Trailer Tuesday: The Warrior's Way

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I was completely unaware of The Warrior's Way until the trailer sprang on me during a recent trip to the cinema. Certainly not for everyone, this mashing together of fantasy, martial arts action and Western conventions looks geek-tastically ridiculous - like the filmmakers eavesdropped on a group of fantasizing fanboys and then scripted their movie. Surprisingly, almost, The Warrior's Way isn't a comic or video game adaptation.


Korean superstar Jang Dong-gun stars as Yang, a fierce swordsman and deadly assassin who finds himself on the run after refusing to kill a baby. He crosses the Pacific and joins a carnival in a dilapidated Badlands town. He finds contentment, and maybe even love, in his new home - but his bloody past soon catches up with him. Geoffrey Rush and Kate Bosworth are inhabitants of the town, while Danny Huston is a vicious cowboy villain.

I'll admit The Warrior's Way could be utter junk. And I certainly wouldn't advice watching it except on a half-price day at the movies, lest you feel cheated. However, I have to admit that I find this overtly CGI-ed, martial arts-heavy and hyper-stylised adventure to be way more appealing than the similar Ninja Assassin or Blood: The Last Vampire.


For the record, The Warrior's Way released in North America on 3 December, making little impact at the box office or among critics. The film is 37% Fresh on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. This said, while it's impossible to deny that the film is heavily flawed and mired in cliches, the reviews include some choice, intriguing quotes.

  • "That was completely retarded, and I would absolutely watch it again." Rob Humanick - Slant Magazine
  • "If you can't figure out why a clown shooting a ninja is forty kinds of awesome, it's not going to waste time explaining it to you." - Rob Vaux, Mania.com
  • "The Warrior's Way is a visually inspired multi-genre amalgamation, a borderline-surreal folly that suggests a martial-arts action-adventure co-directed by Sergio Leone and Federico Fellini." - Joe Leydon, Variety
  • "The ingredients here congeal into a gooey mess that is not without amusing moments." - Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter
  • "The film's details suggest potential for a lively, bizarre, action-comedy cult classic. It just never comes together the way it needs to." - Eric D. Snider, Film.com

By the sounds of it, The Warrior's Way could be a future cult favourite - another The Spirit potentially. I just hope that in terms of its over-the-top, utterly unsubtle nature it's more 300 than Shoot 'Em Up. Then I'd be more than happy to go with the (silly) flow.

The Warrior's Way opens in South Africa in just a few weeks' time, on 11 February.

Comments

MJenks said…
"If you can't figure out why a clown shooting a ninja is forty kinds of awesome, it's not going to waste time explaining it to you."

Crap. If I had read THIS review when it was released, I would have gone to see it.
6:31 PM
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