Dream Warrior (2003)
5/10
X-men with more humanity involved
30 June 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Lance Henriksen was the only real reason to pick up this movie. Later on, I read the box to find Isaac Hayes is in here as well. It turns out that this film is basically the X-men movie with more humanity involved.

Henriksen's character, Parish, is the leader of a post-meteor collision with Earth, leaving a handful of people at his control (roughly 300 max). He uses his hypnotic control over them (a power he gained during the meteor strike) and has a complete reign of control over others like him who were affected by the crash giving them random super powers as well. Rage, the main character being followed, has the real story in this picture, being Parish's son (a twist which no one should have to wait through this movie for) and having hope that he can escape this new colony with his newfound, similarly-affected friends he has made.

Isaac Hayes plays a wise sage who is there to tell Rage and his friends what's really going on throughout the entire film, and he also shows off his cheap "Star Wars-esquire" force push technique on villains.

I felt the movie was a ripoff of like-minded films, which is easy to do being that its such an abstract story but very comic book-like. The special effects went back and forth between weird and stupid (hardly mind-blowing except for the child in the film having crazy evil eyes in a scene). The raining sequence was particularly fake-looking. There was a humorous chant and celebration during the naming of the child, which cannot be missed. Also, like Magneto talking about his feelings in the X-men movies, Parish discusses his actions whilst in the midst of some "rage art" (like splattering paint on canvas-art) which is different and should've been looked into character-wise.

The set design echoed like-minded films which feature a wasteland-looking scenery, but it didn't reflect the DVD's cover art at all (a downer). The hunters (like in true 80's action films) had very leather and stud motifs in their wardrobe, but the main character good guy team didn't have any special suits or anything (one of the only differences between it and X-men). I liked the one girl, Paloma (I think her name was) was a direct ripoff of Jubilee from X-men and acted more like a human Tesla coil than anyone with superpowers. And the main girl (who could heal people) was just like Jean Grey, Isaac Hayes might as well have been Professor X (but with Hayes' Black Moses wardrobe), and the others had power like heroes on Captain Planet.

The music was nothing special except in the first scene when the meteor was going down; it was more-or-less rehashed electronic music with the edge of 80's action movies (again). And the direction was like a television direction, which makes sense as it seems like a straight to video release anyways, yet it was still average with hardly any thought going on.

All in all, I gave the film a 5. I check the running time about 4 times in the movie (meaning: it got boring at times), but it was a different take on these hero movies out. This seems more like a vehicle for up and coming actors who are tired of not being in films, so they made this. And it wasn't all that horrible...just average as hell.
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