The Warrior's Way

I'm guessing many of you have never even heard of The Warrior's Way. It's OK - I hadn't either. Shot back in 2007 and shelved until this past Friday, the samuari/western mash-up earned only three million dollars in its opening weekend, one of the worst wide-release showings of the year. But does that mean the movie is terrible? Actually, it kind of is - but it's also more entertaining than it has any right to be.

The Warrior's Way

Writer/Director: Sngmoo Lee

Starring: Jang Dong-gun, Geoffrey Rush, Kate Bosworth, Tony Cox, Danny Huston

Set in an indeterminate time period that's neither future nor ancient past, the plot follows an epic swordsman (Jang Dong-gun) on his quest to defeat every member of his rival clan. When it comes down to the last member - an infant girl - the swordsman can't bring himself to kill her, and (shocker!) decides to adopt her and go on the run from his own clan. He holes up in a dilapidated wild west town full of circus characters; the society inexplicably can't get their act together enough to finish the construction on the circus. The town is populated with all sorts of crazy characters: the height challenged leader of the group (Tony Cox), dressed to the nines but known as "8 Ball" because of the number eight scrawled on his bald head; the ex-gunfighter-turned-town-drunk (Geoffrey Rush); a ruthless band of outlaws with a leader (Danny Huston) who enjoys the company of adolescent females; and one of the aforementioned females (Kate Bosworth) who scarred his face and escaped his clutches, now - of course - out for revenge.

As totally contrived as that plot sounds, there's a colossal difference between a movie like this and one like Faster, a similar B-movie themed flick from earlier this year: style. For all of its attempt at recreating 70's revenge movie nostalgia and a sense of raw filmmaking, Faster took itself way too seriously, to the point of being detrimental. The Warrior's Way has no problem being derivative, but it also knows that in order to have a story that's so similar to things we've seen dozens (if not hundreds) of times on screen, they have to add something interesting to the equation. Even if that new addition is the something as simple as the look of the movie, shot almost entirely (if not 100%) in front of green screens down in New Zealand, at least it's contributing something to the greater movie landscape and doing it with some flair.

Like a trainwreck on fire, The Warrior's Way makes it hard to look away: all the dazzling colors and washed-out backgrounds are punctuated with CGI blood spatter as swords go slicing and bullets go blazing. There's a distinct B-movie vibe on full display here, and because the entire film is played tongue-in-cheek, it's hard not to appreciate the over the top attitude. The influence of Zack Snyder is felt not only in the green-screened look of the movie (ala 300), but also in handling the action; the movie cribs Snyder's style but does it adequately enough to make the fight scenes worth seeing. I won't list all of the movies this one copies - that would be an insanely long list - but in an effort to report on the tone of the movie, two came to mind. Clive Owen's Shoot 'Em Up shares the cartoonish atmosphere, and, to a lesser degree, the final act of John Woo's Hard Boiled comes to mind (the baby being the key part of that allusion). More than anything else, though, The Warrior's Way feels influenced by video games. The ability of the near-perfect hero to thrash hundreds of bad guys with little to no danger feels like the best sort of cheat code, one in which to enjoy the barrage of battles and not worry for a second about pesky things like health or mission goals.

It'd be a shame not to mention the performance of Geoffrey Rush, currently gaining awards momentum for his work in The King's Speech, but here channeling co-star Johnny Depp from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. This is Rush's chance to play the stumbling drunk, the wheezing teetering boozer always a second away from passing out, and he does it with gusto. Kate Bosworth also committed to her role, and while I initially found her harsh accent to be grating, I must admit she grew on me as the movie progressed. Danny Huston plays the villain with equal parts camp and sleaze.

It's not even worth it to bring up questions of logic in a movie like this. (If the people in this town are all so jovial and work so well together, why don't they just finish building their Ferris wheel so they can start the circus like they wanted?) This is a movie in which text pops up to alert us that our hero is "the greatest swordsman in the history of mankind...(ever)." It's totally aware of its place in the overall movie realm and embraces that as much as possible. The Warrior's Way is a fun watch - totally unrealistic, ludicrous in almost every way - but unquestionably a lot of fun. Until next time...

