Forbidden Warrior (2005) Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

USA 2004
Director: Jimmy Nickerson
Cast: Marie Matiko, Sung Kang, Karl Yune, Tony Amendola, James Hong, Homie Doroodian, Ron Yuan
Rating: PG-13
Release Date: 1 November 2005 (DVD)
Running Time: 1 hour 31 minutes

The Movie Review

Forbidden Warrior film still 1

Jiberish, Tall Tall, Good Son and Mouse


FORBIDDEN WARRIOR
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

Basically there are two warlords here, Muraji (James Hong) and the evil Che-Kahn (Woon Young Park). It is has been prophicied that Muraji's grandson will be the sole ruler of all and of course Che-Kahn will not accept that and sends his best man, Yang Sze (Al Leong) to kill the child even though it's still inside the womb of his mother. And unfortunately, Yang Sze manages to locate the place where the child's parents, Miyamoto and Hana are hiding and trying to deliver the baby.

Yang Sze success in creating destruction and cowardly killing Hana (Minglie Chen) while Miyamoto (Bruce Locke) is fending off Yang Sze's warriors. However, fate destines the child to live and also to be a... female. For the sake of the baby, she's dropped to the home of powerful wizard named Ajis-Aka (Tony Amendola). Several years later the baby has grown up to be a spirited young woman named Seki (Marie Matiko) and has the ability to control the wind. But the news of her has at last reached Che-Kahn and he now orders his two sons to go after the girl and finish her once and for all. But Che-Kahn has also his own concern over his two sons. The one named Locust (Karl Yune; as Tak Mashido in Real Steel (2011)) who is too cruel and another one who is kind-hearted named Doran (Sung Kang of Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee (2007)).

Female Warrior Seki

Meanwhile in the Magical Land called Cathay where Seki and Ajis-Aka live, Pirates have come to own Seki but as the leader of the pirates, Lank (Ron Yuan of Mask of the Ninja (2008)) meets face to face with Seki, he immediately falls in love with her. And things gonna be complicated once all parties (Seki, Pirates, Cruel Son and Kind Son) comes together in one place to finish their own respective mission.

Forbidden Warrior is an awful movie, Awful almost to the level of unwatchable due to many things that should've been used to the most nevertheless wasted mainly because of the storyline. Boring and boring and boring with such tacky dialogues moving in slow pace without anything exciting or new to behold. The story is so linear and predictable, the acting is really a mixed bag with only James Hong and Sung Kang shows higher capacity, the music score is too Disney-like for Forbidden Warrior.

Pssst psssst...

The action martial arts fighting scenes are entertaining but unfortunately they are rare! The opening scenes features a short but quite intense battle scene but after it's over, the movie begins the journey to boredom with such cumbersome tedious scenes until around 50 minutes into the movie when we (finally!) see a duel between the pirate leader and the kind son. Even the final showdown is tarnished by the action of silly wand-waving by Ajis-Aka which puts everybody to sleep. What was that all about?

Kame Hame Ha?!

Oh my, Forbidden Warrior really is very tacky and I was glad that the cinematography is beautiful. Forbidden Warrior can be said as a Sword and Sorcery movie and if this was released in the 80s, it might've worthy of watching. But now, I really don't recommend you to buy or even rent it, unless you have little kids who fond of fantasy movies and you want to give them clean entertainment, then Forbidden Warrior may be the answer as it's clean from sensuality or other adult stuff, the only kissing scene is oh so cheesy that it's far from being titillating.