The Warrior's Way

Director: Sngmoo Lee
Starring: Jang Dong Gun, Geoffrey Rush, Kate Bosworth, Danny Huston
***

Blame it on the iPod shuffle or moviegoers' shrinking attention spans, but genre-bending films are becoming a mainstay of modern filmmaking.

Hollywood has well and truly joined its music and literature counterparts in the "mash-up" movement, where various contrasting genres and conventions are blended together in the hope of creating something unique.

When it works, as in Shaolin Soccer and Shaun of the Dead, the results are thrilling; when it doesn't, you risk ending up with the likes of Shanghai Noon or The Last Airbender.

The former was strangled by its tangled plot-lines while the orientalism of the latter bordered on the offensive.

With his debut feature, The Warrior's Way, the South Korean filmmaker Sngmoo Lee doesn't throw away the rule book, but instead gathers them all and staples them together as one, in a film that hopscotches across various genres.

By the final credits, viewers could have spotted snippets of Japanese samurai films, the spaghetti Western, the family comedy, sports drama and graphics that could come straight from the latest PlayStation.

This is all well and good for playing spot-the-genre with friends, but does it translate into a watchable experience? Lets begin with the plot.

After slicing his way across Asia, the eponymous Warrior (Jang Dong Gun) achieves his ultimate goal of being hailed as the world's top swordsman. However, his decision to spare the life of an infant - the sole survivor of a rival clan - has him on the run from his own tribe.

With sword and baby in tow, the Warrior (we never learn his name) sails to America and comes to the dusty old circus town of Lode, which the drawling narrator describes as "a town full of broken people at the end of the desert".

When he learns that the Chinese friend he had meant to visit is dead, the "warrior with empty eyes" makes himself at home among the population of unemployed clowns and misfits.

Standing out from this dour lot is the fiery beauty Lynne (Kate Bosworth). Intrigued by the stranger, she decides to work with him to revive the town's (much needed) laundry business.

With the samurai and fish-out-of-water themes checked, the film resorts to Karate Kid mode when the Warrior learns of Lynne's quest to avenge the death of her family at the hands of a bandit known as the Colonel (Danny Huston), who, with his henchmen, routinely terrorises the town.

The Warrior teaches Lynne the fine art of sword combat, all the while dispensing self-help advice such as: "Focus! It is not your arm that shakes. It is your heart."

When the Colonel and his gang return to destroy the town, the movie veers towards spaghetti Western territory, only this turns out to be the prelude to the real showdown, which is when the Warrior's pursuing tribesmen catch up with him.

The final battle sequence, where it's east versus west, paddy hats versus cowboy boots, swords versus pistols, is unintentionally hilarious, though you wonder whether Lee is offering some kind of subtle cultural observation here, portraying the cowboys as clumsy yet resourceful while the silent Asian assassins are efficient but single-minded.

What saves The Warrior's Way from being a total mess is the sheer verve of the filmmaking. Lee approaches the film with an eye for the surreal. In his world, body parts fly gracefully across the screen, trajectories of bullets are tracked, and battles finely choreographed.

The decision to shoot the film mostly on green screen was inspired as it gives the stylised setting an almost mythical feel, but at times it comes awfully close to resembling a computer game. And given that most of the creative work happens behind the camera and in post-production, the cast do a good job of serving the director's vision.

In what has been pegged as his Hollywood breakout role, the South Korean actor Jang Dong Gun has charisma but ultimately has little to do beyond looking deadpan while disembowelling his enemies, while Geoffrey Rush, as the retired gunslinger Ron, and Bosworth simply have fun in unchallenging roles as the Warrior's sidekicks.

The best performance, however comes from Huston, whose maniacal Colonel recalls Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter.

On paper, The Warrior's Way may look as mismatched as sashimi on spaghetti, but it's a treat worth sampling.