Invincible

Plot synopsis:
During the 1970s decade, chaos reigns in the city of Philadelphia as southern portions of the city protest the shutdown of several job sites while their NFL team, the Philadelphia Eagles, endures a string of losing seasons, along with irate fans.
In 1976, Vince Papale goes to a sandlot one night and joins his friends playing a pick-up practice football game against another group of young men. After the game ends, Papale goes home and finds out that his wife Sharon is disgusted with his alleged failure to provide proper support.
The next morning, Papale goes to the high school where he works as a substitute teacher. In a short, unexpected meeting with the principal, he is told of his layoff. Later in the day, there is a report that the Eagles have hired a new head coach named Dick Vermeil as shown in a formal televised conference. That night, Papale goes to the bar where he works as a part-time bartender. The bar contains die-hard Eagles fans, who are watching TV about the hiring of Vermeil. The news story concludes with the announcement by Vermeil that he is staging open public tryouts for the Eagles. The men in the bar encourage Papale to go to the tryout. When Papale returns home, he finds out that his wife has left him and a note from her saying he will never be anything in the world. Distraught, Papale thrashes the few remaining belongings that Sharon left behind.
When Papale goes to the bar the next night, he meets a new co-bartender, Janet Cantrell, who is a Giants fan. Desperate for income in the aftermath of his wife's departure, Papale receives support from his friends and attends the tryout hosted at Veterans' Stadium. Out of several hundred Philadelphia residents attending the training facility, Papale performs well during the workouts. After the camp is over, Papale fails to start his car and Dick Vermeil comes by. He is impressed by Papale’s actions at camp and invites him to training camp to compete for a roster spot with the Philadelphia Eagles. Everyone at the bar becomes excited about the TV announcement that Papale will be joining the team. After work, Papale has an interview with a newscaster.
The next day, Papale exercises by jogging in the city and stops by at the empty home he tore up, where his former wife Sharon lived; then he interacts with his friends, telling them about joining the Eagles. His father, meanwhile, offers to let Vince stay with him. The following day, he goes to his first training camp with the Eagles. As the days of training camp progress, Papale endures a life full of hard work and disrespect from the other players. Papale goes out on a date with Janet one night, but didn't think he'd still be on the team. He says he's not sure he can start a new relationship at that time because he's focused on trying his best to make the team and she claims she didn't know it was a date. She goes to help out at the bar and he leaves. As training camp ends, the final roster spot is down to Papale and a veteran. Against his assistants' advice, Vermeil decides to give the spot to Papale.
As Papale’s career with the Eagles begins, the team loses all six preseason games and their regular season opener against the Dallas Cowboys. Papale plays poorly against the Cowboys and Vermeil faces pressure from the fans and media for the poor start. After the team returns to Philadelphia, Papale goes to the sandlot where he played with his friends several months before. He is invited to play, but he declines because of his upcoming Eagles game and watches for a few minutes. A rainstorm begins, and then Papale does join his pals and plays against another sandlot team to help his friends. During a wet and dirty game, Papale ends the game by throwing a touchdown pass. When he runs into Janet later, they speak briefly before passionately embracing and tumbling into Vince's home.
During the home opener against the New York Giants, Eagles fans are enraged about Janet’s appearance in a Giants shirt. In the locker room, Vince looks again at the note Sharon had left and tears it up. Papale opens the game by solo-tackling the kickoff returner inside the 15-yard line. After an up-and-down game, Papale gets downfield during an Eagles' 4th quarter punt to tackle the returner, forcing a fumble that he recovers and takes into the end zone for a touchdown, giving the Eagles their first win in Papale’s career. Eagles fans go wild with joy. As the film's end credits appear, media and actual footage show highlights of Papale’s career with the Eagles. Papale plays for the team for three seasons and eventually marries Janet while Vermeil succeeds in turning the Eagles into a winning team, culminating in an appearance in Super Bowl XV.

Tags: humor

Review:
They were only producers, but you wouldn't know it by the extent to which their names were featured.I thought the film looked good back then - some kind of "Matrix"/"Highlander" clone, maybe, but it still looked kinda interesting.
Well, I was wrong.From the opening - with this angelic warrior being pursued by, and then fighting, Billy Zane - the film only becomes worse and worse.
It copies "The Matrix" mercilessly - from the wannabe philosophy that stems throughout every scene to the slow-motion sword fights.Billy Zane gives an embarrassingly dull performance and the rest of the cast - mostly B-movie actors or TV actors - don't help any.The plot is silly to begin with.