The NJNM Podcast: Ep. 20 - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Pat makes his glorious return as he, Tyler, and Ben discuss Ang Lee's 2000 film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.


Don't forget to call and leave us a voicemail at (904) 469-6566 or e-mail us your thoughts at notjustnewmovies@gmail.com.

TRON: Legacy

In 2008, test footage for TRON: Legacy surprised audiences at San Diego Comic-Con and the enthusiastic reaction from fans helped greenlight the sequel to the 1982 original.* This footage prompted me to see TRON for the first time, and while I enjoyed the movie, more than anything it raised my anticipation for Legacy. This is one of those rare sequels that is totally justified due to drastic updates in filmmaking technology and a story that is served by exploring those technological possibilities.

TRON: Legacy
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Michael Sheen

I'll come right out and say it: I was disappointed with the movie. There were aspects I really dug - I'll get to those in a minute - but taking Disney's overkill marketing approach out of the equation and looking directly at the trailer, I was half-expecting a transcendent experience. Unfortunately, what I ended up with is just a shell of a movie. The world of the Grid, strangely enough, is a good metaphor for the film itself: it's sleek, sexy, gorgeous to look at, and unlike anything we've seen before - but it's also cold, harsh, and unforgiving, a world made up solely of 1's and 0's incapable of convincing anyone that a heart beats inside its mechanical chest.

If you're looking for eye candy, you've hit the jackpot. Director Joseph Kosinski makes his feature debut here, and his past experience as an architect is on glorious full display here, highlighting the expanse of the Grid with a wondrous originality and dynamic visual flair never before seen in movies. It's easily the sexiest city I've ever seen, and with its dichotomy of dark glassy panes and bright LED light strips embedded everywhere, the movie serves as a shining beacon of what is possible with today's technology. All the staples of the original are updated with pizazz: the disc war sequence is exciting enough, but the light cycle race was the highlight of the film for me. Watching Hedlund speed through Kosinski's world really allowed us to bask in the glory of what the director and his production designers created.

Kosinski is capable of handling the action - as Zack Snyder will tell you, slickness and style will get you a long way in this industry - but when he has to settle down and actually tell a story, that's when the problems begin. Based on the stunning visuals we'd seen over the years, I'd (perhaps unfairly) hoped the quality of the story would meet or exceed the quality of those images. Due to a lackluster script, it doesn't quite play out like that. I can easily see two scenarios here: if Legacy fails to meet box office expectations and turns into a financial disaster, I can see Kosinski returning to the commercial world and never directing another feature. But if it does gangbusters over this holiday season, it's easy to imagine Disney latching onto him for future franchises. (They've already got him signed for a remake of The Black Hole.) Enough speculation - let's get back to the movie at hand.

Jeff Bridges reprises his dual roles as Kevin Flynn and Clu. Flynn, older and trapped in the Grid for years, has developed as one might expect for the character, but with one semi-distracting exception: his dialogue seems intent on reminding us that he was once The Dude.  Drew McWeeny at HitFix brilliantly summed up the elder Flynn in TRON: Legacy: "he's Obi-Wan Lebowski." His affability works with this character (if you watch the original, you'll essentially see a young hacker version of The Dude), but with lines like "it's biodigital jazz, man," and "you're messing with my zen thing, man," the writers are relying a bit too much on our outside knowledge of Jeff Bridges and not giving us enough Kevin Flynn. Those are direct quotes, too - no exaggeration, that's exactly how they were stated in the film. My audience openly laughed at lines like that on more than one occasion.

With Clu, Flynn's computer counterpart designed to help build a perfect system capable of shepherding the world into a new digital age, the filmmakers opted to take a motion-captured approach to the character, meaning that he appears as a younger version of Bridges in the final product. Unfortunately, this CG Bridges looks completely unconvincing (save for some brief moments) and took me out of the movie entirely. I can see why they'd need that version inside the world of the Grid, but in the film's opening minutes (set in the "real world") they choose to show that version of Bridges in a flashback sequence that absolutely does not fit into anything aiming for reality.

