action movie freak
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action movie freak
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The Warrior's Way(3 December 2010) 100 min. "Ninjas. Damn."
If you think this movie was shallow . . .
Dig Deeper
Weed and Feed
Sewing the Seeds of Love
Lynne helps turn Yang from a warrior who saved a baby into a more loving and caring man. The calm of Yang's face is in keeping with his true nature. If you think about it . . . He would have seemed insane if his emotions swung wildly in the other direction, and he was laughing and smiling all the time. Keeping true to his yang nature even as he flows into yin by staying stoic lets you know that this is temporary, and fits perfectly with the theme. In fact, it adds a deep-but-subtle beauty to his transformative experiences. The less emotion he shows, the more deeply you understand he was affected when his actions convey his true feelings. Lynne helps Yang and Yang helps Lynne in return, by teaching her to fight so she can exact her revenge when the times comes, and in doing so, break free from her past. She brings out the love in him, and he brings out the warrior in her. Each of them achieves balance in their lives through the other, and they fall in love.
Simple Beauty
Rush's character rises to the occasion when the chips are down. His circus folk, like the flowers Yang planted (so much for 'putting down roots'), get trampled when the bad guys ride through town. The town drunk in pain from losing his wife, Rush plants his violence in the ground literally by burying his guns in a casket. Turns out he's a marksman with a rifle. He's not just a construction worker on the ferris wheel or the town drunk, he's the ring master of the circus, and reassumes his leadership role when the town is threatened by the return of the men who killed Lynne's family.
The creative use of the
partially-constructed ferris wheel as a defensive post is worth the
ticket price alone. Oh, and yeah . . . they blow shit up!
There is plen-ty of action in this movie. If you've ever wanted to
see cowboys vs. ninjas, hold on to your hat, because the fighting is
really creative. [How BAD ASS is this movie poster?! If I was Geoffrey Rush I would hang this in my living room! Hell, I'd laminate it onto my front door! The fact that they made this version shows they appreciate his talents beyond just casting him. It must be a great feeling.]
Darkness Descends
Dancing With The Stars
Coming Full Circle In another battle mirroring a scene at the beginning of the film, Yang fights his 'master' (and/or himself/his nature) against a magenta sky (representing the bloodshed about as beautifully as such a thing could be imagined). In the beginning there was the whiteness of snow. The 'purity' of his magnificent violent skills. From when the flowers in the town were trampled, lavender petals float by and the lavender color against these shades of red is a definite wow factor in its beauty! For someone to not say this movie is at least a visual masterpiece, they must be short-sighted indeed. It succeeded on so many levels. If a scene like this (hell, the whole movie) didn't impress you, you're seriously spoiled, and jaded.
The use of the ferris wheel they are building as symbolism—circle/cycle of life and death—and as a
weapon for defense is genius.
The tiniest details are simple yet symbolic: They
show a trampled flower with blood on its petals in a pool of blood.
Not just any flower:
A Black-Eyed Susan: a
yellow flower with a black 'eyes'. These details are not
accidental and you should not take them for granted. I read one
blurb that said it was Moulin Rouge meets blah blah blah. I don't
like those comparisons when they discount the films involved (I do like
it if its creative and positive.) The fact that so many critics
discounted this movie is reversely proportionate as a compliment to
the direction and the 'simple' beauty of the film. In the end,
each of the characters flows back into balance with what they were before.
________________________________ I wish the movie had stayed in theaters longer.
I would have loved to see it a second time. I found it easy to write
about but I am sure there were many great details I missed and would
have loved to point out. For sure I will buy it when it comes out on DVD.
It would be an amazing first movie to watch on Blu-Ray! If you were
on the hater bandwagon for this movie, you need to seriously
reconsider!
Dong-gun Jang
I didn't really start watching KDramas until 2012 (two years
after this). It took me a while to get hooked but looking back, I am
so delighted that I now know who Dong-gun Jang is through a Korean
viewpoint. He was great in A Gentleman's Dignity, compared to
this, he's a dandy but it only serves to show his range.
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' [In Taoism, the yin yang symbol is called the "Taijitu".] Yin is female and
yang is male. They fit together as two parts
of a whole.' ' From a philosophical
standpoint practitioners of Zen Yoga see yin-yang as a flow."
"At its heart are
the two poles of existence, which are opposite but
complementary. The light, white yang moving up blends into the
dark, black yin moving down. Yin and yang are dependent opposing
forces that flow in a natural cycle, always seeking balance.
Though they are opposing, they are not in opposition to one
another. As part of the Tao, they are merely two aspects of a
single reality. Each contains the seed of the other, which is
why we see a black spot of yin in the white yang and vice versa.
They do not merely replace each other but actually become each
other through the constant flow of the universe.
appreciating the violence. Get used
to it. There's plenty more to come. Faced with having to kill baby
who is the last member of a clan he has wiped out, Yang stops
killing in order to save the baby. The baby brings out the seed of
yin in Yang who
escapes to a far-away place with the baby to start a new non-violent life.
He even seals his sword shut.
Mad Flow
In killing the man who killed her family, Lynn
breaks free of her past and regains her 'self'.
Lynne and Yang (and yin-yang) come full
circle in an emotional goodbye, and in the ending you can almost see
her soften as she goes back to the innocent beauty she was before
the violence took her family. She wants Yang to stay and for them to
raise the baby, but in order to keep her and the baby safe, he knows
he has to leave and leave the baby with her to raise. This photo speaks volumes about innocence and
horror, safety and danger, life and death, and the cycle of yin-yang.
