The Warrior's Way Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

The Warrior's Way Blu-ray Movie Review

A green-screened mess that’s all (silly) style and no substance.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater July 1, 2011

A story about a Korean master swordsman who emigrates to the wild Wild West and is forced into using his blade again to dole out justice when his enemies come looking for him? Normally, I’d say “yes please,” but The Warrior’s Way is nowhere near as fun--or badass--as its premise implies. In recent years, a new live action/CGI hybrid has emerged, a visual aesthetic that drops human actors into environments that are almost entirely digitally created. Sin City did it well, 300 upped the ante even further, and Avatar took it to new extremes, pushing the technology ever closer to photorealism. I’m not going to get into the pros and cons, or what this means for big-budget Hollywood productions in general, but it definitely looks like this kind of filmmaking is here to stay. What’s obvious, though, is that visual effects will never “make” a film. You can’t polish a turd, so the saying goes, but The Warrior’s Way definitely tries, resulting in the most generic of these green-screened action movies thus far. The film’s problems have very little to do with its computer generated comic book style and everything to do with its inconsistent tone, boring story, and swing-and-a-miss attempts at humor.

Warrior, on his way...

The film marks the Hollywood debut of Jang Dong-gun, one of Korea’s most lauded movie stars, and The Warrior’s Way wants to be the kind of vehicle that Shanghai Noon was for Jackie Chan, down to a plot that’s really not all that different. Dong-gun plays Yang, a member of the “Sad Flute” clan--so called because that’s the sound it makes when a throat is slit--who trains to become “the greatest swordsman in the history of mankind.” This involves killing the previous greatest swordsman, a member of a rival clan who dies defending the last of his lineage, a tiny, innocent infant girl. Yang can’t bear to kill this cooing bundle of joy, so his own clan turns against him and he’s forced to flee his home country to America with the baby in tow. Looking for an old friend who emigrated earlier, he saunters into a nearly abandoned burg in the deep southwest, a ghost town that’s the home of a defunct circus. His friend is dead, it turns out, but Yang inherits his laundry business--no, really--and decides to put down his sword to start a new life with some help from Lynne (Kate Bosworth), the feisty redhead who takes an immediate liking to the tall, handsome stranger she nicknames “Skinny.” But business ain’t exactly booming in Lode, the “Paris of the West.” The carnies and their dwarf ringleader, 8-Ball (Bad Santa‘s Tony Cox), hold out hope that business will pick up if they can just complete construction on the massive ferris wheel in the town’s square, but this is a pipe dream.

A crumbling economic infrastructure is the least of the town’s worries, though. The black-hatted bad guy in this story is The Colonel (Danny Huston), a brute with pedophilic overtones who killed Lynne’s family ten years prior. The snarling madman controls a posse of like-minded thugs who like to come into town and raise Cain, and Lynne is dead-set on getting revenge, an ordeal that occupies much of the second act. The Colonel also wears a face mask because of burns he suffered when he tried to have his way with the then-underage Lynne whilst simultaneously cooking french fries in pork fat on a wood stove. I only wish I were kidding, but that’s hardly the most ridiculous element of the plot. In a silly twist, Yang’s sword audibly weeps when it’s removed from its sheath--this has something to do with the souls the sword has taken--and Yang’s former master, Saddest Flute (Ti Lung), somehow hears this sound from across the Pacific and follows it like a homing beacon, along with a legion of less superlatively sad Flutes, on a mission to destroy his wayward student. Mixing Old West action with wuxia swordplay and impossible physics, The Warrior’s Way plays out in a series of showdowns, with the fight against The Colonel ultimately overshadowed by the arrival of Saddest Flute and his minions, who settle on the town’s rooftops like crows.

Also tottering around Lode is Ron, a sloppy old alcoholic and former Civil War sniper played by a seriously slumming Geoffrey Rush, who has somehow gone from The King’s Speech to this in the span of a few months. You get the feeling he was doing someone a favor, but he’s grossly mis-and-underused here in an all too stereotypical “town drunk” role. The thing is, everyone’s talents are wasted in Warrior’s Way. Dong-gun speaks English well, but he’s given little dialogue in a performance that consists mostly of stoic, faraway looks, while Kate Bosworth compensates by talkatively hamming it up like a wacko cross between Betty Hutton in Annie Get Your Gun and Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum 2. (Two films I never thought I’d put in the same sentence.) Huston just glowers and spits and stomps around as the uni-dimensional villain. Writer/director Sngmoo Lee’s script--not the actors--is at fault, as the film seems to have no idea what it wants to be, alternating awkwardly between hokey comedy and hard-edged, R-rated action. In the end, it doesn’t do either particularly well. The threadbare story just lies there limply, the humor falls flat, and the wire-fu swordplay isn’t anything you haven’t seen done much better before. Lee tries to give his compositions a dramatic, graphic novel-ish, comic book-y sensibility--even occasionally overlaying the image with cheesy bubble-letter text--but the style comes off as thoughtless and imitative, two adjectives you could use to describe the film as a whole.

The Warrior's Way Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The film's style may be derivative and video game-ish, but in terms of high definition clarity and visual intent, I have nothing bad to say about the movie's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer. You'd expect a production like this to be shot digitally, but The Warrior's Way was actually filmed on 35mm, and the image here retains its natural film grain, which gives the otherwise glossy, CGI-heavy aesthetic a bit of warmth and texture. There's no sign at all of DNR or excessive edge enhancement. The picture isn't overly sharp--and there are times when it could probably be a hair sharper--but there's a strong sense of resolution in the details of the actors' faces, the raggedy period costuming, and the stagey set design. The CGI backdrops look good for what they are, but there's usually a noticeable disconnect between the actors and their environments. Color is strongly stylized and scene specific, sometimes taking on a dusty orange cast and elsewhere draped in blues and grays. Skin tones look natural within these shifts, and the image rests on a solid foundation of strong contrast and black levels that are deep enough without endangering shadow detail. I didn't spot any blatant compression artifacts or any other encode issues.

The Warrior's Way Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The sound design for The Warrior's Way is just as theatrical and artificial as the film's visuals, but you can't say this DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track won't give your home theater system a modest workout. The complete soundstage is engaged for the battle scenes, which often involve cross-channel machine gun fire, clanging swords, and all kinds of whiz-bang-pow sound effects. The surrounds are even put to use for quieter scenes; Lynne's knife-throwing act features crisp, head-turning pans, water laps in the rears during the opening lakeside showdown, and in one sequence, a fly buzzes around Yang's laundromat, zipping in and out of every channel. The subwoofer kicks in capably for some of the bigger explosions, and in general the mix has a strong presence, with a solid bass anchor, clean highs, and clarity throughout the range. Javier Navarrete's score is heavy on the plucky Jew's harp during more hokey-pokey moments, but it kicks in with force when the action ramps up. Dialogue is clear and easily understood throughout, but the disc includes optional English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles if you need or want them.

The Warrior's Way Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes Montage (1080p, 2:26): An extremely short featurette that shows off some of the stunt choreography and includes a few snatches of interviews.
• Deleted Scenes (SD, 12:10): Thirteen short scenes, including one called "Circumciser."

The Warrior's Way Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Warrior's Way is one of the most underwhelming action films I've seen so far this year. I can see how it might appeal to younger teenagers- -it's got the plot and graphics of a mediocre videogame--but the target 18-35 demographic will be bored and unimpressed. Although 20th Century Fox's Blu-ray release looks and sounds great, that's hardly reason enough to recommend the film. Check out 13 Assassins instead if you're looking for a movie with a solid story and kickass swordplay.