The Warrior's Way

Name: The Warrior's Way
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Western
Released: December 3, 2010
Duration: 100 min
Rating: 45

2010

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Mixed or average reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 53 Ratings

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6.5

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6.5	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 53 Ratings

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The Warrior's Way

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Movie Details & Credits

Relativity Media | Release Date: December 3, 2010 | R

Summary: An Asian warrior assassin finds peace, contentment and perhaps love in a forgotten western town on the edge of the desert but is then faced with...?

Director: Sngmoo Lee

Genre(s): Action, Fantasy, Western

Rating: R

Runtime: 100 min

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Critic Reviews

Movieline Michelle Orange

Dec 6, 2010

The result is way out there - so far that you won't quite recognize the terrain, and still feel strangely at home. The look has the impossible feel of a CGI soundstage: Not cheap, not even necessarily fake, just… weird. Read full review

Joe Leydon

Dec 6, 2010

A visually inspired multi-genre amalgamation, a borderline-surreal folly that suggests a martial-arts action-adventure co-directed by Sergio Leone and Federico Fellini. Read full review

Keith Uhlich

Dec 7, 2010

Someone surely thought to call this knowingly ridiculous genre mash-up "Cowboys vs. Ninjas," though even that title wouldn't hint at all the you-gotta-be-kidding-me craziness on display. Read full review

Kirk Honeycutt

Dec 6, 2010

One ticket buys you cowboys, samurais, gangsters, ninjas, spaghetti Westerns, Hong Kong martial artists, knife throwers and even Fellini-esque circus performers. But like kimchi pasta, some things aren't meant to mix. Read full review

Marc Savlov

Dec 8, 2010

Drained of much of its presumed power by a distinct "been there, seen that" vibe. Read full review

Boxoffice Magazine Steve Ramos

Dec 7, 2010

Genre movies like The Warrior's Way are all about pleasing core fan boys. While the film claims dazzling visuals, Lee fails to deliver the type of never-before-seen martial arts fights fans demand. Read full review

Robert Abele

Dec 6, 2010

South Korean filmmaker Sngmoo Lee's debut feature is less a genre-spanning romp than a tiresome lab experiment in computer-generated tropes and green-screen oppressiveness. Read full review

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User Reviews

Noisy-Ninja

Jul 17, 2012

I'm having a hard time understanding the low Critic Review average. This is beauty through artistry via sword play. I thoroughly enjoyed this film and have watched it a few times. The wild west makes it an interesting take on the genre, but what really makes this film stand out is it'sI'm having a hard time understanding the low Critic Review average. This is beauty through artistry via sword play. I thoroughly enjoyed this film and have watched it a few times. The wild west makes it an interesting take on the genre, but what really makes this film stand out is it's artistic elements, similar to 300. The action scenes are very well directed, invoking memories of The Matrix, while the heroes are bad-ass in a fun and interesting way. The movie itself is amusing with subtle self recognizing cheese. -- But the best is the ending -- The final fight is a good 30 minutes, never dull or numbing, and with some fantastically memorable scenes.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Martim_Durao

Mar 26, 2011

You have got to be in a mood for this kind of movies, the kind that touches surrealism. It very well made, very good cast and it is very entertaining all the way from the start.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

deliberatedmind

Nov 8, 2011

I liked this movie when I saw it in theaters at its release. I recently purchased the DVD. It is an abstract genre of filmmaking that is visually stunning and intriguing story. It didn't make enough money to cover its production cost, still I hope a series is being considered.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

PYRiAH

Dec 5, 2010

"The Warrior's Way" is Sngmoo Lee's first attempt at directing and I must say that he may need some more work if he is going to continue to direct animes, I mean comedies, no westerns, I mean samuraiâ

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

grandpajoe6191

Sep 7, 2011

The movie was brazen but bizarre; A Quentin Tarantino styled start with cool action, but after a few lethargic twists it fails to deliver its true premise.

4 of 5 users found this helpful41

Shiira

Dec 13, 2010

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Ancient...Korean secret? What the Calgon is going on here? Just because the actor portraying the assassin comes from South Korea, "The Warrior's Way" still has a lot to answer for, in regard to the wait it reinforces(or is that reintroduces?) the old stereotype of the Chinese laundryman. Jang Dong-gun, best known for his role in Kang Je-Gyu's "Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War", plays a character whose surname just happens to be both Korean, and Chinese, in a film whose audience probably would be hard-pressed to differentiate the two. Yang, a "Yojimbo"-like anti-hero, formerly of The Sad Flutes(described in the titles as being "the cruelest assassins in the east), is perceived explicitly as a "China man", in spite of the uni-racial name, because his kind(more so than the Koreans and the Japanese) are associated with the Old West, having worked extensively on the First Transcontinental Railroad in the mid-nineteenth century. Predictably, there's not a train to be found in this frontier outpost, even though the inhabitants who call the desert their home, couldn't possibly survive without infrastructure; in other words, a functional railroad, by which food and supplies could be received on a weekly basis from the cities. Already straddling the line of political correctness, any sense of realism had to be discarded(a ferris wheel, really?) in order to keep "The Warrior's Way" from crossing that line, so the locomotives had to go, since its presence would damage the filmmaker's ability to cultivate the lie, in which Yang's ethnicity is of an indeterminate origin, what the titles vaguely state as "the east". A train can't help but signify Yang as Chinese, and the town(with the circus-based economy) he defends against "The Colonel"(Danny Huston) and his gang of desperadoes, as a place that resembles, however faintly, western civilization from out of the past. Surrounded by circus freaks, among them, a "midget", a guy who breathes fire, and a bearded lady, Yang's otherness, his exotic looks, and way with a sword, makes him "one of [them]", an attraction, as if a "yellow" face was some sort of physical abnormality, which taints the kiss he shares with Lynne(Kate Bosworth), in what should be a taboo-shattering moment(compare this kiss with the tentative one Jackie Chan gives Amber Valetta in Brian Levant's "The Spy Next Door"), but conversely, becomes a spectacle, since the cowgirl is kissing a monstrosity, a freak, somebody from the mysterious east. When "The Saddest Flute"(Lung Ti) finally tracks down his former disciple, his negative assertion concerns him alone, and not his race as a whole(the implied Chinese), because this is an America untethered from the historical record, and on a filmic level, the western myth created by the John Ford movies, and others of its ilk. In this world, an Asian may be expected to do the laundry, but the absence of a track suggests that the "Chinese", unlike their real-life counterparts, were never imported from their motherland to help install a railway system, which as a result, undoes the associative stereotype, making the stock occupation of laundryman into a mere business that Yang's friend(also from "the east") just happened to undertake. "The Warrior's Way" does away with the notion that the east is split into nations and factions as a means for perpetuating race in a brazenly callous fashion that borders on racist.… Expand

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

Santiman

Dec 17, 2010

For many years I have been a martial arts practitioner and movies enthusiast. Hear my advise: DO NOT spend your money watching this movie. If you want to watch it, wait until it comes out on free TV.

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

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