Demon Warriors (Opapatika) (2007)

Review by Sean Patterson



"Just one person can change your life forever."

A man (and Bruce Lee look-alike) named Techit kills himself and is reborn as an opapatika. Each opapatika has a special ability, and Techit's is to read other's minds. But his new skill comes at a cost. Every time he uses his ability he loses some of his other five senses. He is given a task by his new master, who helped create him (well, really just handed him the gun he shot himself with): find the other Opapatika and bring them to the master.
This, I'm pretty sure, is the premise. There is a lot of talking throughout the movie, and not a little arguing as well. But I'm not sure any of it forwards a coherent story. We do learn the secret of why the master is bent on waging war on his own kind (his opapatika ability is one of the big reveals near the end), but there are plenty of questions left unanswered. For instance, where do all the soldiers keep coming from who battle the opapatika? They die by the dozens and are about as effective as your average storm trooper.
Despite it being hard to understand, Demon Warriors is fun to watch. The fight scenes are impressively stylized and fantastically bloody. There's even a little cannibalism thrown in for good measure. The body count in the movie is massive and the kills are some of the most creative I've ever seen. We're talking blood fountains nearly on par with a Bellagio show.
The opapatika powers are creative and fun. One of the more memorable opapatika is a man with the power to summon a hulk-like demon-ghost to defend him, but who becomes more ghost-like himself with every use. Another (my favorite) is the man who can see exactly the way to kill anyone, quickly and effectively. The catch for him is that he has to endure the scars, wounds, and pain he inflicts.
Unfortunately, Demon Warriors slows down in the middle and end sections. There's a lot of pop philosophy spouted, discussions of the value of human life and the cost of taking your own. Perhaps there is an understanding of specific Buddhist beliefs that are assumed for the audience, but I found the movie almost impossible to follow from the halfway point.
The movie is simply trying for too much. It tries to marry philosophy and action in the same way The Matrix did, but misses by a mile. Each opapatika is treated with a little back story, but none of them are fleshed out enough to care about. Snarky interjection here: why would anyone hunting an opapatika who gains superpowers at night begin chasing him just before sunset?
When I'm disappointed by a foreign movie I always tend to blame myself a little. I assume there is a cultural divide I don't have the eyesight to see across or that the movie was handed off to the lowest-bidder translation company. Either might be the case for Demon Warriors, but I have a feeling it might be just as confusing to your average Thai moviegoer. I'll be vague and simply say that the movie is stylistically superb, but dramatically flat.