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Movie Review | 'Warrior'

A Tale of Jacob, Esau and Muscles

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By A.O. Scott

• Sept. 8, 2011

At one point in “Warrior” we see Brendan Conlon, a high school science teacher, laying down the law — the law of physics that is — for his students. “Force equals mass times acceleration,” he writes on the board. That formula might be of use in thinking this new film from Gavin O’Connor, which grasps the Newtonian principles at the heart of pugilistic melodrama.

“Warrior” takes place in the world of mixed martial arts , and it is appropriately blunt, powerful and relentless, a study of male bodies in sweaty motion and masculine emotions in teary turmoil.

But like the brutal, brawling sport that provides Mr. O’Connor with a backdrop, a storehouse of metaphors and a pretext for staging some viscerally effective fight scenes, “Warrior” possesses surprising poetry and finesse. Which is not to say that it is subtle. The director’s impressive technique — and all the grace and discipline of his excellent, hard-working cast — is mustered with a single, unambiguous goal in mind. This movie wants to knock you out. It will.

Brendan (Joel Edgerton) is a dedicated educator and a devoted family man. His students adore him, and so does his wife, Tess (Jennifer Morrison). But Brendan’s roots and his future are entangled in more violent pursuits. He used to be something of a big deal on the mixed martial arts circuit, and now, to make some extra money — and perhaps also to find an outlet for the rage that simmers behind his kindly eyes and gentle grin — he fights for cash in parking lots. As hard as they work, Brendan and Tess have trouble staying afloat. They are, indeed, under water, carrying debt on their modest house in Philadelphia that is much larger than its post-real-estate-bubble value. And one of their children requires expensive medical care.

Meanwhile Tommy (Tom Hardy), Brendan’s estranged younger brother, returns to the modest house in Pittsburgh where they grew up. Years before, Tommy and their mother (whose maiden name he has adopted) fled the boys’ abusive, alcoholic father, Paddy, a wrestling coach played with growling, broken-down grandeur by Nick Nolte. Tommy, a former Marine who served in Iraq, is not looking for reconciliation. He’s looking for a fight, and without forgiving his sobered-up, apologetic dad, he engages the old man’s professional services as he prepares to go into the ring.

Unbeknownst to each other, both Tommy and Brendan — who is coached by an old friend (Frank Grillo) — are training for Sparta, a $5 million, winner-take-all tournament. Every sports movie needs a Big Game, and in Mr. O’Connor’s hands Sparta becomes a frenzied, fleshy opera: a grand, grunting, assaultive spectacle of redemption and revenge.

Tommy’s style of fighting recalls that of the young, unbeatable Mike Tyson. He attacks with a combination of speed and strength that turns an opponent’s bravado into fear in a matter of seconds. Brendan relies more on technical finesse and a capacity to withstand punishment. Mr. Hardy and Mr. Edgerton — an Englishman and an Australian playing a pair of Irish-American he-men — are physically potent actors, but the key to the movie’s effectiveness lies in their ability to convey fragility. These are tough guys, but you can only care about them if you believe that they can break.

At the basic level of plot, what will happen at Sparta is never really in doubt. Though there are other imposing fighters in the Spartan ranks — including a fearsome Russian who recalls (though he does not physically resemble) Dolph Lundgren in “Rocky IV” — it is obvious that the bad brotherly blood between Tommy and Brendan can be expiated only one way, in a final showdown.

Mr. O’Connor, who wrote the “Warrior” screenplay with Anthony Tambakis and Cliff Dorfman, knows perfectly well that surprise is not the essence of sports-movie suspense. A few years back he directed “Miracle,” a rousing reconstruction of one of the most celebrated athletic moments in recent history, the 1980 victory of the underdog United States Olympic ice hockey team over its fearsome Soviet rival. It’s not as if knowing the outcome of the real story diminishes that movie’s impact. On the contrary, the sense of inevitability and improbability makes its triumphant finish all the more cathartic.

The engine of inevitability in “Warrior” is not history but fate. Paddy’s constant companion in his lonely, sober old age is an audio-book version of “Moby-Dick.” That novel’s theme of monomaniacal, violent obsession and the Shakespearean cadences of its prose underline what is happening on screen in a way that is only occasionally heavy-handed. (And in any case a good fight picture, like a good fighter, can benefit from a heavy hand.) Brendan, Tommy and Paddy uphold traditional family values — the tradition, that is, of Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, King Lear and the fallen houses of ancient Greek tragedy.

But if there is something primal and archaic in Mr. O’Connor’s fable of fathers and sons, he nonetheless grounds it in the painful realities of contemporary America. With arresting honesty and enormous compassion — but without making a big topical deal out of it — “Warrior” looks at an American working class reeling from the one-two punch of war and recession. Tommy and Brendan are too proud for self-pity, which makes the evident pain of their circumstances all the more affecting.

They fight because every other way of being a man has been compromised, undermined or taken away. Patriarchal authority, as represented by Paddy, is cruel and unbending until it turns sentimental and pathetic. The roads to an honorable life promised by work and military service are mined and muddied by the greed and mendacity of the institutions — government, schools, banks — that are supposed to uphold integrity.

In such conditions stripping down to your shorts and beating another guy senseless can seem not only logical, but also noble. The mock-gladiatorial theatrics of mixed martial arts may look tawdry and overblown, but the sport, perhaps even more than boxing, expresses a deep and authentic impulse to find meaning through the infliction and acceptance of pain. While the Conlon brothers are both fighting for the money, the real stakes are much deeper. Though their climactic confrontation is terrifyingly violent, it is also tender. And the most disarming thing about “Warrior” is that, for all its mayhem, it is a movie about love.

“Warrior” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). A lot of fighting.

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Gavin O’Connor; written by Mr. O’Connor, Anthony Tambakis and Cliff Dorfman, based on a story by Mr. O’Connor and Mr. Dorfman; director of photography, Masanobu Takayanagi; edited by John Gilroy, Sean Albertson, Matt Chessé and Aaron Marshall; music by Mark Isham; production design by Dan Leigh; costumes by Abigail Murray; produced by Gavin O’Connor and Greg O’Connor; released by Lionsgate. Running time: 2 hours 19 minutes.

