Taglines: Assassin. Hero. Legend.
After a lifetime of training in martial arts and swordsmanship, Yang (Jang Dong Gun) has eliminated all but one of his clan’s enemies—an infant whose smile instantly melts his heart. Unwilling to kill her and unable protect her from his own deadly tribe, Yang takes the baby girl and flees, planning to seek refuge with an old friend living in Lode, a frontier town in the American West.
He arrives to find that his friend has died and the once-thriving Gold Rush town is in shambles, inhabited only by a few dozen eccentrics including Lynne (Kate Bosworth), a beautiful, spirited knife thrower-in-training, and Ron, a worn-out drunk (Geoffrey Rush). In order to make a safe home for the child far from the reach of his murderous clansman, Yang decides to stay on as the town’s new laundryman, sealing his sword for good.
Yang unexpectedly finds a kindred spirit in Lynne. Orphaned by a horrifying act of brutality, Lynne has spent ten years plotting revenge against her attacker, the Colonel (Danny Huston). While teaching Yang to run the laundry and look after the baby, she discovers his talent for swordplay and begs him to tutor her in martial arts.
In the midst of Lode’s annual Christmas celebration, the Colonel and his renegade gang return and threaten to destroy the town. Knowing that Lynne will do everything in her power to exact revenge on the Colonel, Yang reluctantly unsheathes his sword, fully aware that the ring of its blade will immediately reveal his location to his own murderous pack.
He leads a fierce and ingenious force of townspeople armed only with improvised weapons and a unique set of skills in an all-out battle. But, as he feared, the sound of his sword brings the ruthless attackers into the fray, leading Yang, Lynne, April and the town folk to their ultimate destinies.
About the Production
With The Warrior’s Way, writer and director Sngmoo Lee has created a film that reflects his own unique background—a balance of Eastern and Western cultures and cinematic traditions. Raised in Korea and educated at the prestigious New York University film program, Lee easily references a wide range of film genres, from timeless cowboy adventures and martial arts extravaganzas to “spaghetti Westerns” and classic gangster films, when speaking about his English language film debut.
First and foremost, says the director, the film is intended to be rousing entertainment. “My goal was to make an extremely cool action movie with some emotion and brain attached to it,” he says. “I always appreciate some sadness in the humor and some intelligence in the action, and vice versa. For me, the heyday of the cinema was the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, when they were making art films that were enjoyable and appealing to the mass audience.”
The first to recognize the potential international appeal of The Warrior’s Way was Korean producer Jooick Lee, highly regarded in Asia for his expertise in producing crossterritorial films. “This is not a typical, formulaic film,” says Lee. “It’s unique and fresh, with some never-before-seen elements that are combined in the right way and at the right time to make a really great film.”
Producer Lee brought the script to the attention of Barrie M. Osborne, who has produced some of the most unconventional and visually innovative epics in recent memory, including the Lord of the Rings franchise and The Matrix. “I liked the cross-cultural insights of The Warrior’s Way,” he says. “Introducing Asian assassins into the Old West is a novel idea. The movie transports the audience to an imaginative world with a very Asian point of view. It’s a broad, action-packed adventure with a tragic love story at its heart.”
In turn, Osborne brought in Michael Peyser, a producer he has known since they were both young filmmakers in New York. “I thought the script was absolutely beautiful,” says Peyser. “It isn’t like any other movie I’ve ever seen. Sngmoo has written some very popular movies in Korea, and he also lived in New York for years. He embodies the Asian tradition and the western tradition brought together.
“The movie is about a hero who undertakes an epic journey and discovers other characters in crisis, which is a tradition of both Asian warrior movies and classic cowboy movies,” he continues. “Sngmoo has brought them together in a way that is incredibly fresh.”
The unexpected twists that Lee built into his script elevate the film beyond a traditional action adventure, says Peyser. “It’s an epic warrior story,” he says. “It’s a love story. It’s a story that has great depth and texture. But the best thing about it is that it seems to be headed exactly where a Western or a Samurai movie would normally go and then it doesn’t go there. The characters don’t act the way we expect them to. They act on something deeper, something they’ve just discovered.
“For example, the hero’s last assignment was to kill this baby, the sole surviving member of his clan’s adversaries,” continues Peyser. “He makes the decision that determines his future because of a baby’s laugh. That moment is enough to spark the intense and emotional odyssey of the warrior Yang and the baby April. In the process, he falls in love with an American woman, and has to make a choice between being with the love of his life and protecting her.”
