The Warrior's Way

[Drunk Monk]

A few weeks ago, the DM fam went to see Harry Potter and S & T notice the poster for this. They said it looked like the long lost brother of dm and steve yi (dm's last doom recruit who bailed after ED raped his eyes with Ichi the Killer). dm made some flippant comment that all Asian martial arts hunks with long hair look alike, a comment that the Mrs. scoffed at.

So last night DM & CF went to the screener. It was fun.

Be warned with this review - I love ninja flicks. WW is very comic book with tongue firmly planted in cheek, which allows me to forgive many plot transgressions. It has these garish super-imposed backdrops, which work well to accentuate the comic book quality. Jang Dong-Jun is the stoic awesome swordsman, a tad too stoic actually. Kate Bosworth is the cowboy gal set on vengeance, and the center point of the plot. It's really her story, but I was too distracted by her two-color eyes to notice if her performance was any good. Geoffrey Rush, who can do camp as in Pirates of the Caribbean, was sorely underused. Danny Huston has to wear a cowboy phantom-of-the-opera mask through most of it, but gets off a great last line. But the real star was Ti Lung, one of my favorite actors from the golden days of Shaw Brothers, the gentleman swordsman, now in his sixties and still swinging his sword. It was great to see him on screen again. In this way, WW was a lot like Ninja Assassin - a Korean pop star lead ninja goes rogue, has to fight a lot of other ninjas, has flashbacks to his traumatic childhood training, and there's a final duel with his master, played by a veteran of the genre. WW is NA crossed with Sergio Leone, right down to the Ennio Morricone homage soundtrack, with some Baby Cart from Hell/Lone Wolf and Cub tossed in for good measure.

The fights are stylish, relying on a lot of CGI and slo-mo, yet enjoyable. They are bloody, yet not as bloody as Baby Cart from Hell. I confess, they would have worked better for me if they were bloodier. It's more about the cinematography than the choreography.

On exiting the theater, a cute Asian girl came up to me. She said "Excuse me. Are you the master from the movie?" For that reason alone, I love this film. She was with her boyfriend, so I said "no" but then poached PPFY's brilliant Weird Al counterattack saying loudly to CF "I told you they'd recognize me here!" CF laughed and said that there were moments when Jang reminded him of DM. Dm retorted that he hoped she was referring to Jang as the master and not the 60+ Ti Lung. On the drive home, Dm thought he totally could have played Jang's role. He could have done that stoicism, done all of those fight sequences (with more panache even) and snogged Kate. Dm also thought he'd recant his comment about Ti Lung. He would be honored to be mistaken for one of his heroes.

[cranefly]

This is "Kung Fu, the Series" on steroids, and it's a bit disorienting. We've got this Chinaman who isn't Chinese because he's Ninja, which makes him Japanese, though he's played by a South Korean, who skedaddles it to the American West where he must contend with bad cowboys and bad ninjas in hot pursuit. See? Kung Fu the Series. Early on, there's a shot of Jang's back as he walks across an American desert, then the camera swings around and we see his face. And I'm thinking, Hey, wait a second. He's supposed to be Chinese, like David Carradine. But instead he looks like the guy sitting next to me. Very very disorienting.

The bad cowboys and bad ninjas are turbocharged to the max, and the climax is a bloodbath that intriguingly overlaps Jang's battles with both.

I likewise felt Jang was too stoic and so was Ti Lung as leader of the Ninjas (though he's Chinese). By contrast, Kate Bosworth splashed emotion all over the place like it was blood in a Ninja movie. At first I saw it as overacting (perhaps to compensate for Jang's stoicism), but she soon won me over as a real person. Far more real than the town this all took place in. Talk about a schizoid culture. I couldn't begin to fathom it. Yeah, yeah, I know. Comic book land. Cut it some slack.

Geoffrey Rush was channeling Paladin. Richard Boone, I'm telling ya. (Or is this before your time?) But as DM mentioned, they never sufficiently developed his character. They didn't follow through on other characters as well. The dwarf showed promise, but he needed to be sinful. I thought sinfulness was written into every dwarf's contract in Hollywood. Apparently not. Even super-baddy Danny Huston never clicked for me. Great villains should have charisma. They should be menacing in subtle, underhanded ways. He was just a bad-mood thug without any real skills, surviving by virtue of sucking the director's bullhorn.

The Ninjas were all identical and fully costumed in black, ever landing wushu-style, which gave some of the scenes a video arcade feel. I wish they'd been allowed to be individuals. Still, I agree with DM that there was a nice stylishness to the fight scenes.

I wasn't picking up any Baby Cart from Hell vibes, maybe because the baby wasn't allowed to participate in the mayhem. Well, that's not entirely true. I really liked the scene where Kate Bosworth was slaughtering Ninjas left and right while breastfeeding the baby.

All in all, worth seeing (if only for that scene alone).

A big thanks to DM for a pleasant night's entertainment.

[Drunk Monk]

THE WARRIOR'S WAY by Greg Lynch Jr.
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P.S. Forgot about the carnies. That whole part could have been developed more - a lot more. That could have put this film over the top. Actually many things could have put this film over the top, but I was happy with Kate's blood red dress and brown and blue eyes.

I should stand outside of movie theaters and collect donations for taking photos with me.

[cranefly]

Oh man, DM. We should have set you up a book-signing booth outside the theater.
You could have cleaned up.
I can just see you raking in the dough, signing book after book, chatting up the crowd with anecdotes about you and Kate practicing slick ninja moves.

[Drunk Monk]

In retrospect, it really bothered me that when Jang did a chiburi (the final sword flick to shake the blood of the blade) the blade was still bloody. Granted, chiburi is tough. I've tried it when I used to practice iaido. We experimented just with water, and that's pretty hard. Blood would be even harder as it's stickier. But Jang was supposed to be the best swordsman ever, so you'd think he'd be able to do it. I know there was at least one scene, maybe more, where Jang does a chiburi and then the blade is shown immediately after still dripping with blood. It was a classic example of filmmakers observing some martial behavior and not understanding it fully.

[cranefly]

The chiburi scenes surprised me too.

Putting a wet sword (blood or water) back in the scabbard shouts a whole lot of rust to me.

But I just put it down to my own ignorance and assumed the scenes were valid, and that there was some finer point I was missing.

Apparently not.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

While watching the film, I got a great sense of Deja Vu. I guess I did too much research because I felt like I knew every scene.

It was as bad as I feared, but wasn't as I good as I wanted it to be. I can't even say it didn't have enough sword fights. Although most of the swords fights were one and done kind of affairs.

I think it was too stylistic. I could have stood for a token more realism rather than constantly admiring the work of the matte painters and the CGI artists.

All in all, it was a good backdrop for the nap I had while watching it.