WITH: Joel Edgerton (Brendan), Tom Hardy (Tommy), Jennifer Morrison (Tess), Frank Grillo (Frank Campana) and Nick Nolte (Paddy).

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Warrior: film review.

Director Gavin O'Connor's emotionally raw family drama stars Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte.

By Kirk Honeycutt

Kirk Honeycutt

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With a fractured nuclear family that Eugene O’Neill would embrace and electrifying fight scenes in the not-quite-mainstream sport of mixed martial arts, Gavin O’Connor ’s Warrior makes for a sturdy, visceral entertainment. It’s a long movie that feels short: It grabs you in early scenes, intense though low-key before all hell breaks loose, then keeps you riveted to its mostly male characters — a father, two sons, a trainer and, yes, a wife who gets left out of key decisions — as members of a blue-collar family head for a winner-takes-all tournament in Atlantic City.

Each role is a meaty one for the movie’s highly watchable actors while O’Connor’s crew, especially cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi and no less than four editors, has carefully constructed an atmosphere in which the implausible might flourish.

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Superior to last year lionized The Fighter , Warrior may go several rounds starting in early September. Lionsgate needs to put some muscle into its marketing campaign though, and word of mouth will have to energize the fight film’s male demographic.

O’Connor, who previously helmed the sports movie Miracle , about the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team, and Pride and Glory , a multi-generational police family saga, more or less combines these themes within two sets of highly contrasted worlds. There is the darkly shot, working-class neighborhoods of Pittsburgh where a despised pater familias , Paddy Conlon ( Nick Nolte ), sober for nearly 1,000 days following a lifetime of drunken abuse, hangs out, and the sunny suburbs where his high school teacher-son, Brendan ( Joel Edgerton ), lives with his wife Tess ( Jennifer Morrison ) and two youngsters.

A further contrast comes from that city’s sweaty, dirty gyms and a temporary tent in a strip joint parking lot where local punks beat each other into raw meat versus a “World Series” of mixed martial arts staged within the neon glitz of Atlantic City.

The movie begins in Pittsburgh where a wary ceasefire between Paddy and his son’s family, with everyone refusing to acknowledge the other’s existence, gets disrupted by the abrupt re-appearance of Brendan’s brother, Tommy ( Tom Hardy ). He is a ghost from the dead as no one has seen him in 14 years.

A back story gradually materializes: Neither brother could stand their dad but Tommy chose to head west with their mother, where she died a painful death from cancer, while Brendan opted to stay in Pittsburgh to be near his sweetheart, whom he eventually married.

Tommy resents his brother’s “betrayal” almost as much as he does his father’s abuse but, oddly, it’s his father he chooses to look up: Once a talented amateur wrestler trained by his dad, Tommy wants the old man to train him once again so he can enter the mixed martial-arts event.

In a coincidence, of which the film abounds, Brendan also wants to enter that contest as his house is headed for foreclosure and he sees no other option. So the brothers are on a collision course, and the film blithely assumes one can willy-nilly enter this contest despite having no recent experience.

A video showing Tommy taking apart a champion while sparing gets posted on the Internet, which partially explains why Tommy is able to enter the tournament. This is the same video that leads to the revelation of Tommy’s heroic rescue of fellow Marines while stationed in Iraq, which makes this dark-horse combatant a popular favorite.

O’Connor and fellow writers Anthony Tambakis and Cliff Dorfman concentrate on their characters, giving you enough information but leaving plenty of room for these most capable actors to fill in the idiosyncratic derails.

Surly and brooding about wrongs, real and imagined, Hardy’s thickly muscled, highly tattooed ex-soldier is a ticking bomb. Emotionally, he is in a permanent fighter’s crouch, in constant vigilance for the next punch fate will throw his way while looking to do damage to any and all foes.

Edgerton is a more nuanced character. Backed into a corner financially, he has no choice, or at least thinks he doesn’t, but to fight. His childhood has taught him the need of a strong family so he pores his affection and devotion into his own. Yet, shades of his dad, his decision to re-enter the ring is a selfish one that he shares with his wife only after he’s made it.

Like many ex-alkies, Nolte’s Paddy wraps himself in blandness as a kind of disguise. He’s hiding from his former self, even to the point that Tommy says, more than once, he prefers the drunk to this dull and weak person.

The “normal” characters in the screenplay help to balance the three Old Testament types. This would include Frank Grillo , who plays Brendan’s trainer, dubious about his client but too much of a friend to say no, and Morrison as the wife whom the script shortchanges. The voice of reason is too muted here.

For the footage of extended fights over a two-day tournament, whether shooting from the rafters or up close in the feral ring itself, Takayanagi’s cameras dart and weave just like fighters. Sometimes they may even miss a punch and instead come to rest on an anxious corner man or a screaming face in the crowd. The excitement of these matches is brilliantly captured, almost horrifyingly so. Did a chiropractor invent this sport? Being slammed on your back or neck repeatedly is a tough way to earn a buck — or even five million.

For an “entertainment,” Warrior accomplishes a lot. The family drama resonates strongly with a resolution that, in retrospect, seems like the only way the brothers could have rediscovered blood ties. Meanwhile their fights are downright compelling. Instead of interrupting the drama, the story continues in the ring as the two fighters drag a lifetime of emotional torment in with them. They’re fighting their demons as much as their opponents. Warrior is one of the few fight films in which winning or losing is not the key factor.

Opens: Friday, Sept. 9 (Lionsgate) Production companies: Lionsgate and Mimran Schur Pictures present a Lionsgate / Mimran Schur Pictures, Solaris Entertainment and Filmtribe production. Cast: Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, Jennifer Morrison, Frank Grillo, Nick Nolte, Denzel Whitaker, Bryan Callen, Kevin Dunn Director: Gavin O’Connor Screenwriters: Gavin O’Connor, Anthony Tambakis, Cliff Dorfman Story by: Gavin O’Connor, Cliff Dorfman Producer: Gavin O’Connor, Greg O’Connor Executive producer: Michael Paseornek, Lisa Ellzey, David Mimran, Jordan Schur, John J. Kelly Director of photography: Masanobu Takayanagi Production designer: Don Leigh Music: Mark Isham Costume designer: Abigail Murray Editor: John Gilroy, Sean Albertson, Matt Cheesé, Aaron Marshall PG-13 rating, 139 minutes

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An improbably effective and affecting mix of raw emotions and exciting smackdowns.

