assembling a group of chosen warriors to stop an impending threat to reality from his former associate Slate (Field). To this end, Os recruits a band of misfits ranging from professional thief to personal bodyguard, and sets about attempting to forge them into an invincible team.

All of which, of course, leaves tons and tons of characters to be developed, backstory to be explored, and naturally the much-advertised ass-kicking. This wouldn't have been a problem had this "backdoor pilot" actually been picked up as a TBS original series. But to get a series, you need a pilot that doesn't suck, and this isn't it. Mediocre acting, abyssmal pacing, and a marked dearth of the much-advertised ass-kicking make for one of the lamest wanna-be kung fu flicks in recent memory.

Zane does an admirable job as Os, adding a touch of sarcasm and bite to the traditional role of sifu in such pictures. He's got a good sense for the interiority of Os, a former powerful minion of evil shown the light. The rest of the cast, however, look utterly and completely lost. I suspect the script didn't spill too much about the characters, in hopes of developing their stories more extensively through episodes of the wished-for series. This means that the young actors had precious little to work with in the first place.

Then there's the little issue of direction/pacing. What is consistently hyped in trailers and TV spots as a hard-hitting, Matrix-esque kung fu smackfest comes across as an incredibly dull final product. Huge stretches of Os giving motivational pep talks to his students on a single set reused over and over in shot after shot. Weird camera blurring and fades. Flashbacks to things that happened twenty minutes ago. Basically, if there was a stupid mistake and obvious filler shot that could be used, odds are it's in Invincible somewhere.

For all the advertised kung fu goodness, there are precisely two real fight sequences. The first isn't too bad, and involves Os' kids squaring off with some Shadowman thugs in a nightclub. The second is the "climactic" final showdown, which cuts back and forth between Os and Slate jawing and the crew of troops having a badly-staged fight outside. Of course, the director opted to shoot both scenes at a distance of six inches with strobe lights going and otherwise shoddy lighting, so good luck figuring out who did what to who in the fight. This seems to be at least in part due to lackluster martial arts skills in the actors, but since there are plenty of actors out there ready to do martial arts films, I can't cut too much slack to a production whose casting director wasn't smart enough to hire them. Again, I suspect casting was driven by a "young and pretty" mandate to draw in a consistent TV audicence, but that's still no excuse.

Invincible is a decent premise that suffers from bad mishandling. How Jet Li allowed his name to get thrown on this steaming pile, I'll never know. Mel Gibson, too. Maybe a lesson will be learned, and the next wanna-be kung fu TV series pilot will get actual martial artists, an actual martial arts film director, and a decent script before trying to ride on the coattails of Hollywood's latest big trend. Oh, who am I kidding? These dolts don't ever learn anything.