The Warrior's Way

The Warrior’s Way (2010)

42% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 24 reviews)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Sngmoo Lee

Starring: Dong-gun Jang, Kate Bosworth, Geoffrey Rush, Danny Huston

From: Rogue/Relativity Media

Here is a movie that I saw advertised on the sports channels last week and while I hadn’t heard too many good things about it and I knew it was made 3 years ago and sat on the shelf the entire time, I still wanted to return to Downtown Disney (and the wonderful Coca-Coca Freestyle machines they now have at the movie theatre there) and it sounded more interesting to me than anything else playing there that I hadn’t seen yet.

Also intriguing was the movie’s interesting cast, the plot of cowboys vs. samurai ninjas, and the odd cast. It being on the shelf for so long, the first-time director being a film professor at NYU (and boy does that show, once I saw the film), and that kind of movie getting a wide release made it a curio and I wanted to check it out. In hindsight I wish I would have seen some oddball releases, like that Korean movie D-Wars (the one with the dragons; you probably don’t remember it), which I saw on DVD later and what a strange and wacky film that is. One of these days I need to watch that again and do a review for it. You wouldn’t believe the story or some of the bad storytelling they do. Yet there’s some legit thrilling action.

But onto this movie. Despite it being more loony than I expected, I felt let down and I thought it should have been quite a bit better than it was. No wonder it spent time unreleased.

The plot is that a warrior assassin in a nameless Asian country in what I presume was in the late 19th century mows down the members of a rival clan. His clan is called… Sad Flutes. Honest. That’s because of the sound a slashed throat makes, or so they explain in a wacky way. He refuses to kill the last living member of the clan, as it’s a baby girl. He’s shamed so he keeps the cute little girl and they go to America to escape and visit a friend. They get to the town of Lode (Load would be more accurate) and they meet up with the townsfolk, many of whom are retired from the circus and still walk around in their costumes! I swear this is true. He gets to know Lynne (Bosworth), a troubled woman who is looking for revenge against the Colonel (Huston), a bad guy who is quite evil and for some reason before he violates a woman she must have good teeth. What a quirk. He’s also masked due to having part of his face burned. Meanwhile, Yang’s old master (Lung Ti) and his band of merry men are on the look for him and track him down to Lode. Yang and Lynne develop a relationship that revolves around knifeplay and throwing rocks at each other’s heads. Don’t ask.

I don’t know what impression you had of the movie before it came out via ads and trailers or what have you, but there isn’t a whole lot of action to see. I had heard this bit of news beforehand so I wasn’t too disappointed by it. Much of the story is Lynne looking for revenge and Yang trying to escape his past. Not all that exciting. The action stuff can be fun at times but the way it was shot usually turned me off. I mean, to expose the big secret or whatever you want to call it, but just about all of the movie is greenscreened. Meaning, things were filmed on a stage and everything was filled in via computer. That can lead to trouble when it looks phony. Heck, the most famous example to use that process, 300, didn’t blow me away the one time I saw it. Talk about an overrated film. Here, it lead to some nice visuals at times but it otherwise looks really phony and it’s distracting. The same with the CGI used. It’s just way too stylized and that seemed to be the focus rather than delivering on a good story or entertaining action.

Speaking of the action, what you saw of it was usually not that fun to watch. It wasn’t fancy swordplay that Yang uses by any means, and the other stuff usually didn’t capture my interest. That even applies to the final 20 minutes or so when the fit hits the shan and you finally get the ending action setpiece, and you see things like costumed circus freaks wielding guns! Like I said, despite its odd touches, it’s not as exciting as it may sound. The obvious (at least to me) homages to better things didn't help out matters either. I'd rather watch those better films instead.

And the ending… one conflict has a decent resolution but the other one did not appeal to me at all. Without giving too much away, not a lot is shown. They do something else instead and what could have been a cool showdown was ruined. After that, it gets really goofy and involves the Arctic (again, don’t ask) and wow, I wish I could have enjoyed this more than I did. It’s more dull than you’d expect and I wish it would have been done a more traditional way.

I'll be back Sunday night with a new review.