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An improbably effective and affecting mix of raw emotions and exciting smackdowns, “ Warrior ” shapes up as a pic with the potential to appeal to critics and audiences alike. Lionsgate faces the formidable challenge of convincing potential ticketbuyers that there’s as much heart and soul as blood and thunder in this sharply observed drama involving long-estranged brothers destined to compete in a high-stakes, winner-take-all mixed martial arts tournament. But savvy marketing — along with upbeat reviews and word-of-mouth raves — could push the pic toward scoring a four-quadrant knockout.

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Working from a script he co-wrote with Anthony Tambakis and Cliff Dorfman, helmer Gavin O’Connor (who dealt with the slightly less violent sport of hockey in 2004’s “Miracle”) spends much of the first hour methodically revealing backstories and defining current circumstances for the three lead characters, interrupting the drama every so often for a scene in which a character kicks, punches or otherwise pummels someone else in a MMA -style match-up. During the early going, however, there’s appreciably more attention paid to action outside the ring.

Popular on Variety

An Iraq War veteran, Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy) returns home to Philadelphia after a 14-year absence and pays a surprise visit to his dad, Paddy (Nick Nolte), a recovering alcoholic who’s anxiously approaching his thousandth day of sobriety. It’s not exactly a warm reunion: Tommy, wielding scorn and sarcasm like blunt instruments, all too vividly recalls having to go on the run with his now-deceased mom years earlier to escape Paddy’s booze-fueled brutality. But even back in the bad old days, Paddy was an adept wrestling coach, and Tommy benefited from his tutelage. Now the prodigal son wants his father to help him prepare for Sparta, an MMA event with a $5 million purse.

Paddy, deeply ashamed of past sins and desperate to reconnect with Tommy, agrees to be his son’s trainer, stoically accepting Tommy’s repeated recriminations and humiliations as a kind of penance.

Even as father and son get ready to rumble, however, Tommy’s older brother, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), begins his own journey to Sparta. Brendan, who put aside many of his dreams when Tommy and their mom departed, also seeks aid from a former mentor — an MMA trainer (Frank Grillo) who uses Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as an unlikely practice tool — after the discovery that he’s been participating in underground bouts gets him suspended from his high-school teaching job.

O’Connor adroitly sustains an air of kitchen-sink realism throughout the first half of “Warrior,” precisely and persuasively describing the socioeconomic specifics of his characters’ day-to-day lives. More importantly, O’Connor elicits such powerful performances from his three leads — and gets such first-rate work from supporting players Grillo and Jennifer Morrison, playing Brendan’s childhood sweetheart — that he keeps the drama grippingly focused despite the fuzziness of a few plot details.

Occasionally recalling the bruised and brooding virility of a young Marlon Brando, Hardy is arrestingly intense as Tommy, by turns implosive and explosive as he alternates between guilt and rage, savagery and self-loathing. In perfect counterpoint, Edgerton winningly portrays Brendan as a sensitive and passionate man who must dredge up inner furies — and feed on mounting desperation — to emerge victorious in his MMA battles.

To their considerable credit, O’Connor and his co-scripters generate virtually equal sympathy for each brother, coming up with an emotionally and dramatically satisfying payoff for their climactic cage match.

Nolte’s heartfelt and fearless performance as the anguished Paddy — a man whose self-abnegation is such that he no longer feels entitled to express anger — ranks with the veteran actor’s finest work. Still, some auds may feel frustrated by the pic’s evasiveness after planting strong hints (most notably, Paddy’s obsessive interest in “Moby Dick”) that the character may be haunted by even worse sins in his past.

Most of the second half of “Warrior” is devoted to the Sparta tournament in an aggressively gaudy Atlantic City, as the mano-a-mano mayhem threatens to overshadow the dramatic interactions between the bouts. (Just how extreme are these battles? According to the credits, even the stunt doubles required a double.) Lenser Masanobu Takayanagi joins forces with editors John Gilroy, Sean Albertson, Matt Chesse and Aaron Marshall to make the fight scenes — skillfully choreographed by JJ “Loco” Perry — more than believable enough to make viewers wince or cheer exactly when they’re supposed to.

But the production values are every bit as impressive during the deliberately drab and dreary scenes in Philadelphia. That’s where “Warrior” patiently lays the groundwork for its consistently compelling narrative, preparing auds for an ending that just might move some strong men to tears.

• Production: A Lionsgate release presented with Mimran Schur Pictures of a Lionsgate/Mimran Schur Pictures production in association with Solaris Entertainment and Filmtribe. Produced by Gavin O'Connor, Greg O'Connor. Executive producers, Michael Paseornek, Lisa Ellzey, David Mimran, Jordan Schur, John J. Kelly. Co-producers, Anthony Tambakis, Jamie Marshall, Josh Fagin. Directed by Gavin O'Connor. Screenplay, O'Connor, Anthony Tambakis, Cliff Dorfman; story, O'Connor, Dorfman.
• Crew: Camera (Deluxe color), Masanobu Takayanagi; editors, John Gilroy, Sean Albertson, Matt Chesse, Aaron Marshall; music, Mark Isham; music supervisor, Brian Ross: production designer, Dan Leigh; art director, James Donahue; set decorator, Ron von Blomberg; costume designer, Abigail Murray; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Peter J. Devlin, Glen Trew; re-recording mixers, Gary Summers, Christian P. Minkler; stunt coordinator/fight choreographer, JJ "Loco" Perry; assistant director, Jamie Marshall; casting, Randi Hiller. Reviewed at Edwards Marq*E Stadium 23, Houston, Aug. 3, 2011. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 139 MIN.
• With: Brendan Conlon - Joel Edgerton Tommy Conlon - Tom Hardy Paddy Conlon - Nick Nolte Tess Conlon - Jennifer Morrison Frank Campana - Frank Grillo Principal Zito - Kevin Dunn Colt Boyd - Maximiliano Hernandez Bryan Callen - Himself Sam Sheridan - Himself Pilar Fernandez - Vanessa Martinez Koba - Kurt Angle Pete "Mad Dog" Grimes - Erik Apple

