Martial Arts Movie About Ninja and a Baby in the West
| |
| Comments count:0
In the abundance of trailers jostling for position each fourth dimension y'all visit the multiplex, somewhere between car adverts and that encarmine Orangish advertisement for Gulliver'south Travels that I'm starting to worry will only keep forever, someone occasionally makes you sit up and pay attention.
And if you've seen the trailer for The Warrior'due south Way, it'due south just one line of dialogue from alcoholic gunslinger Geoffrey Rush. "Ninjas. Damn."
Cowboys are cool. Ninjas more so. It's this kind of combination of Western elements with cool stuff that's expected to serve Jon Favreau'due south Cowboys & Aliens well side by side summer, just in the meantime, we accept another attempt to mash up Hong Kong martial arts cinema with Western B-pic in just the kind of mail service-colonial misstep that Hollywood seems to make over and over again these days.
In the terminal year or two, we've seen two of these wrong-footed activeness flicks that tried and failed to capture the essence of the wilder eastern equivalent. Last year, Blood: The Last Vampire mashed up horror and martial arts, simply forgot to bring in much plot or logic. And earlier this year, Ninja Assassinator was the least fun it's possible to have with a police procedural thriller chosen Ninja Assassin.
What nosotros become in The Warrior's Way is a little better, perhaps for the work of Sngmoo Lee, who writes and directs the flick and isn't American. His story follows Yang, a Sad Flute swordsman who kills "The Greatest Swordsman In The History Of Mankind E'er" early, and by the rule of Top Trumps or something, gains that championship himself.
The film put a daft grin on my face with the Scott Pilgrim-esque on-screen graphics that illustrate this changeover, but it doesn't maintain this humour. It's more concerned with Yang taking mercy on the final survivor of an enemy association, a baby girl. Having slaughtered her family unit and her people, Yang decides to save her and take her with him to the New Earth.
Hiding out in a rundown circus set up in a frontier boondocks, Yang befriends Lynne, a skilled pocketknife thrower who has vowed revenge on the disfigured Colonel who killed her family in front end of her. The Colonel and his ravening comrades aim to bring war to the circus once again, while the Distressing Flute clan aren't exactly pleased with their brightest member's desertion.
What'due south weird is that Lee handles the Western chemical element of the story ameliorate than the martial arts element, equally if influenced by Sergio Leone in the former aspect and by Undefeatable in the latter.
Nosotros've seen this type of crossover before, and while some may be naïve enough to think it's Hard Boiled meets High Apex, it's actually closer to a Neveldine/Taylor rendition of Shanghai Noon.
Yang very willingly takes on the American way, as is the fashion of these films. In the virtuous Lynne, you lot get a willing pupil who absorbs the absurd-looking stuff from Yang's teachings, but is more ofttimes seen ingratiating Yang into his job at the local launderette. Kate Bosworth plays Lynne like a sexed up and vengeful version of Jessie from Toy Story, and Dong-gun Jang comes beyond as blank every bit Keanu Reeves whenever he's non jumping in the air and slicing something into bits.
Animated blood and wonky CGI are here, along with many other fixtures from Blood: The Final Vampire and Ninja Assassin. Somehow, though, the idea of martial arts and Western together appeals more than putting martial arts into vampire films or police dramas.
I actually quite like Shanghai Noon, not only considering of my great appreciation of Jackie Chan in annihilation and everything, only because information technology's conspicuously one of his improve English language buddy movie efforts. The Warrior's Way is doing the aforementioned affair, but keeping a straight confront well-nigh information technology.
The permanent directly face is what makes some parts unintentionally hilarious. Casting Tony Cox every bit a midget with a figure 8 painted on his head isn't the way to make an audience take your film seriously, but the absolute trough, by a long shot, is Danny Huston. Huston plays the Colonel like Vernon Wells from Commando would accept played Jack Torrance in The Shining. It's embarrassingly bad, and a low point for Huston.
There's as well niggling threat from those much mooted ninjas coming to town. Here'due south a inkling as to why: Yang defeats "The Greatest Swordsman In The History Of Flesh E'er" in the first five minutes. We're repeatedly told, by no less than the master who's going to fight his student, that Yang was trained to be the strongest at that place is. Is there actually whatsoever jeopardy for Yang, or his young accuse?
The highlight is Geoffrey Rush, who refuses to telephone it in equally erstwhile soak Ron, tackling head-on the tired idea of the once trigger-happy human now forced to resume violence for the greater skilful. The saddest thing of all is that a sure line doesn't appear in the finished film. The best line in the whole film isn't fifty-fifty in the moving picture.
It takes its sweetness time getting to the action-packed conclusion, and even one time we get there, its master-student confrontation and copious flashbacks are over-familiar from, you guessed it, Blood: The Last Vampire and/or Ninja Assassin.
Recall of another Western show that takes transgeneric elements from the east, Joss Whedon's Firefly. Of the series' Hong Kong sensibilities, Whedon said, "At that place is a convention in Hollywood to autumn back upon clichés – or on time-honoured structure… and in these films, where you idea you were going to exist terrified, the broadest one-act might appear.
"Wherever you thought this guy has been defeated, he might come up back and kill everyone in the room, and so suddenly exist defeated. You just never knew." Hollywood's failure to extrapolate the best parts of martial arts cinema thus far has conspicuously been downwards to the lack of surprise in films like these.
The Warrior'south Way might err to shut to the Hollywood Way, but it has plenty gumption that it's at to the lowest degree a stride in the correct direction. I don't believe American movie theatre chimes with martial arts the way studios seem to want it to, merely this is an enjoyable plenty picture on its merits equally a Western. It'due south a damn sight better than the ludicrously inept Jonah Hex, but not expert enough to deny that my rating is a generous one.
Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.
isaacsonlathe1992.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-warriors-way-review-2/
0 Response to "Martial Arts Movie About Ninja and a Baby in the West"
Post a Comment