A Samurai Swordsman in the American West
In The Warrior’s Way’s vividly imagined world, every sunset and sunrise infuses the air with crimson and the night sky floods the landscape with cobalt blue light. It is a world where an army of trained assassins can instantly emerge from a lotus pond and a half-finished Ferris wheel dominates the landscape. Shot almost entirely on studio sets, The Warrior’s Way brings together a kaleidoscope of color, visual effects, evocative costumes, vivid make-up and stylized action to create a dreamlike setting that is not entirely East or West.
To realize his ambitious vision, director Sngmoo Lee put together an impressive production team including Academy Award-winning production designer Dan Hennah. Hennah embraced the opportunity to create a unique, fantastical universe for The Warrior’s Way. “When I first read the script, I could see the mix of Asian elements and cowboy traditions,” he says. “The derelict town with that great image of the half-built Ferris wheel and the carnival lent itself to all sorts of Fellini-esque elements I don’t normally get a chance to explore. Then when I met Sngmoo, he talked about wanting an anime feel, which gave us yet another design element to incorporate.”
Visual effects supervisor Jason Piccioni also worked with Lee from the earliest stages of pre-production through the completion of the film. “Sngmoo is a teacher at his core,” says Piccioni. “He approaches directing as if he were an orchestra conductor. He was very clear about the movie he wanted to make, but he was always open to suggestions. It was great to be involved from the very beginning and it was certainly the most influence I’ve ever had at that stage of filming.”
Piccioni describes the world of the film as like living in a storybook. “When I read the script, it swept me away into this gorgeous imaginary world that I couldn’t wait to see,” he says. “You’re still clearly in the real world, but things are just a little bit off-kilter. It’s always magic hour, that special time at dawn or dusk when the natural light is at its most beautiful,”
Hennah and Piccioni were joined by a team of top creative professionals including director of photography Woo-hyung Kim, concept artist Brendan Heffernan, who drew the initial style pre-visualizations, supervising art director Phil Ivey, costume designer James Acheson (an Oscar winner for The Last Emperor, Dangerous Liaisons and Restoration), and make-up and hair designer Jane O’Kane.
Originally, the filmmakers planned to shoot the film in the Southwestern United States, where the story is set, but it quickly became apparent that achieving the imaginative, fairytalelike setting indicated in the script would be impossible to do on location. “The town in The Warrior’s Way is in the middle of nowhere in the desert,” says director of photography Woohyung Kim. “The real towns we scouted had greenery and mountains nearby and that’s something we didn’t want to have in our background.”
The producers decided that best place to realize their plan would be New Zealand. “New Zealand is the only place we could have made this movie,” says Peyser. “It takes place in a mythical Asia and a mythical American West. Those places aren’t real. They’re part of movie culture and New Zealand is the new capital of imagination. The extraordinary creative professionals there can take a piece of this and a piece of that and put it together to create something totally new and wonderful. The ingenuity and the ‘we can do it’ quality of New Zealand film crews make them the world’s experts at fantasy.”
In order to fulfill Lee’s extraordinary vision, the filmmakers decided to build partial sets and use green screen techniques for set extension and scenic backgrounds. “When Barrie Osborne and I talked about how to achieve the world we envisioned, it seemed much smarter to design sets that would allow us to add the environment,” says Hennah. “It would allow us to achieve the anime look without the added complication of a real distant landscape.”
Creating a seamless world using both the physical world of the sets and the digital world of CGI involved broad-ranging and ongoing collaboration between visual effects and all the production’s other creative and technical departments. According to Piccioni, approximately 1,500 visual effects shots were used in the film. “But the effects are a tool used to tell the story, not an end in themselves,” he says. “This is neither a traditional film where we built all the sets and shot, nor is it a film in which we just threw up green screens and designed everything virtually. We were somewhere in the middle and it took several weeks of planning to figure out where that middle ground should be.”
Supervising art director Phil Ivey led the art department in building 45 sets in six studio spaces on a tightly scheduled rotation to accommodate two units shooting over a 12-week period. “In terms of visuals, the script was a goldmine for us,” Ivey says. “We drew on the ghost towns from the post-Gold Rush era in the southern and western States.”