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Warrior Movie Review

Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton), a high school physics teacher, has a house the bank is about to foreclose on and a daughter with an (expensive) heart defect. He’s also a former mixed-martial-arts champion, and so — strictly for the money — he decides to get back in the ring, even if the clawing, kicking, anything-goes bouts threaten to kill him. Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy), an Iraq-war veteran who left the battlefield under mysterious circumstances, is also an MMA fighter, and he too wants back in the ring. The two men are brothers, and were once close. But the only thing that unites them now, apart from their ruthless hand-to-hand prowess, is how much they hate their father, Paddy (Nick Nolte), a recovering alcoholic whose drinking tore the family apart.

Warrior , a two-track drama of fighting and redemption, tells the parallel stories of Brendan and Tommy, and the movie, with its grim, deliberate rhythms and grainy ’70s-style look, comes on as if it were no mere sports fable. It’s about demon-haunted Irish Catholic men testing and punishing themselves. It’s about broken families coming together. It’s about economic desperation and about America getting off the ropes and recovering its fighting spirit. If Rocky was sweet and inspiring, and The Fighter was touching and fascinating, Warrior is at times almost gravely self-important. The gifted director Gavin O’Connor ( Miracle ) brings the film an affecting, ripped-from-the-guts spirit, even if he can’t really hide how many old-movie tropes are floating around in it.

Mostly, Warrior is a showcase for its up-and-coming stars. Edgerton, from last year’s Animal Kingdom , and Hardy, who stole scenes as the identity forger in Inception , both have a tense, tough presence, though in a slightly colorless way. You buy them as brothers, and as gnarly brawlers hungry to win, but Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale they are not. In this film, they’re closer to the second coming of Tom Berenger and Michael Paré. B

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• Drama , Sports

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In Theaters

• September 9, 2011
• Tom Hardy as Tom Conlon; Joel Edgerton as Brendan Conlon; Jennifer Morrison as Tess Conlon; Nick Nolte as Paddy Conlon; Frank Grillo as Frank Campana

Home Release Date

• December 20, 2011
• Gavin O'Connor

Distributor

Movie review.

Beasts we can be, ravenous and cruel. Destruction is in our nature. We must be taught to build a thing. But to destroy? It’s easy, like breathing. We beat and bend, crush and kick and tear.

And once we get a taste for it, it’s hard to walk away.

Paddy Conlon knows well the taste of destruction. For years he poured it from a liquor bottle and drank it down. For years he gave of it freely—bellowing, berating and striking his family, forcing them to swallow his rage again and again. He was chaos, tearing apart everything around him and consuming even himself.

It was Paddy who trained Tommy to wrestle, burnishing the boy for greatness. That was before Tommy and his mother split town, putting as many miles between them and Paddy as they could. Until one day when Paddy comes homes and finds Tommy sitting on the doorstep, eyes cold and angry underneath his hood.

Tommy hates his father, even as he asks Paddy to help him train again. Tommy didn’t just learn about wrestling from his father, but about rage. And now he lives in a bubble of fury, a fiery circle of destruction.

Brendan Conlon, Paddy’s older son, knows all about destruction too. He’s watched his father wreak it. As a high school physics teacher, he’s studied. it. And as a former mixed martial artist, he’s experienced more than his fair share of it—quitting the cage, we’re led to believe, after a particularly brutal beatdown. He turned his back on it for his daughters: His wife says they agreed they shouldn’t live in a family “where their father gets beat up for a living.” But when financial difficulties strike, Brendan feels this violent and lucrative sport hauling him in again.

Three men, torn by destruction, pulled together by a sport predicated on it. Is it possible that these characters have, in the midst of all the havoc, the opportunity to build something?

[ Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

To answer the question above … yes. In the midst of Warrior’ s punches and kicks and guillotine holds, something else is going on. Underneath the violence there’s reconciliation, redemption and the renewal of a form of family. Let’s not mince words here: The three main protagonists—all of them—are messed up. But in their own ways, they’re all trying to get better.

Brendan is a family man—the sort of guy who lets his daughters paint rosy circles on his cheeks during one of their birthday parties, the kind of man who stays up late fixing their dollhouse furniture. And when one of his daughters is born with a serious (and expensive) heart ailment, Brendan does what it takes to save the family house.

Tommy, once an active Marine, calls his brothers in the service his family. We learn he saved the life of a Marine in Iraq by ripping off the door of a tank while it was sinking in a river—then running away without a word of thanks. Now that he’s back in the States, folks are calling him a war hero and rooting for him to win a prestigious and lucrative MMA tourney. What would he do with the millions in cash he’d win? Give it to the widow of his best friend—a man killed in action.

And Paddy? He’s at least trying to find his family again. He knows he’s made mistakes. He knows he might never make up for what he’s done. But he’s trying, and when the movie opens we learn that he’s been sober for nearly three years.

The climactic showdown between the brothers is brutal and uncomfortable. Tommy, fueled by rage, wants to tear Brendan apart for mostly imagined past hurts. And when Brendan injures Tommy in the third round, separating his shoulder, Tommy still won’t quit. It’s almost as if he’s determined to either kill or die, the only two ways he seems capable of quieting the beast inside. Brendan doesn’t want to hurt his brother anymore, but he knows that inside the cage—and inside his brother’s head—there’s no other way. So Brendan pounds Tommy to the ground and clamps himself onto him, shouting as the crowd goes crazy around them, “Tap out, Tommy! It’s over!” And finally, “I love you!”

Tommy taps—a sign of submission. And the brothers walk out of the arena together, Brendan’s arms draped around Tommy like a coat.