The Shadow Warriors are trying to bring an end to the world - replace "Shadow Warriors" with any other bad guy name from another psycho-baddie movie and you've got the exact same plot.Billy Zane assembles together a group of warriors to help defend earth against the Shadow Warriors.The ending of the film is so laughable it's almost painful to watch.
OK, if you've got the chops to put "matrix-like action" on your movie poster then you either have a really incredible martial arts film or you have "Invincible".
At no point during this movie was there anything that even remotely resembled "matrix-like action" and the actors who play the martial arts studs all look like Ralph Macchio could probably stuff them in a locker.
Like most "martial arts" movies the plot is stodgy at best but this is hidden by the fact that the special effects were created by hamsters.
I rented Equilibrium and saw the previews for Invincible, and I said to myself, "Wow that looks really good!" Wow was I wrong, terrible acting, poor lighting, sad fights and the supporting roles made me want to vomit!
It isn't original but it looks pretty and the fight scenes adequate for a TV movie.
The whole "love will overcome all" is a good idea, but Os runs it into the ground to the point that he comes across as one of those fake happy lovely-dovey Mormon missionary types that makes most people nauseous.Judging from the commercials and the packaging, I expected this to be more of a martial arts movie.
The fighting relied a lot on wires, which is okay for a fairy-tale or a wuxia movie, but it just looked silly here.
Also, it wasn't hard to tell that the actors trained just long enough to pull this movie's few fight scenes off.
Mel Gibson I can forgive for being involved in this silly movie, but Jet Li ought to know better.
I caught a preview for this movie on TBS and vowed to watch after I saw Billy Zane starred.
I guess the story is really well known: There is a hero named Os played by Billy Zane (yes, it is astonishingly true, that this truly second rate performer was allowed to play the opponent of Leonardo Di Caprio in the worldwide blockbuster "Titanic"), who concentrates some comrades-in-arms to rescue the world and the human race from the evil namely the demon Slate.
Evil" movie, replete with characters you know virtually nothing about, Eastern philosophy & mysticism, & a healthy dose of (admittedly stunning) martial artistry & SPFX, yet for some reason, it works in spite of itself.That reason is BILLY ZANE.Zane portrays "Os", a "Shadowman" who renounces his Immortal life of Darkness & Evil when he is shown The Way.
The main point of conflict comes in when the two former friends must face-off against one another in mortal combat.As I stated earlier, despite the fact that this film is filled with cliches & either over-the-top or forced performances, Zane's gentle portrayal of Os somehow makes everything gel rather nicely, holding any absurdities together like a well-woven garment.
I honestly don't think this guy's capable of turning in a bad performance, regardless of the material he's given.Not necessarily a "must-see" movie, but an entertaining popcorn-muncher for a cold night in..
They have six days to stop Slate.The fact that this movie was produced by Jet Li and Mel Gibson is apparent from the beginning.
Non-stop action, incredible special effects and a story right out of the comic books make this a very enjoyable piece of movie mayhem.
(But both would eventually learn) The story is a very Asian style of telling, but was released at a time when Western culture still split "Asian" as either Bruce Lee or Karate Kid with no middle ground between them, and a total ignorance of everything else about that entire quarter of the world.If you have even a slim understanding of the Asian style of storytelling (AKA you know more than Naruto and wire-fu) you can find it to be a mediocre flick; the obvious cutting that would have been filled out in a series become glaring.pity; Zane had the skill and really took to the character well enough to make it a fun role..
The film also seems to have stolen ideas from the likes of Highlander, Mortal Kombat and even a little bit of Tomb Raider.I wouldn't usually get this upset about a bad movie but after reading some of the other reviews for the film I discovered that my American Brethren got to see it for free on TV, were as here in England the gits brought it out on DVD and I paid £3.75 to watch it.Stay away from this film, all that preaching about love and how it will set you free seems to encourage violence.I thinks that all I have to say.
One could assume that Jet and Mel met on the set of Lethal Weapon 4, except that Jet Li didn't speak a word of English untill almost six months later.Yet another thing: Billy Zane as a wise, sword-weilding martial artist?
The dialogue is thin, the directing os comepltely off the wall, and the plot seems to just go by the wayside as the director seems to think you just don't need some vital parts of the story explained to you.Overall I think this films prooves chos theory, there was no way one could predict this twisted masterpeice would even be produced.
