By Next year we’ll have the chance to see cowboys versus aliens as Hollywood continues to pair up every possible permutation for our entertainment. This week’s nonsense? Cowboys versus circus freaks versus ninjas. Hey, as long as it’s fun it can work some magic and maybe even splice in some memorable dialogue in between the action scenes. The problem is that there’s not even that much action, hardly any martial arts at all, the action that does occur massively underwhelms, there’s no good dialogue, and every single main character is boring.
Next year we'll have the chance to see cowboys versus aliens as Hollywood continues to pair up every possible permutation for our entertainment. This week's nonsense? Cowboys versus circus freaks versus ninjas. Hey, as long as it's fun it can work some magic and maybe even splice in some memorable dialogue in between the action scenes. The problem is that there's not even that much action, hardly any martial arts at all, the action that does occur massively underwhelms, there's no good dialogue, and every single main character is boring.{{page_break}}
Let’s start with EVERY scene that didn’t suck. Hold your breath: An assassin pond scene, a cliché but cool hallway strobe fight scene, and a primitive minigun that falls off its support and spins in a circle. Okay, you can breathe now. I know, you didn’t hold your breath for very long, did you? Now let’s move on and allow me to cut this movie to shreds.
Somehow 30 or so circus freaks live in an abandoned desert town with no food or water even though none of them ever seemingly travels, cooks, or really does anything. Normally I’d look past such a small gripe, but since the movie did a poor job of taking my eyes off it, it started to annoy me. Then to make things worse the main character teaches them that, yes, you CAN plant things you idiots. So what kind of fruit or vegetables do they plant? Flowers. Sigh. How long do I have to wait for ninjas to arrive and kill everyone?
For the main character, Yang (Jang Dong-gun), we’re given a strong and silent type of assassin who vows to never kill again. Out of the 20 or so assassin movies with this plot I’ve seen, The Warrior’s Way's execution of this trope is far towards the bottom of the list, but more annoying is the fact that he’s a terrible “strong, silent type.” His face never changes, his training of Lynne feels like it has huge gaps, the supporting cast can’t support his uselessness for the first half of the film, and the few scenes where he eventually does open up aren’t enough to make me care in the least.
Lynne (ginger Kate Bosworth) runs in circles never accomplishing anything as she tries to keep us from bleak boredom in every scene. Her backstory is the backbone of the plot, and her weak revenge on The Colonel (Danny Huston) is almost as weak as what comes next. When the villain returns for a fight, they decide their crappy desert town where they’re seemingly all starving to death is worth fighting for. So for the next hour we get to watch them defend their shambles city. Unsurprisingly, the town drunkard (Geoffrey Rush) has a haunted past he must now deal with. Yawn.
The vast majority of the town battle has poor pacing and lack of music cues for momentum, so even during an event that sounds cool – like climbing a Ferris Wheel and then tearing it down – ends up not feeling satisfying at all. It wasn’t that it was checking things off a list, it’s that you care so little about the main characters that it’s not even possible to care less for the town’s extras or the villain’s minions. Every second with the main characters on screen is painful enough, so imagine the scenes with nothing but extras being present. Also, the excessive use of CGI skies didn't bother me, though it probably will bug a decent amount of viewers.
Eventually the movie comes to a close and people literally started walking out of the theater expecting the credits to roll in a few seconds, and then it remembers there’s a character it introduced halfway through the film, so hey, let’s give him a background montage NOW, and shove him down your throat for one last fight scene before the credits. Okay. Fine. Go – wait, I just said “Go.” You’re done already? Jesus Christ, take some damn Viagra.
Overall Score: 4.60 – Terrible. (4s are terrible in many ways. They’re bad enough that even diehard fans of its genre, director, or cast still probably won’t enjoy it at all, and everyone else will leave the theater incredibly angry. Not only are these not worth renting, you should even change the TV channel on them in the future.)
I don’t care how many homages to old films it may have included, a terrible movie is a terrible movie. I’ve seen decades old anime before that does everything this movie does far better in every way. The Warrior’s Way gets no respect from me, and unless you’re the type who loves really old assassin movies AND likes the cheese, then I advise you to stay far away from this mess.