Spiritual Elements

Director Gavin O’Connor says that his movie’s title has been misunderstood, at least to some extent. People think that it refers to the MMA world in which the film takes place, he told Plugged In , “about guys in a cage beating the heck out of each other.” Not so, he said. “The intention of the title had more to do with spiritual warfare.”

Much of that warfare centers around Paddy, the only explicitly Christian character. And it’s suggested that faith helped Paddy turn his life around. We see him leave church and compliment the father, and we spot a Holy Bible on a table in his house. O’Connor describes him as a man who’s on a “spiritual path of sobriety, and a spiritual path of making amends to his sons and trying to get their forgiveness—which is ultimately what the movie’s about.”

Realistically, Tommy, who saw his own deeply faithful mother die painfully, has no use for Paddy’s conversion. He bitterly tells Paddy how she died, “all the while waiting for your pal Jesus to save her. … I guess Jesus was down at the mill forgiving all the drunks.”

Sexual Content

Brendan’s wife, Tess, suggests that he wait up for her so they can (it’s insinuated) fool around. “Promises, promises,” he says. Brendan’s first fights take place outside a strip club. (One of his students calls it a “t-tty bar.”)

Violent Content

The sport of mixed martial arts is essentially a mash-up of boxing, wrestling and martial arts, where contestants try to overcome one another through a variety of punches, kicks and holds. While there’s some serious strategy involved, MMA bouts often look and feel like barely controlled street fights. They can be brutal and, within the confines of Warrior , almost gladiatorial. The fact that they take place in a literal cage doesn’t help.

We see fighters knocked out cold or “strangled” into submission. And one man dislocates the shoulder of another. Many of the holds used are designed to break bones (encouraging fighters to tap out before they hear a pop).

One of the announcers says, after a particularly bloody battle, “You do something [like that] on the street, they lock you up and throw away the key.” He’s exaggerating—but just barely.

Brendan’s regularly a mass of cuts and bruises after spending time in the cage, and sometimes his face looks as if it’s been through a thresher. The brutality he subjects himself to is perhaps particularly painful to watch since the film makes it clear that he’s been seriously injured in the arena before. The fact that he’s on the wrong side of 30, battling blokes so much bigger and more violent than he is, adds to the audience’s discomfort. During one round, the announcers practically beg the referee to stop the fight to keep Brendan from suffering irrevocable injury. And in doing so they lend punctuation to the film’s emotional assertion that Brendan is risking his life (or at least his health) every time he climbs into the cage.

I’ve already referenced Paddy’s domestic violence, which we hear about but don’t see.

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word and 15 s-words, along with “a‑‑,” “b‑‑ch,” “b‑‑tard” and “h‑‑‑.” Jesus’ name is abused four or five times, and God’s name is misused another 10, sometimes paired with “d‑‑n.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Even though it was Paddy’s alcoholism that drove his family away, Tommy lambastes his father for getting sober, nearly demanding that Paddy have a drink with him. When Paddy refuses, Tommy says, “I think I liked it better when you were drunk.”

Some of that attitude may have to do with the fact that Tommy can’t break the chain himself, often drinking to excess, and turning sullen and hateful when he’s had too much. He also pops pills—which Paddy makes him give up before they start training again.

After a horrible encounter with Tommy, who once again tells his father how much he wished he still drank, Paddy goes up to his room and does just that—getting drunk while listening to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick . In his drunken condition, he gets the story of Captain Ahab and the white whale confused with his own family situation, and he paces the room, weeping, begging the rage-filled Ahab to give up the pursuit. “We’re lost!” he hollers at Tommy when his son finds him. “We’re lost, Tommy!” And Tommy, finally, sits down on the bed, allowing his father to rest in his lap as he still mumbles and weeps. “I always loved you,” Paddy says.

Other Negative Elements

We learn that war-hero Tommy is actually a deserter, and that he now competes under his mother’s name to evade capture. Brendan lies to Tess at first about his fighting, knowing she’d disapprove. He finally confesses after the marks on his face grow too obvious.

Warrior features strong performances from Hollywood staples Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte. It’s a quality film, but it’s harsh, pushing the PG-13 boundaries with its violence and language.

It’s also being marketed as a Christian film—a label director Gavin O’Connor (who helmed  Miracle and Pride and Glory ) doesn’t try to shirk.

“In regard to Christian values, I think the message is very Christian,” he says.

The advance screening I attended was filled with local faith leaders, and representatives handed out a small “film companion” loaded with Christian discussion points and Bible verses. Clearly, the makers are hoping Christian audiences can take Warrior’ s theme of forgiveness to heart—forgiving the film of its content while embracing its messages.

“In real life, we are faced with ugliness at times, and we’re faced with massive challenges and pain and heartbreak and harsh language, profanity,” O’Connor says. And he adds that to deliver the film’s message of forgiveness he had to show that ugliness: “For me, I didn’t know how to get that message across in a film without having to deal with the flip side of it.”

Which leaves me, at the end of this review, conflicted—strangely wishing that the movie wasn’t being pushed so explicitly to a Christian audience.

When it comes to mainstream movies, we ( Plugged In reviewers and, perhaps, Christians in general) walk in assuming it will be “bad,” at least in some respect, infused with problematic content or a point of view that’s not very Christlike. Then, if the film delivers resonant, maybe even Christian messages, we’re pleasantly surprised and correspondingly laudatory.

With explicitly Christian films, the strictures are by definition different. We walk in assuming the point and ethos of the film will bolster our values. We assume (perhaps unfairly) that the content will be suitably reined in. And when such a film falls short in one or both of these areas, we must deal with the disappointment.

Warrior is a violent, profane movie, far from the universe of what we’ve grown to expect from Christian films. It’s also resonant, inspirational and, artistically, quite good. It works in ways that art sometimes does: It challenges, it questions. And it intentionally tries to shock us into grappling with its message.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Warrior Parent Guide

Chokeholds, knockouts and body slams aside, this story has far more depth than the title suggests..

Strapped for cash, former marine Tommy Riordan (Tom Hardy) decides to enter a mixed martial arts tournament. His best chance for a win is a good coach, so he turns to his father (Nick Nolte), even though he has an alcoholic past. And the competition will also put him in the ring with his estranged brother (Joel Edgerton).

