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Movies like Star Wars and The Matrix have offered decent mystical teachers, but could Yoda also fill your car with unleaded? Would Morpheus wash your windshield? Well, Peaceful Warrior's gas-station guru, Socrates (Nick Nolte), is happy to impart New Age wisdom while checking your fluid levels. He's a full-service sage.
In Peaceful Warrior, this particular spiritual mentor comes to the aid of aspiring Olympic gymnast Dan Millman (Scott Mechlowicz), a self-centered jerk who needs either a good beating or a dose of common sense. And this movie is overflowing with common sense. Millman jogs to a gas station one night and witnesses Socrates magically disappear from the parking lot to reappear on the roof. His curiosity piqued, Millman begins making regular visits to the service station to learn how Socrates managed this feat. Instead, he learns some cryptically delivered life lessons.
The film follows the standard sports-movie formula, with an opening dream sequence foreshadowing the injury Dan must inevitably endure and just as inevitably overcome. Socrates plays the part of trainer, pushing discipline, good habits and "live in the moment" messages. But unlike other cinematic coaches, Socrates also has lightning fast reflexes, can incite out-of-body experiences and may or may not even exist.
Since this is based on a true story, it's pretty safe to assume that Socrates is just an expression of Millman's own intuition—a figment of his imagination with a predilection toward fortune- cookie one-liners. The film's Achilles' heel is that the take-home messages, whatever their validity, seem more like overused platitudes than revolutionary wisdom. The whole revelatory point, in fact, is "the journey is what's important—not the destination." That's less philosophy than Hallmark card.
Nevertheless, the film does muster some entertainment. Millman is initially so unlikable, it's impossible not to smile when Socrates begins dealing him some much deserved verbal and physical abuse. Eventually, you root for Millman since, after all, he is the athlete fighting unspeakable odds in clichéd sports-movie fashion.
Fresh off the Jeepers Creepers movies, director Victor Salva still can't quite manage to make a film without a few epic flaws, but he's a visually interesting filmmaker and squeezes in touches of brilliance, like the aforementioned dream sequence. Just don't expect any mind-blowing insights.