The Warrior's Way (Greg)

A samurai western might seem like a crazy idea to some, but as Leone and Kurosawa have shown, the two are really the same genre in two different settings, and the stories they tell are fundamentally the same. And as much as the idea of pitting cowboys against samurai sounds like a perfect fit for a sci-fi channel original movie, the merging of styles undoubtedly has potential for great storytelling. So when I watched The Warrior's Way, it wasn't the premise but the execution that left me disappointed.

The story follows swordsman Yang, who strives to be the world's greatest at the art of killing. He runs into a problem when he shows mercy on a helpless baby from an enemy clan. His people take it as an act of betrayal, and Yang flees to the American West. Not the actual one, the one seen in only the cheesiest westerns. The visuals are lame, with 300-style exaggerated GCI settings, but without Zack Snyder's keen eye for detail. After some mostly ineffective fish-out-of-water comedy and a stale attempt at a romance subplot, Yang's people arrive seeking revenge and cowboy on samurai/ninja/stock Asian fighter role action ensues. The acting all around is Michael Bay quality: no one's particularly bad, but everyone's bland enough that talking scenes really only serve to fill space between action sequences.

Of course this is an action movie, and all my previously mentioned gripes could be dismissed easily enough if the action were first rate. After all, plenty of similar movies, most recently the Wachowskis' Ninja Assassin, overcame bland scripts and stock performances by delivering intense, creative action sequences. Unfortunately, The Warrior's Way's biggest flaw is that the action scenes are only decent. There's too much emphasis on slow-motion without much understanding of what makes slow-motion sometimes works. Fight scenes slow down and speed up randomly, not bothering to heighten tension like the Matrix or emphasize picturesque moments like a Zack Snyder movie. Everything about the action scenes feels like an only partially successful recreation of what we've seen in better movies.

All in all, The Warrior's way is passable entertainment, if only barely so. If you're a fan of samurai movies, this might be worth a rental. If, like me, you wonder what a successful samurai western might look like, keep wondering.

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