Thank God he shaved it for the rest of the film.Luckily, that wasn't the worst thing about this film, although luck may have very little to do with this.So, you walk into a video-store and see "executive produced by Mel Gibson and Jet Li".
But i'll get back to that.You stick it in your DVD or video and low and behold : you're thinking : "WTF is going on up in here?"Granted the fight scenes are nicely done, although the slo-mo actions gets old after the fifth fight and you can actually see a little Jet-Li style stuffed in there ( dudes walking on walls and stuff).
Obviously Gibson and Li had little to do with this movie and their name got stuck on the box because the studio gave them money for it, it is NOT the best Martial-Arts Action Movie Ever like the box claims it to be, Billy should pick his projects better, Levy should stick with Dark Angel and all the other staff should get jobs at Mickey D's.On second thought, maybe Zane's haircut in the beginning of this film was the best bit..The critics were right.
just a bad rip off movie, i am always amazed how much money people have around to waste it on crap like this.
This has to be one of the most horrible TV Movies I've ever seen.OK, so, Os, this Shadowman turned Good by the White Warrior, and has to round up a few people to "Save the world", and each of them has some kind of element.
Pretty much the whole movie is just Os (played by Billy Zane) talking about love, and how love is going to defeat the Shadowmen...
In this film there are a few fight scences although they make up abou three minutes of a film that seems never-ending.If you are a Billy Zane fan, please, please do not watch this film, you will end up hating him.
Even though it had some empty scenes and the female character wasn't much of an actress, it covered it up with cool special effects and fantastic Jet Li action kung fu.
Even though Jet Li wasn't in it (he produced it along with Mel Gibson) I highly recommend this movie if you are a kung fu fan..
"Invincible" is an amazingly bad made-for-television movie, filled with poor acting and amateurish direction.
You'd think that the likes of Jet Li and Mel Gibson would be enough to propel this turgid mess into something better, but their producing credits are worth nothing more than  screen time.
If you are fan of good martial arts movies, stay REALLY away from this one.
Billy Zane does a terrible job, I highly recommend not watching this movie.
Oz, played by Billy Zane (who's always fun to watch) has a unique outlook on the bad guys as he WAS a bad guy for the first few minutes of the movie.
I got up to the dream sequence with Ohs and Slade arguing philosophy like two slightly drunk college sophomores before I turned it off.The movie starts with a hackneyed "conversion" fight, all-too-short "gathering of the heroes" sequences, inexplicable bicycle rides, quasi-Buddhist/Christian philosophy, bad dialog, bad editing and bad acting from everyone but Billy Zane who came off as rather natural despite the unnaturalness of the part.You will watch and be amazed that the film got made and how Mel Gibson and Jet Li ever became associated with it.
The fighting scenes were really bad, using corny effects to create a feeling of "coolness", I swear this movie was just about looking good.
And that's not even the worst of it...Billy Zane tries gamely to make some of the junior school Zen, Love & Understanding dialogue sound like it's supposed to be all postmodern and ironic, but he's not fooling anyone.
But at the end of the day, nothing and nobody could make this script work.Let me put it this way: I watched Invincible in a double bill with Ticker, and left thinking Ticker was actually pretty good..
People shouldn't not like this movie for bad acting or whatever.
I don't need to know the ending to the film to give an accurate review mostly because the plot doesn't matter and it's clear that watching more would only sour my opinion more on it.So here's basically the breakdown: The acting's terribly ham-fisted at times.The fight scenes could have been worse but show pretensions clearly beyond the budget.The storyline, while vaguely interesting, is executed in such a way that hurts the teeth just to look at it.Almost everything in the film has obvious pretensions towards being a much better film than it was ever capable of being.What is good about this film is that there certainly was some potential to be a decent television Sci-Fi movie if handled properly.
Rather than either making the plot less mystical, or adjusting the tone of the movie to be more of a drama, the film tries so hard to approach films that far surpass it (Scenes directly echoed crouching tiger, the Matrix, and I'm sure many other films).Rather than taking the action into the realm of minimalism, the film decides to use special effects that only serve to further exclaim how little money this film was made for.
At least he seems to enjoy himself though, which is more than can be said for anyone unlucky enough to be watching this movie.The real problem with invincible is it's supposedly a martial arts film with little in the way of Martial Arts fight scenes.
To be fair though, there is a bit of sword fighting at the beginning and some kicking later on but these don't come as often as you'd like, interspersed with long, dull scenes of training and one very confusing and incredibly dull dream sequence where Zane pulls as many clichés as he can from every crevice of this butt hole of a film.
