Peaceful Warrior 2006

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: Full of cheap fortune-cookie wisdom and noodly inspirational advice. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: 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. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: [A] watchable exercise in Zen hokum. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: 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. Read more

Hap Erstein, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Maybe there are worthy films buried in collections of spiritual homilies, but Peaceful Warrior is not one of them. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: 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. Read more

Kathy Cano Murillo, Arizona Republic: 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. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: It has deep things to say and a hilariously ponderous way of saying them. Read more

Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times: The sage-elder/wayward-charge saga Peaceful Warrior aims for inspirational highs but mostly feels like a self-help book read aloud by actors. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: This woozily uplifting saga is big on homilies and deficient in just about everything else. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: 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. Read more

Scott Brown, Entertainment Weekly: [A] self-congratulatory self-help seminar, which plays as high comedy, thanks to Nolte's slurry sensei. Read more

John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press: A movie about spiritual awakening that plays like a spliced-together string of New Age fortune cookie messages. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Dan's transformation hits the kinds of snags that might occur in real life but spell doom for narrative momentum. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: You'd have to be either an avid New Ager or willing to see Nick Nolte in absolutely anything to get fully onboard for this visually overexcited tale of salvation-by-gas-station-guru. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: 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. Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: The film is better than it has any right to be, considering the prosaic source. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: 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. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: 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. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: 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. Read more

Robert Koehler, Variety: So under the spell of the be-here-now philosophy of Dan Millman's New Age-y memoir from which it was drawn that it loses sight of the need to credibly dramatize the ideas. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: 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. Read more