Creating an environment that reflected Yang’s emotional state was key to guiding the audience through his journey. “Yang shows very little emotion, especially in the beginning of the film,” says Piccioni. “We needed a way to help the audience connect with him. We used the palette of the film to convey his mood visually. For example, when he first arrives in Lode, the colors are harsh, angst-ridden reds and oranges. As Yang begins to settle into the town, we introduce more greens and blues. Then, when the Hell Riders attack the town, we close in the environment with grey storm clouds.”
Director of photography Woo Hyung Kim says further character clues can be found in the lighting. “Yang is always lighted differently from the other characters to set him apart,” he says. “Although he is in the Western town with other characters, we tried create subtle differences in the light to make him look as if he’s there, but he’s not there.”
Hennah also worked closely with the stunt coordinators to create sets that could accommodate the battle scenes. “The action was a major consideration,” he says. “It was a case of function dictating form. With so much choreographed fighting, the sets needed to be a lot more expansive than they might normally be. For example, a Chinese laundry in a Gold Rush town would be quite a small space in reality. Because there is a small army fighting in there, I had to make sense of a laundry that’s almost as big as the town hall. There’s a huge fight sequence in a hotel room, so we made it the presidential suite. We imagined that when this town was pumping, there were 70,000 people living there and the gold was just pouring in, so there was every possibility that the president might turn up.”
For stunt coordinator Augie Davis, being asked to collaborate with production design and visual effects added an exciting new dimension to his work. “My thoughts are in the real world when I design a fight or an action sequence,” says Davis. “In this case, that didn’t always work in exactly the right way for this script. The effects guys had some very cool ideas and we were able to plan each scene in tandem. For example, Yang comes in and cuts a guy in half down the middle. Now that’s plainly impossible to do in the real world, so we had to work it out together.”
Davis also had input into the set-design process, and made an unusual request. He asked that certain sets be made of hard surfaces to give his stunt team a sense of reality for their hits and falls. In the laundry, for example, the benches and tubs are made of concrete. “It’s not always necessary to soften a set-up to make an action sequence work,” he says. “In the laundry, we asked for a very hard set because the rest of the town is full of sand, which is soft. Whenever we came inside, we wanted to be able to interact with hard environments. People are hitting their heads on wringers and tubs, rolling down stairs, going through ceilings. We even used teak instead of balsa because it’s harder and gives more impact.”
Davis says the underlying philosophy of Yang’s fighting style is his efficiency. “It’s one strike, one kill,” he says. “Yang doesn’t hack anybody to death. He just cuts them very cleanly in two. It’s very simple and almost elegant, based on Samurai, but also drawing from other Asian traditions.”
Key to the success of the fight sequences was secret weapon Yuji Shimomura, a Japanese Sword Master. “We wanted to incorporate a unique sword style,” says producer Barrie M. Osborne, “and our stunt coordinator felt we should find someone from Asia. With the help of Jooick and Nansun Shi, we found Yuji, who achieved the singular style in our film through extensive training of our cast and assisting Augie in choreographing the sword fights.”
Jang Dong Gun came to the set with extensive experience in action movies, which Davis says was invaluable. “Dong Gun arrived with a full range of skills. We didn’t need to teach him a lot. He’s very physical, very fit and he has great posture. He’s also quite calm and he listens well. We were so very fortunate to work with him.”
All the actors, no matter their skill level coming in, threw themselves totally into the stunts and action sequences, recalls Davis. “Kate Bosworth is energetic, coordinated, tough and she’s not afraid. She would just put on some extra pads and throw herself around. When we all watched a rough cut of the saloon fight, people commented on what good work the stunt double did. In fact, it was Kate and she was wonderful.
“Geoffrey Rush was put through the wringer,” Davis continues. “We put him on the flying fox cable, he jumped off the Ferris wheel, he was dragged along the ground and bullwhipped. He’s a man who’s willing to do whatever it takes to make his character totally convincing. You’d think after winning an Oscar he’d be immune to that sort of treatment, but Ron is a tough guy, and Geoffrey was willing to be treated like one.”
Performing much of his own stunt work was an important part of the acting challenge for Huston. “I feel more confident as an actor if the images that are being used are mine and not interpreted by a stunt man,” he says. “You get the odd bruise here and there, so you feel like you’ve actually had an honest day’s work. We trained hard for the fight scenes and got it down to a fine dance. Still, you depend greatly on the stuntman to double you, especially in the moments when the action is amped up a bit. They make you look great.”
