Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Patrick Willems ★★ 1

  The poster: this is a terrifying supernatural horror movie!

  The actual movie: a woman remembers Pierce Brosnan being harassed by some punks in a van

• 

  Review by Tony the 1313 Terror😼🏳️‍🌈 ★★★★

  So wow I really liked this apparently a lot more than most people did! It’s another one of those movies where the VHS cover always scared/intrigued me as a kid but I never got around to actually seeing it until now so pat myself on the back for that.

  It’s trippy and disjointed and has some really good atmosphere. The editing is very bizarre but I kinda dug it because it fit with the whole idea of Leslie-Anne Down’s character having a connection with Pierce Brosnan’s. I can see why it would frustrate some people but I dunno, it worked for me.

  I did not know going into this that Queen Mary Woronov was in it and obviously that helped boost my rating because she is a true queen. I also didn’t know that we get full rear and frontal of Pierce Brosnan and I’m not saying that helped my rating, but it certainly didn’t hurt it.

• 

  Review by Ian West ★★½ 3

  I was all in for the first 20 minutes or so, but Nomads gets real jumbled after the black van gutter trash gang wrote SEX DEATH PIGS KILL on Pierce ‘Worst French Accent’ Brosnan’s garage door. Still though, I kinda liked it?

• 

  Review by WraithApe ★★½ 14

  ZEES PEOPLE LEEV IN PARKING LOTS!!!

  Before hitting it big with a straight run of Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt For Red October, John McTiernan made Nomads. I'm not sure what's funnier: Pierce Brosnan putting on an excruciatingly bad French accent for the entire duration of the movie or the fact that someone saw this and thought 'yep, this is our guy for Predator'.

  Powered by a banging cock rock soundtrack, Brosnan loses his mind pursuing a biker gang led by Adam Ant who he thinks are actually a bunch of shape-shifting Inuits called Nomads. He spends 30 hours straight, following them around town photographing them before going home to sorrowfully grope his wife. It wouldn't be an 80s…

• 

  Review by Ziglet_mir ★★½ 13

  Did you ever have a dream and not know when it started?

  An incoherent mess yet immensely atmospheric and with a poster that is semi-misleading, 1986's Nomads is a genuine head-scratcher. It's a horror film sort of, and more so by its themes rather than the physical action that takes place. The idea is that the world carries embodiments of evil (or just plain old spirits) that heckle and demonize those that go searching for them (unbeknownst to those who are searching). Pierce Brosnan is one of these unfortunate folks this happens to and the film does it's very darndest to make everything after the initial 15 minutes as ominous and bizarre and sincerely 80s as humanly possible. With that…

• 

  Review by RetroMovieNerd ★★½

  For a film that has such a confusing narrative, there is still some good stuff to be found here. Nomads is John McTiernan's directorial debut, and was the film that inspired Arnold Schwarzenegger to grab McTiernan to direct Predator.

  Pierce Brosnon is a French anthropologist who has just moved to Los Angeles with his wife (Anna-Maria Monticelli). They have moved into a home that has a lurid history, unbeknownst to the couple, and it attracts a gang of roaming street punks that include the likes of Adam Ant, Mary Woronov, Josie Cotton and Frank Doubleday. They are silent throughout the film, but there is clear menace behind them. Meanwhile, Lesley-Ann Down is a doctor who tends to Brosnan one late…

• 

  Review by Matt Singer ★★½

  John McTiernan’s first feature includes almost none of his directorial trademarks and Pierce Brosnan’s accent is so bad I’m surprised there isn’t a warrant out for his arrest in France.

• 

  Review by comrade_yui ★★★★

  john mctiernan's first feature film is a folk horror tale with the dynamic music video aesthetics of miami vice, feels very akin in tone and theme to the more metaphysical john carpenter films from this era (prince of darkness, etc.). don't really understand why people on here are cold on this; is the plot purposefully opaque and esoteric? yeah, but so are the stories of most of these surreal thrillers. is pierce brosnan's french accent very dodgy? definitely, but i've never seen that sort of thing as anything but a feature, not a bug. otherwise this is a flawed yet beautifully-constructed low-budget work from one of america's great formalist filmmakers and deserves a reappraisal similar to the one that the keep has received in recent years.

• 

  Review by Carlo V 4

  John McT: "Say it Frenchie"
  Pierce B: "Chowdère"

• 

  Review by Joe ★★★

  John McTiernan's first feature has a lot in common with his (to date) last, in that they're both powering through thin and possibly nonsensical plots by pure cinematic razzle dazzle. This is just pulsing with energy even when it's just Pierce Brosnan running around Los Angeles to big dumb hair metal riffs (this is incidentally about 60 percent of the movie). Also like Basic, it hinges on a kind of absolute subjectivity, Lesley-Anne Down is experiencing Brosnan's possibly hallucinatory memories of his last few days on Earth, and the audience is just as confused and unnerved as she is, maybe more so. One of the nomads gets dropped off the top of a skyscraper just like Alan Rickman in Die Hard, if that interests you.

• 

  Review by Bob McCully ★★★ 3

  File under "Killer Vibes But I Need To Revisit ASAP"

  Was supposed to see this on the big screen last friday but had to bail due to last minute emergency.
  Watched on Tubi just now and very intrigued by the weirdo supernatural thriller it splays out over 90 minutes even if there's something impenetrable and underwhelming about it.

  A doctor tends to a raving French Pierce Brosnan all blood-soaked in a hospital room only to have him freak out, attack, and lay a big dump of a spirit in her. The rest of the film is the doctor having flashbacks of French Brosnan's life leading up to the hospital escapade, both physically present in that world and watching it unfold…

• 

  Review by single white femalien

  wait now i understand why every mom i knew growing up was h0rny 4 pierce brosnan