About all one can gather from the trailers for The Warrior’s Way is that it has something to do with cowboys vs. ninjas Honestly, no one needs more than that, but the film’s plot turned out to be surprisingly complex. While The Warrior’s Way doesn’t have the smallest budget in the world, it’s clearly limited, but the filmmakers spent what they had in all the right places.
Right off the bat, from the first scene to the last, what caught my attention the most about The Warrior’s Way was the costumes. The costumes were over the top and seem to have been inspired by Mortal Kombat and various western space anime like Trigun and Cowboy Bebop. I want one of the dusters that cowboys wear, so I can officially change my middle name to McAsswhoop.
Other than some fast-paced action at the beginning of the movie, the first half of The Warrior’s Way is pretty slow. Combine this with a weak supporting cast and a hit or miss performance, and I became pretty antsy about the action. The film’s protagonist, Yang (played by Dong-gun Jang), leaves his country and his clan with the last living descendant of his rival clan, due to his inability to kill a baby. Yang ends up heading to the American West to meet one of his old friends in a small circus town called Lode. However, upon arrival he discovers that his friend is dead. From there, hardcore laundry service ensues (don’t ask). The movie then introduces a few different factions and the plot becomes more complex than I originally expected.
There are actually two antagonists in The Warrior’s Way. First up is the ninja clan The Sadd Flute and their leader, appropriately named the Saddest Flute. The Sad Flutes are hell-bent on eliminating the last of their rival clan, and this faction as a whole reminds me of the assassins in Ra’s Al Ghul from Batman Begins. We also have the Colonel and his men, a rebel squad that periodically holds the city of Lode hostage so the Colonel can rape his girls. Clearly the Colonel is the easiest enemy to hate. When the three factions collide in the second half of the movie, he gets real.
There are a ton of tricks used to film The Warrior’s Way, but they are all well executed and rarely repeated. Battles that were clearly inspired by movies like 300, Blade, Resident Evil, and The Matrix are brutally violent, and some of the more over-the-top deaths will make you laugh at their absurdity or cringe in pain. Yang constantly dodges bullets and slices his enemies to pieces at lightning speeds. Although the sword fights aren’t as epic or evenly matched as you’d find in movies like Hero or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, they’re still just as fun to watch.
The CGI in The Warrior’s Way is really hit or miss, and it’s clear that the filmmakers distributed their funds carefully in this regard. A generic explosion that serves to drive the narrative might look gruesome, like something out of an early ’90s PC game, but a complex slow-motion melee looks incredible, with blood, bullets, and limbs flying everywhere.
The good forgives the bad in The Warrior’s Way, and while it’s still more or less what I expected, it’s not quite the disappointment I thought it would be. There have been much worse offerings this year in the action realm (I’m looking at you Expendables), so action fans shouldn’t miss this one.