Raise your hand if you loved the movies Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Wow, a lot of you. Okay, now raise your hand if you loved the movies The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and The Proposition. Um, yeah, another waving sea of fingers, as expected. Excellent.Now, imagine a director with the stunning creative vision of Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and the campy-yet-engaging wit of Baz Luhrman (Moulin Rouge) taking those four movies and shaking them together in a snow globe. What you get is The Warrior’s Way.I loved this movie. It combined the whimsical with the dangerous, the terrible with the daring, and the grit with the wit of a something almost akin to a Shakespearean dramedy (not that Shakespeare would have ever used the word “dramedy”). It retains that epic quality we so love in movies like Crouching Tiger and Hero, yet still brings to life quirky, mischievous, and downright rotten characters that you can relate to. Especially if can fly or shoot a stick of dynamite falling through the air from the top of a ferris wheel.The story, while simple, is filled with timeless themes and juicy plotlines that never fail to titillate: revenge, betrayal, love, broken promises, sacrifice and redemption. The hero, Yang, played by Seoul-based actor Dong-gun Jang is an assassin whose training began as a young boy and was so cruel and complete that part of his rites of passage were to kill his own best friend. When he grows to adulthood, he finds there is still a thread of humanity at his core and he cannot complete the mission of blood commanded by his assassin clan, the Sad Flutes. The mission: to kill a baby girl, the last survivor of a rival clan.Instead of this grisly chore, Yang saves the child and flees in search of an old friend who has escaped the Sad Flute life and become a sword-swinging virtuoso in a traveling circus in America. But what he finds is not what he expects. His friend has died, and the circus is on a permanent dead-end stop in a dead-end dusty town far from the limelight.Yet, with the help and encouragement of a sassy wannabe knife thrower, Lynne, played by Kate Bosworth, this homeless drifter finally finds a place he can settle down for good, and a troop of similarly lost souls to help him raise his adopted daughter.But of course, villainy is afoot. This time, in the form of a megalomaniacal rapist with a fetish for good teeth, who leads a gang of cut-throat desperadoes on annual forages of terror and wantonness into Yang’s new home. And not only that, Yang’s old clan is after him to finish the job he failed and mete out the ultimate punishment for doing so.Like any good western, there’s a showdown at high noon. But you’ve never seen a showdown of this grandiosity. To call it explosive would not do it justice. To call it bloody would not properly capture the volume of gore. And to call it anything but excitingly original would be to challenge me to a movie watching duel.While you won’t walk away from The Warrior’s Way with a profound sense of wonder or emotional drainage, you will walk away feeling thoroughly entertained. And with a supporting cast including Geoffrey Rush and Danny Huston, come on, you just can’t get any better.(If you think Geoffrey Rush is as amazing as I do, run, don’t walk, to Blockbuster and rent Quills. The BEST (only?) movie about the Marquis de Sade in history. Rush is truly sublime.)I highly recommend seeing all the movies just mentioned, but start with The Warrior's Way. If you do, tell me what you think.
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