Release date September 9, 2011

Run Time: 141 minutes

Official Movie Site

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by kerry bennett.

After watching Warrior, I know, as Oprah would say, two things for sure. First there is nothing I like about a sport that has to be fought in a cage, that begins each round with the cry "go to war" and that seemingly appeals to the very basest of human instincts. (I say human because animals don’t pulverize one another for the sake of entertainment.)

The second is that people can change—repent, in the religious vernacular. But a change of heart doesn’t mean the consequences for past decisions and actions are negated. Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte), a reformed drunkard, has found God. However, his family is still lost. The memories of abuse, neglect and inebriated outbursts haven’t vanished from his sons’ minds. And their abrasive reactions to their sober father are understandable though dispiriting. (Aging tough guy Nick Nolte makes this more poignant by capturing the fragility and remorse of an old man who wants to atone for his mistakes but doesn’t know how.)

Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton), a former fighter, is one who hopes to spar for the big prize money in the upcoming world-class competition. He left the ring several years ago to raise two daughters with his wife Tess (Jennifer Morrison). Now financial setbacks plague the high school physics teacher. To stretch the household budget, Tess works night shifts as a waitress and Brendan applies for a second job as a bar bouncer. But the $9.00 an hour salary doesn’t do much to cover the huge debts the family incurred over their youngest girl’s heart problems. Neither does it appease their banker (Noah Emmerich) who is drawing up the papers for foreclosure on their home.

Ex-Marine Tom Riordan (Tom Hardy) is in training for the event as well. He comes to the gym with a chip on this shoulder the size of an army tank. He’s glowering, volatile and addicted to prescription drugs that he washes down with alcohol. He also harbors a secret from his past. But all that rage bottled up inside makes him a threatening opponent when he lumbers onto the mat.

Many viewers will come to Warrior for the mixed martial arts scenes, and there are plenty of brutal encounters reminiscent of Roman gladiators who fought to the death. Others will be drawn to the story of wounded lives and fractured families. While it is difficult to recommend a film glorifying actions that would be condemned on the street, Warrior does offer adults and the oldest of teens a sobering look at the aftermath of poor personal decisions.

About author

Kerry Bennett

Warrior rating & content info.

Why is Warrior rated PG-13? Warrior is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for sequences of intense mixed martial arts fighting, some language and thematic material

Violence: Characters engage in tough training schedules. Frequent fighting scenes include brutal hits, body slams, head battering and cheap shots. Characters are knocked out and choked until unconscious. Characters talk about a man’s abusive behavior in the past and the painful death of a woman. A man lies to his wife. Soldiers are shown under fire in Iraq. One man deserts his unit. A soldier’s death is discussed. Characters posture and exchange smack talk.

Sexual Content: A couple exchange mild sexual comments. They later kiss. A woman wears only a t-shirt and panties. Other characters are seen in tight-fitting or skimpy outfits. A fight is set up in the parking lot of a strip bar.

Language: The script contains crude anatomical terms, frequent vulgarities, scatological slang, profanities and an extreme sexual expletive.

Alcohol / Drug Use: Characters light cigarettes outside an AA meeting. Smoking is portrayed frequently. A man takes prescription pills with alcohol. Characters discuss a man’s past alcohol addictions. A man drinks while watching a fight. Another character goes on a drinking binge and is shown in an inebriated state.

Other: Many characters are heavily tattooed including one man who has his entire head and face inked. A bank manager refuses to accept any responsibility for his part in a family’s debt problems. Characters post pictures of fights on the Internet. A character makes disparaging remarks about another man’s reformations.

Page last updated July 17, 2017

Warrior Parents' Guide

Why is posturing and smack talk (a sports term for trash talk used to rile up the opponent) so important for the fighters in the sport? What is the purpose of it?

What kind of risk does Brendan’s friend take when he agrees to train the former fighter? How does he exemplify faith and friendship? How would a loss have affected the trainer’s reputation?

What does Paddy mean when he says the members of his family are all lost? How does his obsession with alcohol relate to Captain Ahab’s obsession with the whale in Moby Dick ( the book that Paddy is listening to on tape)? What role does forgiveness play in this family? Why does Paddy seem satisfied at the end of the movie?

The most recent home video release of Warrior movie is December 20, 2011. Here are some details…

Home Video Notes: Warrior

Release Date: 20 December 2011

Warrior release to DVD and Blu-ray with the following bonus extras:

- Enhanced Viewing Mode for the feature film

- Audio commentary

- Making-of documentary

- Deleted scene

- MMA strategy feature

Related home video titles:

Fist-to-fist competitions also draw contenders in the movies Rocky and The Karate Kid . Another wife fears for her husband’s safety when he returns to the boxing ring in the movie Cinderella Man . An alcoholic father troubles an athlete in Hoosiers . The writer/director of this movie worked on the hockey film Miracle as well.

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Based on 6 parent reviews

This title has:

• Great messages
• Too much violence
• Too much swearing
• Too much drinking/drugs/smoking

Report this review

You must see this movie, one of the best of 2011 for men and women alike, dads, sons and brothers.

• Great role models

AWESOME!!!!!!!

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Where to Watch

Watch Warrior with a subscription on Max, Netflix, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

Cast & Crew

Andrew Koji

Jason Tobin

Olivia Cheng

Bill O'Hara

Dianne Doan

Dean S. Jagger

Dylan Leary

More Like This

Related tv news, series info.

"Redemptive, But Not Always Clear"

What You Need To Know:

(CC, BB, LLL, VV, N, AA, DD, MM) Strong Christian, moral worldview dealing with forgiveness, with troubled father of two men having become a Christian, but the positive aspects are not always clear; 31 obscenities and 11 profanities; lots of intense violence within martial arts fighting; no sex scenes but kissing within marriage; upper male nudity and women in underwear; alcohol use and alcoholism; use of drugs but condemned; and, dysfunctional family, bitterness, gambling, and lying.

More Detail:

WARRIOR is a dramatic story of two brothers fighting against each other after many years of pain and resentment.

