Warrior

[Cue obligatory sing-along with Scandal's 1980s hit "The Warrior" because I'm just that dorky.]



This is a movie I probably wouldn't have seen had it not been for very enthusiastic responses coming out of an Ain't It Cool screening. I put it off a little while (hence my lateness) because fight movies aren't typically my thing, unless they are largely about something else (such as Million Dollar Baby). As such, I feel like I could have skipped this one. That's not to say it's a bad movie, but it's just not my kind of movie. I also have to say that the fact that the director also made Miracle was not a selling point for me. "Inspirational" "sports" films are rarely my cup of tea.

That's not to say that Warrior is a bad movie or that there weren't things I enjoyed about it, because it's not and there certainly were. I thought the performances all around were really great. Nick Nolte, I thought, was especially strong in a pretty thankless, generic role. The fight choreography was incredible, and the ending was surprisingly suspenseful.

It was an interesting decision to leave the abuse backstory mostly off-page, with only a few references here and there, but it doesn't do the characters any favors. The brothers seem less sympathetic, because we never see what they suffered at the hands of their father. Nick Nolte's character passes 1000 days of sobriety (and then falls off the wagon briefly), but we can't be invested in it because we haven't seen what he was like when he was a drunk and a wife/child-beater. And the one time we see him drunk he's just kind of sad, not scary like we've been told he used to be. It's just hard to get invested in a family's history when you're only allowed to hear about it.

Another thing I found a bit strange was a handful of shots of people watching the "Sparta" tournament on television. There were crowd scenes in the actual arena, sure, but all the reaction shots of people watching were of people just by themselves, which felt a bit unnatural (until the end, of course, when the students are watching the final fights at the drive-in). You want, when you watch scenes like that, to be inspired to jump up and cheer yourself, and I just wasn't feeling it, and it didn't feel like the movie was even interested in arousing that response.

I did like the (somewhat) suspense of the ending, because all the way through the tournament you're cheering for both brothers. I say somewhat because if you've seen the trailer you already know that they end up fighting each other in the final. You want to see them both win, and they both have very sympathetic stories, but I found myself wondering who to root for in the end. It didn't take long to figure out who the winner *had* to be, from a narrative standpoint, and I guess you could imagine that the winner could have shared a bit of the prize money with the other brother. I wondered how that all worked out as the credits rolled, but I was kind of relieved the movie didn't show it to us.

I sort of giggled at the big confrontation scene on the beach, because it looks like both brothers randomly decided to go walking on the beach and just happened to come across each other. That scene is probably the strongest in the movie, and I'm so glad they got all that out there and didn't have a bunch of dialogue in the actual fight. There's almost none there, which is perfect, until the very end. It got a bit weird at that point - there's just something about two men rolling around with their legs around each other saying "I love you." :P

The Karate Kid (2010)

The Karate Kid (2010)


In a time of far too many remakes, this is a surprisingly good one. John Avildsen, who directed the original, had a great "underdog movie" mold and he used it to great effect with his 1984 film, just as he did 8 years before with the Best Picture winner Rocky. So when you've got a good formula, it's tricky to mess with it.

Which is why the remake is nearly a beat-for-beat copy of the original, only put into the new setting of China so that the sights are different, more dramatic, more majestic. And, despite what the title says (I will never understand why that essential change was not made), it's a different martial art, so the moves are different. Seriously, it's like all those posts about Avatar this winter, where someone just took a copy of the already existing story and, as they say, filed the serial numbers off (and not even all of them). Dre instantly makes a friend when he gets to his new home, but the guy disappears after the first few minutes of the movie. Dre is targeted by the bullies because he flirts with a girl one of them knows (or is "promised" to?). He gets beaten up and hides from the bullies at school. He gets just a little revenge and gets a group ass-kicking for his trouble, which is interrupted by the maintenance man who is actually rather good at ass-kicking himself. Dre and the maintenance man go to the - I'm sure the word is not dojo - class where his bullies are learning kung fu, and the similarities to the original have to be seen to be believed. Even the tournament hits almost exactly every note the original does. Dre is given a special garment - in this case a white tunic "like Bruce Lee's" before his first fight. There is then a tournament montage accompanied by some peppy music - sadly, not Joe Esposito's awesome "You're the Best." Dre makes it to the semi-finals and his opponent is told by his master to break a rule and disqualify himself in order to put Dre out of commission. Dre is injured and pleads with his teacher to do that magic healing thing we saw earlier in the film so that he can fight in the final. Dre goes to fight, on an injured leg, and his final opponent is instructed to sweep break his leg. And while it's not the Crane, Dre still witnesses ancient technique that somehow masters and uses in the very end to defeat his opponent.

This is not to say that these similarities are a flaw in the film. Far from it. For people who haven't seen the original, this simply pushes all the same buttons that the original did for us fans. As I said, it's a very effective formula, so why mess with it. For us fans, though, it does something just as cool. Since we know how the story goes, it becomes a game of how much of the original can they fit into this new setting, and how will they transpose our favorite elements of the original.

I thought this was a very satisfying film. Jaden Smith, it must be said, is a little annoying at times. Jackie Chan gets to demonstrate that he can act AND fight (his character's Obligatory Family Tragedy scene is actually very well played). And Taraji P. Henson is possibly the strongest link in the cast.