Neither as ludicrous nor as risqué as some might like to thinkNathan Lee was chief film critic for the
New York Sun but has retired from that position and for the moment seems reduced to the highly respectable but relatively thankless task of writing short weekly movie reviews for the
NYTimes. Recently he turned in this on the movie listed above:
Quote:
Starting with the title and extending everywhere else, “Peaceful Warrior” is blatantly ludicrous. A didactic enlightenment parable couched as a heroic sports flick, the film stars Scott Mechlowicz as Millman, an arrogant gymnast in Berkeley, Calif., who is learning New Age life lessons from a pseudo-Buddhist gas station guru played by Nick Nolte. Mindlessly espousing principles of “no mind” and evidently capable of teleportation, this gravel-voiced fortune cookie suggests the missing link between Grizzly Adams and Yoda.
Based on a best-selling book by Dan Millman, this rich slice of spiritualist cheese has been served up on screen by the director Victor Salva, best known to audiences for his “Jeepers Creepers” horror movies, and perhaps best known to authorities in California as a man who served time in prison in the 1980’s for molesting a 12-year-old boy who had appeared in his movies.
Whether or not one thinks of this while observing the intense eroticism of the film and its gawking display of sweating, half-nude teenagers, knowing about it insinuates a queasy frisson to the themes of mentorship and initiation, with their appeal for trust and relinquishing control.
But there I go letting ego cloud my mind, when the seminal fact of “Peaceful Warrior” is that for all its manifest corniness, this is an achingly sincere and supremely unembarrassed effort to transform an audience for the good. Its heart is very much in the right place — a place that movies all but ignore — but its mind is a mush.
“Peaceful Warrior” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Strong language, attempted suicide, a gnarly motorcycle accident and lots of half-nude gymnastics.
Well, if a movie is homoerotic Lee ought to know what he's talking about and so should I. I admire him for his forthright, even passionate, advocacy of
Brokeback Mountain even though he deplored its conventionality, as a huge milestone for gay men, against the reductive descriptions of straight critics who were claiming it was either "just a love story" or "not gay enough." As for
Peaceful Warrior, however, Lee has fallen into the trap of exaggerating to make his minor task appear more significant.
A local Bay Area weekly also printed a review that said
Peaceful Warrior had homoerotic elements and that it emphasized the hero's "bulging crotch," a thrill which disappointed me. Just because a crotch is visible in gymnasts' tights doesn't mean it's "bulging." (Try
Superman. Or is he airbrushed?)
And it is certainly utterly misleading to suggest
Peaceful Warrior is titillating or homoerotic. It has cute young guys in it, but it's mainly about the earnest young hero's ordeal and transformation. The gymnasts are no sweatier or any more "half nude" than gymnasts always are, and there are not even any shower or locker room scenes. There's kissing -- of girls by the hero. There are not even those "mentoring" pats on the butt that were to be observed during the World Cup. All these suggestions of Lee's are out of place when there are plenty of actual gay movies around, and when the sports sequences are strictly utilitarian.
The Nathan Lee description is typically snappy; I wish the movie justified it. Lee writes with unfailing wit and is usually perceptive. But he's straining for effect here and I'm not sure it's quite kosher of him to mention the director's trouble with the law of twenty years ago -- not, at least, given the fact that that there is absolutely no evidence of anything remotely approaching pedophilia in
Peaceful Warrior. Try
Mysterious Skin or
L.I.E. Try anything by Larry Clark, for God's sake.
The philosophy and life lessons may be Zen lite, but they make pretty good sense as advice to sports competitors and they're put across convincingly and clearly. There's a lot hokier stuff out there being taken more seriously than this nearly forgotten film -- which disappeared rapidly from New York theaters perhaps helped on its way by Mr. Lee's dismissal, but for some reason has had a run of close to three months in the touchy-feely Bay Area. It's still not much of a movie but it's really neither ludicrous nor reprehensible. Nick Nolte gives a reasonable performance and Scott Mechlowicz gives an all-out one, intense and verging on charismatic.
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