EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

rockoforza This isn't the best action movie you'll ever see, but it has its moments. It certainly doesn't break any new ground with a plot about underground martial arts death matches, but it does give us some new names and a few twists along the way. Eastern European martial arts champion Jorgo Ognenovski stars as George, a dojo owner. His nemesis is Verdugo, played by the famous latino movie muscleman Jorge Rivero.Verdugo runs crowded underground fights where young martial arts students in top physical shape are recruited to face older more experienced thugs in no-holds-barred matches. The young studs, though ripped and in the peak of condition, don't really stand a chance against these hired killers. Verdugo's chief enforcers are a massive black professional wrestler and a sadistic biker who looks like a bodybuilder. They easily take the lives of these young men so that - in a sick sidelight to his fight business - Verdugo can harvests their organs for sale on the black market.The movie begins with a match wherein Tony, a superbly muscled boy-next-door type, is slain by the black wrestler -- his neck carefully snapped to insure that, as Verdugo explains, "we don't want ruin the merchandise." Tony was a student of George's and after his disappearance, George begins to investigate. His girlfriend, a beautiful police detective, begs him to leave the investigation up to her, but we can see that George is a true warrior bent on justice and even his sexy girlfriend can't dissuade him. She certainly tries in a number of steamy sex scenes including one where, after a sweaty workout, she slowly strips him and makes love to his powerful physique.His investigation bears fruit when he meets Gary, a young martial arts student Verdugo has tried to recruit. Gary is a good kid who, though a tough fighter, doesn't think he could ever kill anyone in the ring. Agreeing to help George, the babyface Gary must first convince Verdugo that he is a true badass and gets his opportunity when he is taunted by one of Verdugo's goons. Gary shows off his moves, muscling the bigger man to the ground and, remembering that he has to play the "bad boy," savagely breaks his arm. That display of brutality and Gary's obviously well-conditioned body make him a natural for Verdugo's main event.As the final matches begin, George sneaks in, just in time to see the black assassin snuff another muscleboy. Gary, who has also witnessed the boy's execution, knows now it's either kill or be killed. In a furious fight with the muscular biker, Gary gives as good as he gets, but the bad guy's skills are too much for the kid. In a twisted ritual, we see the muscleman kiss his fingertips and touch them to Gary's forehead --- the Kiss of Death. Before George can save him, the big man delivers a death blow, ending the young stud's life.Enraged, George quickly dispatches the biker and, when the wrestler enters the ring, pummels his massive body with kicks and punches until he's dead. At the same moment the cops, lead by George's girlfriend, burst in to arrest everyone present. In the confusion, Verdugo escapes and George tracks him down for the final battle. Like true martial arts warriors, they choose swords and, both shirtless by the pool, we see a terrific battle between the younger George and the bigger, more muscular Verdugo. Back and forth it rages until George sees his opportunity. His blade slips in and slits Verdugo's throat, the body falling into the pool where it floats in a spreading cloud of red. Justice has been done.Though predictable with production values of un-even quality, this movie does offer some great fight scenes. Best are the younger, up-and-coming martial arts boys who deserve a movie of their own in the future.