Creating the costumes for The Warrior’s Way was the kind of challenge that costume designer James Acheson revels in. “It was an unprecedented combination of East and West for me,” he says. “We had everything from Asian assassins to babies to cowboys, and they all needed to have the poetic quality the script demanded. It was a remarkable, delicious thing for any costumer to take on.”
Bosworth asked for and got the opportunity to have considerable input into her character’s look. “She’s kind of a tomboy, so we put her in men’s clothing,” she says. “I wore shoes that were five or six sizes too big, which gave her a real clomping, childlike walk that was essential to the character.”
Lynne undergoes a transformation in the film that is reflected in her wardrobe. “She goes from being a rather grubby tomboy to suddenly realizing that this Asian warrior might just be worth knowing,” says Acheson. “Her costumes reflect that gradual awakening. She starts off in grubby brown buckskin and moves through rusts to pale pinks and pale greens until by the time we get to Christmas, she’s scrubbed up very well.”
Acheson created a powerful signifier of the Colonel’s malevolence with the leather mask that conceals his disfigurement. “During the film, Danny Huston makes the jump from being a young villain to a damaged and bitter villain,” the designer says. “He spent eight solid hours over one weekend trying on two masks and worked with us to subtly change the lines and textures and colors and shapes. That kind of commitment is remarkable.”
Acheson worked with leatherworker Matt Morris to make the mask. “We needed to make it out of something that was malleable,” he says. “We chose leather that was molded in pieces onto a cast of his face. Because it’s leather, the mask itself sweats and glistens, which gives it an eerie kind of life.”
The mask also helped Huston develop signature tics and mannerisms for the Colonel. “The limitations the mask imposed on me as an actor actually helped create the character,” he says. “The masked side of the face was actually quite tranquil, but it distorted the visible side of my face to great effect. It also defined the way the character moves. There was this wonderful little Samurai slit for me to look through, but I didn’t have much peripheral vision. Because most of my vision came from the exposed side, it forced me to move my head in a distinctive way.”
The horrific scar that is exposed late in the film is one of the many effects created by make-up supervisor Jane O’Kane and her team. They also were asked to aid Yang’s transition from the stylized anime look in the film’s outset to a more naturalistic style in Lode.
Bosworth got involved with that aspect of her character’s look as well. “It was such an enjoyable collaboration,” she says. “In my first conversation with Sngmoo, I said ‘she’s got to be a redhead.’ She’s this fiery, passionate, crazy, lovable human being and the vision of wild sunsets behind her reflecting that just cried out for her to be a rich redhead. Later, Jane O’Kane called me and said, ‘I don’t want to scare you, but what do you think about red?’ and I said, ‘Oh, you read my mind.’ We were on the same page from day one.”
According to production designer Dan Hennah, the extraordinary collaborative effort between Sngmoo and the rest of the creative team resulted in the creation of a unique visual language. From classical and contemporary mythology to Japanese anime, Asian martial arts and the cowboy ethos of the Old West, Sngmoo Lee’s rich array of influences challenged them to create some of the most original and exciting work in their careers.
“Sngmoo is a very intelligent man with a very logical brain that’s fueled by crazy, left-of-field ideas,” says Hennah. “Because of the passion and imagination he brought to the table, there’s nothing ordinary about this film. I’m proud to say that every part of it goes the extra mile creatively.”
The Warrior’s Way (2010)
Directed by: Sngmoo Lee
Starring: Dong-gun Jang, Kate Bosworth, Geoffrey Rush, Danny Huston, Tony Cox, Christina Asher, Jed Brophy, Carl Bland, Ian Harcourt, Tony Wyeth, Nic Sampson, Ashley Jones, Matt Gillanders
Screenplay by: Sngmoo Lee
Production Design by: Dan Hennah
Cinematography by: Woo-hyung Kim
Film Editing by: Jonathan Woodford-Robinson
Costume Design by: James Acheson
Set Decoration by: Megan Vertelle
Art Direction by: George Hamilton, Philip Ivey
Music by: Javier Navarrete
MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody violence.
Dstributed by: Relativity Media
Release Date: December 3, 2010