Yes, we're talking about the old "love conquers all" adage.The fight scenes themselves are hard to enjoy, far too short and ruined by stupidly edited camera effects probably designed to cover up the bad choreography.
1. There was ONE i think decent martial artist in this film, the rest of them were slow, as was the actual fighting.
WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FIGHT.Anyway if like me u want a martial arts movie don't see this - 3/10 If you want a compelling lively story don't see this - 3/10 If u want to add this to 'films i have seen' then see it 3/10 for sheer underachievement and boredom.
The very first scene in the movie is that of the incredibly cheesy `white warrior' descending from above into the life of a bad guy to transform him into a hero; like we haven't seen that a thousand times before.
As one might guess, by the end of the movie (which came none to soon let me tell you) good does triumph over evil, and the world is made safe for mortal men.
It looks good from the television preview trailer, and they managed to instill enough interest for me to watch the film all the way through.
If you've never seen Crouching Tiger, Matrix, Highlander, Mortal Kombat, various hong kong kung-fu flicks, various action anime titles or John Woo movies, you MIGHT think this is a good movie.
All the film trailers made the movie to look better than it was.
Mel and Jet - what on earth were you thinking?When I saw the ads for this movie, I was thinking that it would be a good action flick with some great special effects.
It fell far short of my expectations.It was as if they were trying to imitate both the Matrix and the Highlander not only in the fight scenes but also in the story line as well.
If it was - shame on them, because it was poorly done.Two immortals, one good, one evil, but of course only one can exist - was much too reminiscent of "there can be only one" from the Highlander...And Billy sort of had Sean Connery's role in this movie.
Just like getting together with a whole bunch of inherently good guys to banish the evil one by learning to defeat him using hand to hand combat training (ala Matrix)...And they end up being the "ones" left to fight the "good fight" for all of human-kind because they hold the secret power - LOVE...nope, this just didn't add up.The combination of the two different movies just didn't work....Billy had the worst dialogue out of all the characters - it was completely contrived and hokey.
It was hard to get through.I definitely expected better from Mel and Jet. Sorry, but this was a bad movie all around..
Billy Zane gave a decent performance, but the plot was too big, and some of the exposition was too trite to save the movie.
Which is too bad because I know at least Byron Mann has martial arts experience, you would figure the other actors could have been of similar material, it's not like they were pulling a lot of big names for the "secondary" roles.
I don't know, maybe it was too ambitious for a TV movie, it seems like they just needed more time to get the fight scenes right.
The problem with the plot reminded me of the fatal flaw of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and the fight scenes reminded me of badly done Matrix, like a superficial Hollywood attempt of the Hong Kong style, most of the look with none of the feel..
The storyline seemed interesting as well, combining my favourites of action and make-believe.The overall theme of Good and Love overcoming all evil is, one might say, an overused plot line but this had great potential.
"The Hangover") "The Invicibles" is the movie worth watching and +1 is for Billy Zane's good job.
Where they fight Bad guys with children's toys, poser acrobatics and sissy slaps, and wag-your-finger, spiritual blocking moves.Before-seen special effects permeate this arrangement of b-movie or otherwise unknown actors as they hunt for evil in search of the doomsaying "Tablet." Billy Zane puts on The Matrix's Morpheus' shoes and finds them impossibly big to fill out, seeking would-be heroes to assist him on his journey to retake the Tablet from Slate, whose performance in the movie could make one wonder why her never said "Mr. Anderson!" I've seen scripted scenes of martial arts sparring between friends that have been submitted on YouTube with more credibility than what this film could offer, and while those submissions generally contained no plot, they at least did not deceive me by having one like "Invincible's," that grazed so un-elegantly across the movie's surface.Terrible acting, useless karate gimmick poses, effects reminiscent of the early 90's, and I don't even have the heart to finish this sentence...
Now a soldier of good, he must fight the bad guys ("Shadowmen"), with the aid of the "Elements", who have come into the possession of some "Tablet" and threaten to destroy the Earth.If you're older than 6 and that sounds like potential...
Spoilers AheadWhen I saw the poster of an action flick with the names of Mel Gibson and Jet Li, I wanted to see the movie, and when I finally did, I was very disappointed.
I expected to see a film closely related to Mortal Combat, and it appeared to have some of those elements, i.e., Fantasy martial arts, Good vs.
I liked this movie the first time I saw it on TV.