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Sunday, December 5, 2010

Review for THE WARRIOR'S WAY

Your kung-fu is good...but your movie is...meh....


The new martial art-esque/western-like movie opened up and everyone wants to know, does it give us all that kung fu fighting and gunslinging action!? Or was it a big kung fu FLOP.  Let't get into our Crane Stance and found out.  HIYAH!!

The Warrior's Way takes place in...."the old west," (sure lets go with that), but before we get there we meet our hero known simply as, The Warrior, played by South Korean actor Jang Dong-gun, (he did have a name in the credits, but I don't recall anyone calling him by it).  Yang, which is his name in the movie, is a member of The Sad Flutes, a ninja assassin clan and that's pretty much all we get about them.  The only other information we get about his clan is that the name is given to them because that's what it sounds like when someone's neck gets slashed open...a "sad flute"...pretty name for such a morbid act.  Anyway, we meet Yang in some sort of marsh and he is ambushed by a rival ninja clan, where he quickly mows them down.  He then takes on the leader of the group, who is actually "The Greatest Swordsman in the History of Mankind, Ever," ...we know this fact from, literally, a Comic Sans Style title showing up underneath him. But like before, he does some quick work, the leader falls, and, HE, is now "The Greatest Swordsman in the History of Mankind, Ever"...quite a mouthful.  Then we meet the true target of Yang, a little baby girl, and the last of his clans enemies.  However, he can't seem to take the child's life, so instead, he betrays his clans orders, takes the child, and becomes number 1 on the Sad Flutes death list, (under him is, Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton, and Fred from YouTube).

Yang then travels across the world and ends up in a runned -down town, that we often see in spaghetti westerns, and we get to meet the rest of the cast, who never shut up.  That's what I like about Yang, hes a hero from a foreign land with some broken English so he doesn't talk that much and that makes him a mystery, most of everyone else....they need some kind of mute function or ball gag.  One of these people, who needs more of a steel plate and some rivets is Lynne, played by Kate Bosworth.  She befriends Yang and helps him reopen the old laundry shop, which was actually owned by a friend of Yang's.  Her character, like many female characters in these type of movies, open Yang's shut off heart and helps him open up, and blah blah blah, you get the picture.  We later learn that Lynne is a victim from a horrendous attack from a gang lead by Danny Huston, who is only known as "The Colonel," a psychotic man thats into teeth, the whiter the better....I'm still trying to figure out if toothpaste was even introduced during this moment in time.  Anyway, and I'll make this short as possible; The Colonel takes younger version of Lynne to have his way with her, she fights back with a pan full of hot grease, scarring him, she runs, he shoots, then he shoots the rest of her family, she lives and she wants revenge since then, THE END.  When yang learns this he goes about teaching her the ways of fighting with two daggers.  The Colonel returns however with his gang, but this time he's sporting a Mankind Mask.  And, you can probably guess what happens when he does, SOOO, I'll leave it at that

I know I've pretty much spoiled a good chunk of the movie for you, but I'm doing you a favor.

This movie isn't necessarily bad, but it has some major flaws.  The first being is the dialog between the characters, especially the ones involving Lynne.  She is pretty much the "Scrappy-Doo" of this movie, she is either spewing out some Cowgirl jargon, that just makes you turn your head like a confused dog.  Another thing wrong with this movie is that we don't get much Ninja Action, or even a Ninja Movie, we get a poorly done Western.  The writer/director of this movie is someone named Sngmoo Lee, and this is his first movie, so maybe I'm being a little hard on him, and maybe he'll do better next time.

However, there are some good things I can say about this movie.  The effects were pretty good and the fight choreography was very well done.  They definitely got someone good to come in and make some great action in this movie.  The fighting was also anime inspired and you can tell with most of the fighting in the movie.

There was a movie here, but I think it got lost in translation.

MY RATING: 5/10

3 comments:

  1. I'm glad you ruined the movie for me, it certainly didn't look worthwhile enough for me to pay money to watch it, and this confirms every bit of that gesture. If only I could have had a piece of that pie they're making from the ones who ARE going to watch it..

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  2. First of all, I'll say that I'm a fan of Jang Dong Gun. Not to the extent where I've seen every single Korean drama and/or movie he's been in, but he happened to star in my favorite Chinese movie (The Promise). Kate Bosworth isn't that bad either, having seen her in "21" and "Blue Crush". And come on - who doesn't know Geoffrey Rush from the Pirates franchise at least? So it's not the acting I have issue with, here.

    What I'm very concerned with is the merging of genres. Normally, I wouldn't mind. But Western meets Wuxia? DO NOT WANT. The effects look great, but the plot that you described does not sound at all appealing. It seems somehow lacking. Plus, I would have preferred if the movie had been in Korean with subtitles, but that's just me.

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  3. believe it or not, Jang Dong Gun was the only decent actor in the movie. He played what we was casted, a mysterious warrior, and he did a great job. and yeah, i think this would have been a lot better as a Korean movie with subtitles, because I've seen this happen before with Sukiyaki Western Django, where it wasn't received well by everyone who watched it

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