THE WARRIOR’S WAY: Would You Believe… A Samurai Spaghetti Western Fable?

Every year, there’s at least one movie that every­one just misses the boat on.  From the daily review brigade down to the online blog­gers, this unlucky con­tender just can’t seem to get any respect or notice from any tastemak­ers and said film slips between the cracks of the mar­ket­place.  Your Humble Reviewer’s vote for the unlucky vic­tim of this curse in 2010 would def­i­nitely be The Warrior’s Way.  This off­beat blend of samu­rai film and spaghetti west­ern was gen­er­ally shrugged off when it hit the­aters in December — and it’s a shame because it’s the kind of eccen­tric, inven­tive lit­tle film that deserves to find a cult audience.

The Warrior’s Way is the story of Yang (Dong-gun Jang), a dead-eyed soul who has been trained since child­hood to be the most lethal swords­man of all.  He achieves the pin­na­cle of his pro­fes­sion in an open­ing sequence that plays like some­thing from a Lone Wolf & Cub film but expe­ri­ences a moment of doubt when star­ing down his final task: the mur­der of a help­less infant who is the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of the clan he was instructed to kill.  Instead of killing the child, he decides to seal his sword shut so his clan will never hear it again and thus be unable to track him down.

Yang takes the child to America, search­ing for a friend in the old West.  He dis­cov­ers his friend is dead and the town’s main inhab­i­tants are a group of cir­cus per­form­ers led by Eight Ball (Tony Cox), their midget ring­leader.  Yang decides to set­tle down there and ends up run­ning the town’s laun­dry through the prod­ding of Lynne (Kate Bosworth), a young woman whose go-getter exte­rior hides a tragic past.  However, this domes­tic peace is inter­rupted when the General (Danny Huston), a scar-faced crim­i­nal leader with a his­tory of ter­ror­iz­ing the town, resur­faces.  It’s inevitable that Yang will have to pick up his sword — and when he does, the clan he aban­doned will come calling.

As the syn­op­sis should indi­cate, The Warrior’s Way is an odd duck.  It plays its out­ra­geous sto­ry­line straight: in fact, it often plays like a fable, weav­ing in lyri­cal sequences like Yang train­ing Lynne how to fight with knives on the desert sands against a star­lit back­drop.  However, it is not a humor­less affair either.  There is an odd­ball sense of humor at play here: the General is writ­ten as a per­verted fop instead of the expected generic sadist/villain and Yang’s learn­ing curve in how to han­dle a child or live as a civil­ian is mined for the occa­sional sly laugh.

Thankfully, the film’s odd blend of lyri­cism and eccen­tric wit is bol­stered by styl­ized per­for­mances from a unique cast. Jang is a pro at the action scenes but also shows a flair for dead­pan humor in his qui­etly bemused reac­tions to his fel­low towns­peo­ple.  Bosworth  gets a showier role and really sinks her teeth into it, cov­er­ing all its screw­ball humor, drama and action demands with a like­able amount of energy.  Huston makes a good vil­lain­ous foil for the hero, clearly rev­el­ing in the oppor­tu­nity to play such a joy­fully nasty char­ac­ter.  Elsewhere, Geoffrey Rush plays a drunken gun­slinger in a way that con­jures up fond mem­o­ries of Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou and Shaw Brothers fans will be delighted to see Ti Lung in a brief but cru­cial role as Yang’s cold-blooded for­mer men­tor.  Cox also deserves notice as the leader of the cir­cus troupe: he’s funny but also brings a sense of author­ity and dig­nity to his role that you might not expect.

However, the ulti­mate fate of The Warrior’s Way rests in the hands of its writer/director, first-timer Sngmoo Lee.  Thankfully, Lee has done his home­work and cre­ates a film that pieces together its own dream­like world while pay­ing trib­ute to a vari­ety of influ­ences: for exam­ple, there is a flash­back scene that plays explicit homage to a sim­i­lar scene from High Plains Drifter, right down to have a midget char­ac­ter as a reluc­tant onlooker in the scene.  He mixes dig­i­tal and prac­ti­cal effects to cre­ate a look that makes one think of what a Guillermo Del Toro west­ern might look like.  He also has an eye for sur­re­al­is­tic visu­als, like the cir­cus per­form­ers pick­ing up guns to fight dur­ing the finale (you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Fellini-style clowns involved in a shootout).

The end results aren’t flaw­less — the big crit­i­cism here would be that the action-oriented sec­ond half of the film doesn’t flow as smoothly as the atmos­pheric first half does — but the verve and cre­ativ­ity that Lee brings to his off­beat mélange of styles and gen­res shows a pas­sion that is charm­ing.  If your cult-film palate is diverse to include both the samu­rai film and the spaghetti west­ern, you just might find some­thing to like here — and it’s a sure bet that you haven’t seen any­thing like The Warrior’s Way lately.