Early rumors warned of a terrible performance from Garrett Hedlund (an actor I've actually liked in a number of things), but I found no issue with his performance. He's the "tech geek badass" prototype here, able to infiltrate a Fortune 500 company, base jump, and ride a motorcycle with equal ease. He does a fine job at all of the above, and while the writing may force some questionable dialogue out of him every few minutes, for the most part he sells and it and totally worked for me as the action hero of this movie.

Olivia Wilde looked stunning, and brought a kind of wide-eyed naivety to her character that was endearing but ultimately didn't make a lot of sense. When the true nature of her character is revealed, some of her actions don't hold up under scrutiny - again, a writing issue, nothing having to do with her acting. For my money, she was one of the more enjoyable aspects of the film, questionable character or not; her willingness to commit to the role seemed a bit more genuine than Hedlund's performance, which seemed tired at times. Michael Sheen, aside from being almost unrecognizable covered in white makeup, seemed to have more fun than everyone else on set combined. He played the flamboyant character of Castor as a brash loudmouth who loves to be the center of attention. While grating as a character, Sheen gave a memorable performance and shows a willingness to go from British royalty films like The Queen to big budget blockbuster with no problems in between.

(Very minor spoiler in the next paragraph.)

Like most blockbusters these days, TRON: Legacy borrows heavily from other sources, but this one regularly strayed from paying homage into more dicey territory of quasi-theft that caused me to wince a few times. Cillian Murphy makes an uncredited surprise appearance in the beginning of the film as the son of Flynn's nemesis Dillinger, the villain from the first film. He now heads up the technical operations at ENCOM, the company made famous by Kevin Flynn years before. But his appearance is limited to about five minutes of screen time (if that), and then he's never seen or mentioned again. As if blatant set-up for sequels wasn't a big enough sin, writers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis actually have Murphy utter a famous line from another franchise sequel in which he made a tiny appearance: The Dark Knight. "It's all part of the plan," the younger Dillinger says, with a hint of Heath Ledger in his voice. Immediately following this scene, there's an epic helicopter shot of Sam Flynn standing on top of a building at night that looked suspiciously similar to TDK even before Sam base-jumps from the roof.

Using The Wizard of Oz as inspiration, the movie stays in 2D for the "real world" aspects until switching into 3D as soon as we enter the Grid, just as Dorothy and Toto stayed black-and-white until they hit full color in Oz. (Incidentally, I think Avatar would have benefited by using this same approach.) Like the first TRON, there are plenty of Star Wars rip offs here (the gunner battles are near identical in all three films, actually) and also a visual callback to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, hearkening back to James Cameron's T-1000 innovation when programs are "derezzed" in the Grid. Even the notion of Castor and Zeus being the same person dates was notably featured in science fiction in Schwarzenegger's Total Recall.

Musical duo Daft Punk composed the score for the movie, sending shock waves through the online film world when it was announced. I won't pretend to know anything at all about Daft Punk, but from what I can gather, the original movie was a massive influence on them as artists; it's fitting, then, that they would provide the score for the sequel. Trouble is, the score sounded an awful lot like Hans Zimmer's already-iconic score for Inception, with the same frenzied strings and intermittent bursts of loud horns. That doesn't mean it wasn't a great score - it certainly was - but I don't think it reached the groundbreaking level many assumed it would reach when they heard DP were on board. Daft Punk even made a cameo in the film as the DJ's at The End of the Line Club.

