The Warrior’s Way (Blu-ray rental)

The Warrior’s Way (15)

2010. Running time: 100 mins approx.

Written & directed by Sngmoo Lee

Starring: Dong-gun Jang, Kate Bosworth, Geoffrey Rush, Tony Cox, Lung Ti and Danny Huston

As genre mash-ups go this is a not-bad effort. Debut helmer, Sngmoo Lee, lays on the style thick and heavy, and most of the time, he does it well. South Korean mega-star Dong-gun Jang is Yuan, an assassin who ascends to be the greatest swordsman in the world ever (achieved with some wit in the opening scene). He is tasked by his clan, the Silent Flute, to wipeout a rival clan; he does so but stops short of killing the final clan member – a wee baby girl. He goes on the run from China, all the way to the American Wild West Badlands of the late 1800’s. He heads to the old shanty town of Lode, where his old mentor emigrated. Yuan arrives to find that ‘Smiley’ (as the locals dubbed him) is now dead, and his laundry press business lies abandoned. Yuan sets about reopening the laundry, with the aid of feisty Lynne (Kate Bosworth, looking incredibly like a young Katherine Hepburn…). Lode lies in the shadow of an old ferris wheel, and the town is populated by the remnants of a troupe of travelling circus performers, led by Tony Cox’s potty-mouthed Eight-Ball and Geoffrey Rush’s alcoholic sharp-shooter, Ronald.

But Lode is plagued by a gang of bandits, led by Danny Huston’s Civil War veteran, the ‘Colonel’, who has unfinished business with Bosworth’s plucky Lynne… When they next ride into town, Yuan is drawn into the town’s struggle with the bandits, knowing full well that if he draws his sword, his clan will know where to find him; you see, cleverly, the Silent Flute have a talent for tracking each other by their swords – if Yuan draws his sword from its sheath, they will instantly know where he is. Cobblers, yes, but I just went with it.

The final third is a chop-sock-fest of cowboys vs circus performers vs ninjas, and zips along. The Warrior’s Way is a bizarre film and slightly misshapen in conception, but is mostly fun, and Rush and Huston are on fine ham-and-pineapple form to keep things going at a pace. Dong-gun Jang pushes the definition of stoic to its limit with his mostly silent performance. He is so restrained he looks constipated most of the time. When it matters, he slices stuff up in a rather impressive fashion and, in one of the film’s better moments, impales a man in the eye with a frozen fish…

You want to see it now, eh?

Andy Jamieson, Editor