The last year has been a difficult one for the ninja and Western genres. From the lackadaisical “Ninja Assassin” to the loud implosion of “Jonah Hex,” these two B-movie staples have seen much better days.
Last week’s only major studio release, “The Warrior’s Way” aimed to stylistically combine both of the genres, and instead gave the audience uninspiring action pieces and a poor attempt at visual wonder.
The hodgepodge storyline takes place in the late 1800s and follows disgraced ninja Yang (Korean acting sensation Dong-gun Jang) as he escapes his past to seek refuge in, for all intents and purposes, a ghost town in the western frontier of America.
There he meets other damaged souls, such as Lynne (the increasingly insignificant Kate Bosworth) and Ron (Geoffrey Rush, slumming it for a paycheck), as the forces of evil, which include his mentor (Lung Ti), the town’s nemesis, former Civil War officer, Colonel (yes, just “Colonel,” portrayed by Danny Huston, the only one hamming it up with vigor) and their ninja/cowboy henchmen, prepare to destroy them.
First-time writer/director Sngmoo Lee took the interesting concept of genre-crossing the ninja and Western films, but unlike past successes such as the rollicking “Big Trouble in Little China,” fails miserably because of the movie’s lack of humor and irony, poor acting, long run time, bland and sporadic action scenes and a prosaic visual style.
The last category might be the most egregious as the filmmaker has clearly made an attempt to make the set design and CGI stand out, but it fails miserably.
Overall, “The Warrior’s Way”, like its other 2010 genre progenitors, didn’t grasp the reason why audiences pay money to see this fluff in the first place: to find a cheap way to kill some time at a matinee while having fun!
Ari Sibler is a Loyola MBA student. Before graduate school, he worked for nine years in the Los Angeles film industry, focusing on marketing, publicity and distribution.
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