Over at GeekTyrant, we recorded a video of our initial thoughts right after we left the theater. After I expressed disappointment with the storyline, Mazer wondered what I (we, anyone) would have done to change it. I didn't have an answer right then, but after a few hours to think it over, I've got a couple of ideas. For starters, I actually liked the look of the movie outside of the Grid, so I would have featured more of the "real world" in the film. Not in the way the movie was hinting, in which Clu would lead an army out into the world to cleanse it of its imperfections in an updated Nazi storytelling device that we've seen dozens of times before, but perhaps feature Bruce Boxleitner's returning Alan Bradley character more on the outside, helping Sam out or working behind the scenes to cause trouble for the corporate hackjobs who have taken over ENCOM since Kevin's disappearance. Sure, now that sequels are being planned and an animated series is in the works, I'm sure we'll find out all sorts of different ways to tell a story within this franchise. I just wish we would have seen a better one here to get it all started again.

TRON: Legacy is a mindless action movie, and I take issue with that because more than many other blockbusters, this one had the potential to offer us something to think about instead of just something to look at. Though the first film looks cheesy now, there was a definite sense of something deeper going on under the surface; concepts and ideas about the digital world were highlighted with CGI and wrapped in a new and exciting story. Here, the world has been retrofitted with better tech, but all of the heart from the original is gone. It devolves into the exact cliches longtime movie-watchers will see coming from light-years away ("he's building an army!" "Get to the portal!"), but it does a great job of making me want to ride a light cycle. And hey - any movie that features Journey's "Separate Ways" can't be all bad. Until next time...

(All images courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures.)

*A similar tactic was used to convince Frank Miller that a movie version of Sin City would work, with Robert Rodriguez shooting the opening scene as a test and shopping the concept footage to Miller and the rest of the soon-to-be lead actors.

Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky is undoubtedly one of the boldest filmmakers working today. Black Swan is intended as a companion piece to his previous film The Wrestler - in fact, both were initially conceived as one movie - and though the shot selections may look similar, the meaning derived from them is diametrically opposite. Slowly building to hysteria, this movie ratchets up the intensity until its climactic conclusion, leaving the audience breathless and stunned at the incredible finale.

Black Swan
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey

Nina Sayers (Portman) is a ballerina on the rise, replacing Beth (Winona Ryder) as the lead dancer in a new production of Swan Lake from ballet impresario Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel). While her form is excellent due to years of training with her ex-ballerina mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), Nina lacks the passion required for the duality of the Swan Queen; new addition Lily (Mila Kunis) has the sensuality necessary for the darker side of the role and the two dancers traverse a psychological battlefield on the road to the opening night performance.

Let's get this out of the way: Natalie Portman clearly deserves an Oscar nomination (and probably a win - I haven't seen every movie this year, so it's hard to say for sure) for her work as Nina. Pure and simple, she loses herself in the role and delivers one of those special performances people will be talking about for years. Again, like The Wrestler before it, this is an intensely personal movie that hinges on the performance of its lead, and Portman gamely raises her commitment to a level previously unseen from the young actress.

While Natalie has been earning rave reviews the world over, I don't think enough attention is being paid to the supporting cast. Barbara Hershey is great as the overprotective mother living vicariously through her daughter's success, and Vincent Cassel shines as the ballet director and choreographer, taking his cues from Anton Walbrook's Boris Larmontov in The Red Shoes. Mila Kunis truly stands out with her most impressive work to date; Lily's sensuality perfectly complements the repressed and subdued Nina and the competition between the two turns fierce.

I won't pretend to have seen The Red Shoes or Suspiria any earlier than last week or for any other reason than in preparation for Black Swan, but I'm certainly glad I watched those movies. While not required viewing, they lay the groundwork for another level of appreciation of Aronofsky's latest, and their influence, both in style and story, is clearly on display in Black Swan. Stylistically, the film leans more toward Argento's Suspiria, a visually striking film about a ballerina who discovers her academy is run by a coven of witches. But the story - especially the "story-within-a-story" elements - seem to be directly influenced by The Red Shoes, a movie about a young upstart ballerina taking on the lead in a new ballet inspired by a fairy tale.

