Warrior Angels (2002)

A vehicle to an old Joanna Pakula,let's say in last breath of beauty,but if the production is a low profile at least three woman who were casting for supporting role is fine,the Hunter,the virgin warrior which lives in a cave,the Gipsy that lost all relatives and has a reason to fight,and the Tramp,really gorgeous girl who wants an easy life,all them worths the picture,Voslo and Hauer were acceptable,the story not quite,bad cheap sets,enjoyable movie but easy to forget!!Resume:First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 5

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.

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.

Arnold Vosloo (from "The Mummy") and Rutger Hauer tried to revive this movie but failed, probably due to the director. This movie had a lot of new ideas going for it: a female main character (who was not young and sexy), a single mom in a medieval film, characters who are not simply good or bad... It even made good use of its low budget, particularly by using some realisticly cold-blooded "medieval" type horses rather than the cheap quarter horses miscast in such historical films. The acting was on a MST3K level with the exception of Hauer and Vosloo, but at least the scenery was nice and the unusual circumstances of the story compensated until--The ending ruined it all. The director made an obvious change at the end contrary to the way the screenplay built up the characters throughout the whole film. It leaves a plot hole you can drive a MAC truck through. What can I say? I guess the director figured Americans love happy endings, no matter what loose ends it leaves.