The Warrior's Way

Most of what happens in The Warrior's Way, an eastern-tinged Western about an Asian assassin (Dong-gun Jang) hiding out a frontier town, sounds like the ravings of an undermedicated fanboy. Samurais kill cowboys, cowboys kill circus freaks — all for no particular reason other than to give director Sngmoo Lee a chance to go buck wild with eye-catching visuals lifted nearly intact from the reels of Zhang Yimou (Hero) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Micmacs), among others. Backing up Jang is a cast of Hollywood vets phoning in plasticine versions of characters they've done before: the sexy tomboy (Kate Bosworth), the half-mad codger (Geoffrey Rush), the fully batty villain (Danny Huston). There isn't a shred of subtlety in their clowning — or in any part of the movie, which clumsily shoots for operatic highs and lows. But with so many borrowed bits and pieces, the only feeling it successfully evokes is déjà vu. D+