WARRIOR is an intense film about two brothers who box in Mixed Martial Arts to make money. One brother, Tom Conlon, had real potential as an Olympic boxer, whereas the other, Brendan Conlon, felt like their father didn’t help support him and train him in the same manner Tom was being supported. The father of the two boys, Paddy Conlon, became an alcoholic, leading to a split in the family, with Tom leaving with his mother and taking care of her during her cancer.

Both brothers have a bitter reaction toward their father, but years pass, and Paddy becomes a Christian and quits drinking. Tom decides to get back into fighting and approaches Paddy about helping train him. Being known to be the best trainer, Paddy openly helps his son, but Tom is still hurt from his father’s actions in the past and therefore doesn’t want a relationship with him other than the training.

At the same time, Brendan is in need of money to support his family. Even though he’s older and out shape, Brendan builds and trains for a big fight. Inevitably, Tom and Brendan have to fight at the same major fight arena, but they still have grudges against each other.

The split between the family is very dysfunctional, the brothers have resentment with each other and at the same time each has resentment of their father. This creates a highly dramatic story line, in which each character feels they weren’t treated in the way they felt they were worth. The question is, will they forgive each other? After many beatings, blood, foul language, and signs of hatred toward each other, they may have forgiven each other. To the viewer, the transformational power of forgiveness isn’t exactly crystal clear as it should be.

All and all, WARRIOR needed some work on developing the plot line. The characters seemed to speak about their trials, instead of showing them. As to who’s the hero in the movie, it wasn’t clear which brother viewers were supposed to support. WARRIOR also contains drinking, lots of fighting violence and some foul language, so extreme caution is advised, despite the movie’s apparent Christian worldview. Media-wise moviegoers probably will prefer ROCKY BALBOA or CINDERELLA MAN.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Warrior’ On Netflix, Which Brings Bruce Lee’s Story Of Post Civil War Tong Battles To Life

Where to stream:, warrior (2019).

New Shows and Movies To Watch This Weekend: ‘Oppenheimer’ on Peacock, Hulu’s ‘Life & Beth’ + More

New shows & movies to watch this weekend: ‘the witcher’ season 3 + more, stream it or skip it: ‘warrior’ season 3 on max, the return of the gritty 19th century action saga that started on cinemax.

After The Green Hornet was canceled and before he left to become a superstar in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee wrote a treatment for a show about the Tong Wars in San Francisco in the 1870s. It was found after his untimely death in 1973. Forty-six years later, that treatment was finally made into a series, landing in the hands of action kings Jason Lin and Jonathan Tropper. The result is Warrior , the first two seasons of which originally aired on Cinemax — Season 3 aired on Max — before landing on Netflix in February 2024. Does it honor Lee’s vision?

WARRIOR : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man looks at a drawing of a girl right before he leaves the hull of the ship he was on. “San Francisco, 1878.”

The Gist: Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) has come from China to San Francisco like many immigrants from his country did in that era; to be cheap labor for wealthy businessmen. But he’s not the average “onion,” the pejorative name for these immigrants; he’s there on a mission. Oh, and he speaks English, the product of having an American grandfather. Oh, and he kicks major ass, as we see when he dispatches three belligerent cops looking for immigration papers. Chao (Hoon Lee), a fixer for Chinatown’s gangs (aka tongs), sees this and takes Ah Sahm to the Hop Wei tong, offering him to its leader, Father Jun (Perry Yung).

While Ah Sahm isn’t your standard tong toady — Father Jun has to admonish him for not bowing to him before he leaves — his abilities impress Jun’s son Young Jun (Jason Tobin), who takes him to a brothel run by Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng). When he asks Ah Toy about the wearabouts of the girl he’s seeking, word gets back to the members of the rival tong. After he dispatches their thugs, he’s branded as a loyal member of Hop Wei.

Meanwhile, a brewing battle is happening between Irish laborers and the Chinese immigrants who take their jobs. After an incident where two Chinese men are killed, Sargent “Big Bill” O’Hara (Kieran Bew) is tasked by Walter Buckley (Langley Kirkwood), deputy to Mayor Samuel Blaks (Christian McKay), to lead a Chinatown squad. It’s an assignment that he takes reluctantly, but one of the people he chooses for the task force, Georgia-born rookie officer Richard Henry Lee (Tom Weston-Jones), who stopped the attack, wants to be there.

Ah Sahm finds the woman he’s looking for, who turns out to be his sister. She came west two years before to escape her violent husband; now she’s Mai Ling (Dianne Doan), wife of rival tong leader Long Zii (Henry Yuk), who sees that their fragile piece with Hop Wei over the opium trade in Chinatown is about to collapse.

Our Take: Warrior , based on writings about the Tong Wars by none other than Bruce Lee, was co-created by Justin Lin ( Star Trek Beyond ) and Jonathan Tropper ( Banshee ) (Lee’s daughter Shannon is also an EP), so you expect a lot of action. And the fighting scenes are pretty action-packed; there are three significant scenes in the one-hour first episode, all pretty compact. It’s the rest of the first episode that’s got some issues.

We do get Lin and Tropper’s desire to make the show accessible despite being a period piece; they’re not interested in making Warrior into The Knick or The Alienist , so they resort to more modern language, especially when he’s interpreting the Cantonese the folks in Chinatown use with each other into English. Let’s just say it’s not the Queen’s English, full of f-bombs and a colloquialism for a woman’s body part we’re pretty sure wasn’t prevalent back in the 1870s. But the Chinatown portion of the show more or less plays out like a high-quality martial arts film, so the stylistic choices there can be forgiven a bit.

But we’re not sure why Tropper and Lin have decided to cram in so many storylines into the first episode. Watch the opening credits to Warrior and the cast list just goes on forever, and in the first episode, it seems like they’re serving all of those characters with their own storylines, sacrificing time for the most interesting story, which is the Tong Wars in San Francisco, as well as Ah Sahm’s encounter with his sister. We’ve seen more than enough mustachioed, racist and corrupt cops with Irish brogues to keep us happy, so we’re not sure why the story of O’Hara and his Chinatown squad even exists. It just takes away from the fun that is the Chinatown story, and it feels like the creators are forcibly merging a fun martial arts action series with a serious Peak TV period drama.

