Peaceful Warrior (2006)
Directed by Victor Salva
A chance encounter with a stranger changes the life of a college gymnast.
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What critics compared Peaceful Warrior to
This is basically the dirty old man version of "The Karate Kid".
Director Victor Salva combines the Zen story of finding ones’ soul with the master/student sentiment of “The Karate Kid.”
One of the most flat-out strange items to come along the pike in a while, “Peaceful Warrior” desperately tries to tell an inspirational story of spiritual awakening but winds up coming off like an overtly homoerotic riff on “The Karate Kid” coated with a gooey glaze of holistic hooey that make the gibberish spouted in “What the #$^@ Do We Know?” seem sound and rational by comparison.
Peaceful Warrior is The Karate Kid set in the world of gymnastics.
This might please the director's psychologist (or parole officer) but it won't sit well with anyone with absolutely no interest in revisiting American Anthem or The Karate Kid all over again, only this time pumped with laughable horror-film pretenses.
Meet the Filmmaker: Director Victor Salva (Powder and both Jeepers Creepers films) is, as has been widely reported, a convicted child molester.
When Salva returned to Hollywood after serving 15 months in prison for his crimes, he resumed making movies about young men in peril, notably the "Jeepers Creepers" flicks.
Those who raised their eyebrows over the film being directed by Victor Salva -- thinking of him mostly for the Jeepers Creepers movies -- might be surprised by the wisdom evidenced in hiring him to do Peaceful Warriors.
Director Victor Salva may have made a slight career comeback with his love-them-or-hate-them "Jeepers Creepers" movies, but this one more closely resembles his insipid fantasy "Powder" (1995).
Director Victor Salva — who most recently trafficked in more gruesome life-preservation lessons on the "Jeepers Creepers" films — displays a capably slick hand and a surer touch stylizing Dan's exploits on gym rings and the supernatural way the is-he-real-or-isn't-he Socrates messes with Dan's mind.
Victor Salva, whose Jeepers Creepers is one of the best modern horror films, shows time and again here that he knows how to construct an inspirational sports movie, and he is time and again betrayed by the profoundly nonsensical screenplay, which consists of hundreds of nuggets of mystical wisdom that have nothing to do with each other.