A Quick Review of The Purifiers

It's been about a week now since the night where I was just worn out from work and couldn't get on the internet and so I turned to the pirated DVD I recently purchased in Kericho. I was looking for something relatively short that did not require a lot of dedicated attention, so in looking at the 5 films on the disc I settled on The Purifiers. If you've been reading along with my blog lately you already know where this review is going.

"The Purifiers" is a kung-fu movie set in Sydney, Australia. In fact, it's a kung-fu movie with an Asian population of basically one. The plot is rather simple, the Purifiers and several other Karate-gangs have divided the city into territories that belong to each group and the others do not cross them. The Purifiers are a Karate-gang of of vigilantes going around fighting thugs and then leaving them for the police to pick up. We soon learn that the other gangs are not so saint hearted and do the more typical gang thing of running drugs, exploiting people for money, causing general fear and dismay. When one of these rival gangs calls a meeting of all the groups the Purifiers put in their appearance but they turn down the offer to unite with all the other gangs and take over the whole city, controlling all drugs and money from the top down. As you've probably guessed this doesn't sit well with the other gangs who set out to hunt down the purifiers and either change their minds or eliminate them. What follows is a series of intense dialogue exchanges followed by a vignettes of good old butt kicking. As our heros fight their way through each gang to the top baddie to settle the score.

I give the movie a 50% grade for delivering on what it's trying to do. Some of the fights do deliver the fun action that the filmmakers are looking for, some come close but have just one or two moments that fail, and some fights look like they were running out of ideas and money so they just threw in a piece of trash. Hence, the most memorable fight is the one that happens in pitch dark where the two villains have glowing sticks, as soon as the fight started I was pulled out of the film and told myself exactly how the hero would triumph. The next day this was almost all I could remember of the movie.

As my pirated DVD includes absolutely no trustworthy legal information (except the ironic FBI warning tagged on the beginning of the disc) I have no idea when this movie was made, and I only knew one of the actors, Dominic Monaghan. For the many of you who don't recognize "Dom" by his name you may remember him from a small series of films known as "The Lord Of The Rings" where he plays the hobbit Merry. He was also on the TV series "Lost" for several years, but I think he's been killed off by this point.

Overall I'm going to reprise what I said in an earlier blog post, there's a very good reason no one reading this has ever heard of the Purifiers. If it comes free along with a movie that's actually really good, as this one did, then it's not a terrible way to kill a few hours if you're really bored. Another option is to let your 10 year old kids watch it as it's almost on a production level of a good Power Rangers episode.