Blu-ray Review

Mania Grade: C

2 Comments | Add

Rate & Share:

Info:

Blu-ray: The Warrior's Way
Rating: R
Starring: Jang Dong-Gun, Geoffrey Rush, Kate Bosworth
Written By: Sngmoo Lee
Directed By: Sngmoo Lee
Distributor: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Original Year of Release: 2010
Extras: See Below
Series:

The Warriors Way Blu-Ray Review

Unsatisfying Martial Arts/Western mix

By Tim Janson July 09, 2011

Warrior's Way Blu-ray
© 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

The Warriors Way received a theatrical release in December 2010 but if you don’t remember it no one would blame you. The box office flop debuted at #9 and had virtually disappeared in a couple of weeks. The film stars Jang Dong-Gun, one of South Korea ’s most popular actors, in his first Hollywood film. Geoffrey Rush and Kate Bosworth co-star. The Warrior’s Way is a mish-mash of themes and styles notably Clint Eastwood style westerns, particularly High Plains Drifter which it essentially rips off, and combines it with stylized martial arts action similar to recent films like Goemon, with a sprinkling of the old western “Shane”.

Dong-Gun stars as a 19^th century warrior named Yang who has become the greatest swordsman in the world by killing his rival in an enemy clan. He wipes out the entire rival clan except for the last member who is just an infant. Refusing to kill the baby, Yang flees the warrior’s life to the American West to locate a friend. This makes him a marked man by his own clan as his master and an army of assassins is hot on his trail. Yang arrives in a dilapidated town this is home to a bizarre group of circus performers only to discover his friend is dead.

Yang meets Lynne (Bosworth) who helps him run his friend’s laundry and whose family was murdered several years earlier by a ruthless gang of outlaws who left Lynne for dead. Rush is almost recognizable as Ron, the town drunk who has his own tragic past that he is trying to escape. From here you can pretty much surmise the rest of the story. The gang, lead by a former Union Colonel (Huston) returns to the town intent on causing more trouble. Yang had sought to live peacefully but has to take up his sword again and help the town defend themselves from a virtual army of bandits. When he uses his sword again it attracts the assassins and soon the town finds itself caught in a war between the bandits and the assassins.

Dong-Gun does his best to play the silent hero but lets face it…Clint Eastwood he’s not! Eastwood could convey an emotion with the twitch of his lip or the glare in his eyes. Dong-Gun barely bats an eye throughout the entire production. His expression seems stuck somewhere between bored and dead. Even when he’s fighting off wave’s of cloaked assassins or dancing with Lynne at a town party, his expression rarely changes. This makes his romantic scenes with Bosworth come off as trite and forced.

Director Sngmoo Lee drags the production down into a deeper morass by decking out his outlaws in ridiculous masks and goggles making them look more like extras from a Road Warrior film than a western. Punctuating this is the Phantom of the Opera mask worn by the Colonel to cover up the burns Lynne gave him years earlier. As evil and nasty as Huston tries to act I can’t help but keep picturing Lon Chaney in my head.

Visually the film is dazzling. It’s CGI enhanced scenery is all a delight to behold. The fight scenes are a mix of CGI and wire work and are meticulously choreographed. They are the films two main redeeming qualities. Unfortunately we get some fight scenes at the beginning and the end, and a whole lot inane downtime in between. Even the normally reliable Rush gets lost in this odd mix of a film. Grade C

Blu-Ray Extras

Behind the Scenes Montage (2:30) – Glimpses as the stunts and greenscreen effects but at two and a half minutes its far too short to go into any detail so why bother?

Deleted Scenes (12:10) – A couple of interesting extra bits here including a campfire story that was cut. You get to see some of these in a rough cut before the CGI was added

Submit Your Own Review