Comeuppance Reviews Oh dear. Normally this is where we would give a brief plot outline, but, like trying to describe the plot of Samurai Cop (1989), it's truly a fruitless effort. Warrior Of Justice is one of THOSE movies. A movie that, by any standard at all, is "bad". But what is "Bad"? Sure, the movie has a horrendous shot-on-video look, atrocious sound, hacksaw editing, embarrassing lighting, Casio-keyboard music, actors that should be banned from attempting their craft, the supposed fight scenes have blows that don't come close to connecting, and the movie as a whole is amateurish, childish, inept and mind-bogglingly stupid on every conceivable level...but this movie is hilarious! It's truly a case of "so bad it's good". Well, maybe not GOOD, but certainly entertaining.Apparently, George (Ognenovski) is a martial arts instructor (dubbed "the Lone Ranger of Karate", whatever that means) who is searching for a missing student, Tony (Jacklin). Along the way, he discovers an evil, underground punchfighting ring where, naturally, meatheads fight to the death for the amusement of the paying customers. This is all organized by the evil *sigh* Verdugo (Rivero)...yes...VERDUGO. Because being a professional jerkass is such a trying task, George consults The Master (Lynch, with noteworthy hair), his old trainer. George actually spends so much time doing ab crunches, his fiancé Sara Douglas (Blum), an LAPD cop, feels neglected and their potential marriage is on the rocks. That's an actual plot point. So then George teams up with martial arts student Gary (Hill) and they try to take down Verdugo's evil operation. But there's a sinister secret behind this punchfighting ring...will George be able to get to the bottom of it? And will anyone understand what he's saying? Everything Jorgo says, does and wears is laugh-out-loud funny. His accent is so thick he makes Sho Kosugi look like Alistair Cooke. All the dialogue in the movie is amazingly stilted. You'd think a reunion of the cast of Death Match (1994) (except for Matthias Hues, who probably ran screaming in the other direction) would be on board for a film of at least comparable quality. It's not a shining moment in any of their careers. Beyond low budget and low quality, this is NO budget and NO quality. It has that "home movie" feel and it makes Streets of Rage (1994) look like a masterpiece.We don't want to beat up on the movie too much, because it provides about 90 minutes of laughs, but let's be honest. It's pure incompetent junk. Most of the movie you will be wondering why...why...WHHHYYYYY???!!!??? Where do these people come from? How did this get made?...most human beings never sink this low in their entire movie-watching lives, so if you do see it, you should consider yourself lucky (?)...you are now part of an elite club.Featuring the highly appropriate main song "Let's Make Love" by Helena Kevorkian, Warrior of Justice is a deformed mutant baby of cinema. If you enjoy that sort of thing, and you are a masochist, do seek it out. But be forewarned. You may never be the same again.For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

Ukumbwa Sauti, M.Ed. 'Nuff said? Never. Though theflyingninja's review is right on point and possibly the best we could ask for with regard to people wanting to see a GOOD movie, I think this movie dares to be taken in a wider light. As a media studies and video production professor, I find this movie to be of great value. As one of the, if not THE, worst films ever made, it is a great example to learning shooters, directors, writers and actors of most of the things that you would NOT want to do with or to a production. When a production makes its mistakes so glaringly obvious, almost to the point of suggesting Ognenovski had done it on purpose, it becomes an almost iconic utility for a teacher who had never gotten into the rut of Citizen Kaning his students into cinematic submission."Warrior of Justice" aka "(the OTHER title that's on the DVD menu!)" is a visual cacaphony of jump cuts, bad angles, untrimmed edits, poor set design, under-acting, over-acting, pseudo-acting, poor lighting, bad writing and about 372 other issues that will become glaringly apparent once you see it. It deserves to BE the final exam for any film studies or video/film production concepts course. The list of specific mistakes would be so voluminous and constant that the students would need oxygen during a number of required intermissions during the test. It's so bad, it's tremendous! After showing a number of segments to one of my intro production classes, my students nearly demanded that I show them the rest of the film. I had never experienced such a reaction as deep and emotional as that even though I regularly show segments of good and mediocre films and stop them at particularly irksome points (to get them to watch it all on their own). I believe I wasn't able to finish the film with them that day, but their disappointment was alleviated when they realized they could buy copies of the film online for as much as $0.01. I think it had a confidence-building effect on them. They KNEW they could do better than this! I assured them that they could.On another level, this film plays out some old and tired gender, race and other stereotypes that are the stuff that keeps a good media studies professor in good with the universe. From one-eyed villains (a la Disney, which loves to have their villains display some sort of "disability" - Captain Hook, Scar, et al) to one-dimensional tree-log-necked karate dudes, "WoJ" is an anti-joy to behold. One should only watch films like this under the supervision of a professional.We could crush, kill and destroy "WoJ" in one easy, wispy blow if we wanted to. Again, theflyingninja review comes close. But we would be remiss if we did not see the value in repurposing films such as this for the highest good of all. After all, we've learned to popularize the process of food composting. Why not turn movies like "Warrior of Justice" into cinematic compost so that we can grow better filmmakers, videographers, storytellers and media critics? Just like Disney, my favorite whipping-rat, it would be a crime to pass up such an easy critical target.