[A] watchable exercise in Zen hokum.

| Mar 30, 2007

Maybe there are worthy films buried in collections of spiritual homilies, but Peaceful Warrior is not one of them.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Aug 6, 2006

Don't go see Peaceful Warrior. Don't tell your friends about it. Try to forget you ever heard of the movie. Clear your mind and live in the now.

| Original Score: D | Jul 28, 2006

A movie about spiritual awakening that plays like a spliced-together string of New Age fortune cookie messages.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 28, 2006

Starting with the title and extending everywhere else, Peaceful Warrior is blatantly ludicrous.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jul 22, 2006

You're in the moment all right, experiencing every passing minute ticking off in slow motion until the blasted thing comes to a merciful end.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 14, 2006

For a story that is supposed to be about gymnastics and Eastern philosophy, The Peaceful Warrior is as riddled with homo-eroticism as Robert Smigel's 'Ambiguously Gay Duo' cartoons on Saturday Night Live.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 14, 2006

It has deep things to say and a hilariously ponderous way of saying them.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 14, 2006

All this stuff is probably right. It's just that the director, Victor Salva, underscores his points with thunderous obviousness and manipulates us through ham-handed plot gambits.

| Jul 13, 2006

It's an odd, puzzling film.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 1, 2006

The story arc of Peaceful Warrior is so familiar that in addition to being inspired by fact, it is inspired by at least two-thirds of all the sports movies ever made.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 23, 2006

Dan's transformation hits the kinds of snags that might occur in real life but spell doom for narrative momentum.

| Original Score: C+ | Jun 22, 2006

Peaceful Warrior, which is basically The Karate Kid with a bigger kid and a bigger mentor, represents a journey of predictability, rather than a destination worth the trouble.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 22, 2006

The What The Bleep Do We Know? crowd may well receive the film's wisdom like communion, but the rest of us are free to gag when Salva tries to jam it down our throats.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jun 15, 2006

The soundtrack here is piercingly awful, the gymnastics routines hold little suspense, and after a while I just wanted Socrates to give it a rest.

Full Review | Jun 5, 2006

Jeepers creepers, Victor Salva is at it again. His new film is ostensibly inspired by true events, but whose events exactly?

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jun 4, 2006

Based on the story by gymnast Dan Millman, the movie tries to be inspirational and profound, but much of the dialogue sounds like it came out of a fortune cookie.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 2, 2006

The film is better than it has any right to be, considering the prosaic source.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 2, 2006

The sage-elder/wayward-charge saga Peaceful Warrior aims for inspirational highs but mostly feels like a self-help book read aloud by actors.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 2, 2006

Peaceful Warrior is meant to empower and enlighten. But it tries so hard, it's more like inspiration overkill: 121 torturous minutes of long-winded lectures about living in the moment.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 1, 2006