"The Warrior" feels like a Northern Indian take on the Man With No Name mercenary renouncing violence genre that was influenced by John Ford movies, let alone "High Noon," taken up as samurai by Kurasawa, re-invented by the Italians as spaghetti Westerns, and, I thought, brought back to rest with "The Unforgiven."
The first third of the film looks so much like the old-fashioned Hollywood take on Asian despots that I half expected the war lord to be played by Lee Van Cleef and for young Kirk Douglas or Tony Curtis to ride up.
Though we are given no information about the locale or time period or if it's based on a legend or whatever, this take on the genre has breathtaking local scenery and native actors partaking in the usual greedy violence, though the blood is almost too discreetly off-screen to be haunting, plus heavy-handed spiritual magic realism, complete with a fortune-telling blind crone.
Irfan Khan as the henchman suddenly struck with a conscience, however, is mesmerizing and gives the film whatever gravitas it has, as it becomes his picaresque tale of searching for redemption. He also has wonderful chemistry with the excellent child and teen actors who come and go in the story. His performance raises it above the similar looking but pedestrian recent Chinese warlord film "Warriors of Heaven and Earth (Tian di ying xiong)." It is both intriguing and off-putting for the pacing that the mano a mano duel doesn't really feel climactic, compared to the warrior's true quest for inner peace.
The bombastic music is disconcertingly Western, even though we occasionally hear local singing and instruments playing on screen.
It is very commendable that the English subtitles are legible throughout, even through many desert scenes.
But I simply do not understand why it got the BAFTA awards.
The first third of the film looks so much like the old-fashioned Hollywood take on Asian despots that I half expected the war lord to be played by Lee Van Cleef and for young Kirk Douglas or Tony Curtis to ride up.
Though we are given no information about the locale or time period or if it's based on a legend or whatever, this take on the genre has breathtaking local scenery and native actors partaking in the usual greedy violence, though the blood is almost too discreetly off-screen to be haunting, plus heavy-handed spiritual magic realism, complete with a fortune-telling blind crone.
Irfan Khan as the henchman suddenly struck with a conscience, however, is mesmerizing and gives the film whatever gravitas it has, as it becomes his picaresque tale of searching for redemption. He also has wonderful chemistry with the excellent child and teen actors who come and go in the story. His performance raises it above the similar looking but pedestrian recent Chinese warlord film "Warriors of Heaven and Earth (Tian di ying xiong)." It is both intriguing and off-putting for the pacing that the mano a mano duel doesn't really feel climactic, compared to the warrior's true quest for inner peace.
The bombastic music is disconcertingly Western, even though we occasionally hear local singing and instruments playing on screen.
It is very commendable that the English subtitles are legible throughout, even through many desert scenes.
But I simply do not understand why it got the BAFTA awards.