Matthew Libatique, who has worked with Aronofsky on all of his previous films, returns as the cinematographer. Libatique's camera sways closely across the stage with the dancers acting almost as a dance partner itself, providing a unique experience for the audience and an intimacy with the characters that a stationary camera could not achieve. The iconic "following" shots from The Wrestler are repeated here, but with a totally different meaning: with the camera at the back of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a sense of history and Mickey Rourke's broken-down physique led us to believe this was a man on his way out, the camera serving almost as a reminder of times long past. Here, the camera lingers behind Nina - a dancer in peak physical condition - and her quick pace highlights her determination and desire for perfection, the camera very nearly manifesting itself into her drive as a performer. 

The opening scene was stunning, a long continuous shot of Nina dancing with the black-feathered evil sorcerer from Swan Lake, accented only by a single spotlight. There are also a few neat tricks involving mirrors, most of which take place directly behind a character but hide the camera from view (aided, of course, by post-production work). A nightclub scene illuminated by strobe lights and drenched in red and green provided another callback to the color palette used in Suspiria, but the fractured images and rapid editing here complimented this section of the story, in which Nina is on a drug fueled binge before her big performance.

Clint Mansell, also a frequent Aronofsky collaborator, provides the musical score and turns out another phenomenal piece of work. Inspired by the music in Swan Lake, Mansell infuses classical compositions with his patented dynamism and composes songs that highlight the operatic feel of the movie. Mimicking the dichotomy that runs through the movie, Mansell's score feels like the music to an actual ballet but somehow manages to simultaneously feel like a film score. Tough to put into words, but you'll know it when you hear it. It's a strange mixture, but one that works incredibly well and serves to heighten the drama of the story and the intensity of the movie's increasingly insane visuals.

And oh, do those visuals get insane. The movie has hints of weirdness peppered through the first hour - an unexplained rash here, a mirror flash there - but at a certain point, the bottom drops out and we're treated to near Lynchian levels of craziness. I don't want to ruin any of these moments for you - that's half the entertainment value of the movie - but suffice it to say Aronofsky holds nothing back, and the second half of the movie chronicles a descent into madness that will have you questioning everything you've seen thus far. There's a horror vibe that comes in near the end, unabashedly playing up the "psychological" part of the film's "psychological thriller" genre.

There is so much going on in this movie that I feel like I need another viewing to fully comprehend all of it. Aronofsky refuses to be content with a simple All About Eve-inspired tale of competition between athletes; he soaks the movie with complex sexual messages (using sex as an aid to artist's freedom of expression) and, like this year's Inception before it, mixes dream imagery with reality in a very interesting way. Black Swan is, perhaps more than anything, an ardent celebration of the sacrifices artists make for their craft. The final scene, beautiful and horrifying at the same time, is a prime example; although reminiscent of Tarantino's last bit of dialogue from Inglourious Basterds, the final line in Black Swan is not quite as self-serving as QT's, instead providing a haunting conclusion to a cinematic concussion grenade whose last twenty minutes knocked the wind out of me.

This is also one of the most erotic mainstream releases in recent memory. If you're averse to on-screen sexuality at all, you'll surely find yourself extremely uncomfortable at multiple points in this film. A fearless sex scene between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis had the blogosphere buzzing months before the movie's release; rightly so, since that particular scene is pretty damn graphic. I'm honestly a bit surprised the MPAA allowed this one out the door with an R rating, considering their notorious voting habits regarding sexuality in film. I'm also a bit surprised a Hollywood studio would tackle this type of subject matter, but speaking with a friend of mine afterwards and realizing the budget for the film was less than $15 million, I'm sure Fox Searchlight figured they could make their money back with the talent attached to this project.

Black Swan is a gorgeous movie filled with outstanding performances and brazen filmmaking. Aronofsky consistently makes movies I can't imagine anyone else directing, and this is no exception. It will be very interesting watching him go from a project like this to his upcoming X-Men movie The Wolverine (a standalone story with Hugh Jackman reprising his role as the title character), as I'm wildly curious to see what an Aronofsky superhero movie looks like. While Black Swan possesses shades of other movies - including Cronenberg's The Fly, with Nina's transformation into a physical swan seen in the trailer - it is unquestionably one of the most highly original films of the year and an incredible movie-going experience. Until next time...