Sex and Skin: Lots of nudity: Young Jun is in a threesome at the brothel when the rival tong’s thugs bust into the room; the mayor’s new wife Penelope (Joanna Vanderham) disrobes in front of him, but he seems uninterested; we find out later he has his own sexual proclivities. Ah Sahm sleeps with Ah Toy, who we find out also has a side gig that’s amazingly more interesting than being a madam.

Parting Shot: Ah Sahm, ready to do battle to get his sister back, practices moves in his room.

Sleeper Star: We liked Olivia Cheng as Ah Toy, who is both book and street smart, and as we see at the end of the first episode, quite adept with a sword.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Son, I don’t understand a word you said, but I like the way you said it. You’re hired” O’Hara to Lee after Lee brushes off a fellow officer who threatens him simply because he’s from the South.

Our Call: SKIP IT. There’s too much going on in Warrior to enjoy it for what it should be, which is a fun and not-that-heavy martial arts action series.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Warrior on MaxGo

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• Recommendations /
• One Good Thing

One Good Thing: The pulpy joys of the Bruce Lee-inspired Warrior

Warrior feels like if Peaky Blinders starred Bruce Lee and was set in 1870s Chinatown. It’s great.

by Karen Turner

Before he died tragically in 1973 at the age of 32, Bruce Lee was writing the beginnings of a martial arts Western television series. It was a chance for the Chinese American actor, who had long played supporting characters in American films, to finally star as the hero of his own show. Lee pitched it to the studios, but according to him , producers didn’t think audiences were ready for a show with a nonwhite lead. He died before he could see his vision through.

Years later, Lee’s daughter, actress and martial artist Shannon, discovered an eight-page treatment for the show in her father’s journals after taking over the Bruce Lee Foundation, an organization dedicated to his legacy, in 2000. She picked up where her father left off, collaborating with Justin Lin , director of the Fast & Furious franchise. The resulting Warrior feels like the series Lee would have wanted : pulpy, action-filled genre television that centers Chinese American stories.

Warrior premiered on Cinemax in 2019 and aired for two 10-episode seasons, both of which are available to stream on HBO Max . There’s a lot about the show that will be recognizable to fans of today’s dark antihero dramas: The gangster storyline feels like a plot from Boardwalk Empire or Peaky Blinders , the frontier fable of capitalism resembles Deadwood , and warring factions vying for power recall similar conflicts on Game of Thrones . But what sets Warrior apart is its focus on a fascinating chapter in the American story that’s often treated like an afterthought in history books. And it wraps that history lesson in an enticing action-thriller package with nods to spaghetti Westerns, the kung fu cinema of Hong Kong, gangster flicks, and exploitation films, as well as other grindhouse genres.

Warrior takes place in 1870s San Francisco — the city where Bruce Lee was born — during a wave of Chinese migration, primarily to provide labor for America’s new railroads. Newly arrived Chinese immigrants, facing discrimination and sequestered in Chinatowns in major cities across the country, self-organized into gangs, or “tongs,” as a way to survive. The violent Tong Wars ensued as anti-Chinese sentiment swept the nation, ultimately leading to the 1882 passage of the shameful Chinese Exclusion Act, the sole piece of legislation in American history that banned the immigration of an entire nationality.

Warrior ’s story follows Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), a poor Chinese immigrant with first-class fighting skills who arrives on the shores of America in search of his sister, Mai Ling (Diane Doan). Once he arrives, he’s immediately initiated into the Hop Wei, a tong that sells opium in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Soon he discovers that Mai Ling, who had come to America years earlier, is now married to the powerful leader of an opposing tong. Their reunion ignites long-simmering tensions between the tongs, triggering a power play between the long-lost siblings over who will take over Chinatown.

The show’s universe is hard-boiled, steeped in menacing violence and the cutthroat core of American capitalism. The tongs operate on enforced loyalty under threat of death, but you can’t help but admire them for staking out a small piece of power in a country where Chinese people are villainized and shut out of society. The alternative is to work as a cheap laborer subjected to backbreaking conditions for starvation wages. Meanwhile, the city’s Irish workers, who have found their jobs undercut by the new migrants, routinely attack both the Chinese and the factories where they work.

Warrior ’s characters are survivors. Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng), the bisexual madam of a Chinatown brothel, is trying to not only build a safety net for herself but also provide a better alternative to more exploitative avenues of sex work — or, in the direst circumstances, sex slavery — for Chinese women. Weapons dealer Chao (Hoon Lee) makes his way and tries to get ahead by selling hatchets and information to the highest bidder, including the police. For me, the standout character is Baby Jun, the bastard son of a tong leader and sex worker, who is played with humor and recklessness by Jason Tobin.

Warrior focuses on its Chinese American characters, who are just trying to make it in this country. But the show’s villains are compelling figures too. Dean Jagger’s Dylan Leary is particularly interesting as a union leader who mixes genuine concern for his fellow working-class Irish immigrants with the terrifying and violent rage of a racist. The show’s police, mostly Irish themselves, are depicted as unbridled enforcers of wealth and white supremacy, but a Southern cop named Officer Lee (Tom Weston-Jones) makes an admirable attempt to do actual police work. To the industrialists, the Chinese matter little beyond providing a cheap labor source, but it’s hard not to root for Penny (Joanna Vanderham), a woman whose inherited steel factory is her only route to independence from her horrific husband, the mayor.

The immigrant caste system of the show is one of its strongest storytelling features. Recently migrated Chinese are at the bottom, Irish migrant laborers and police officers the next rung up, yet all sit underneath the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) industrialists and politicians — who are, of course, on stolen land themselves. The question of who gets to truly be American and how that question is used to exploit the working class is a core theme of Warrior that feels especially relevant to today’s politics.

And the real-world stories and figures that inspire Warrior’ s storytelling — Ah Toy is based on a real gold rush-era madam , and Dylan Leary is based on the labor organizer and founder of the Workingmen’s Party, Denis Kearney — are refreshing. As a huge fan of period television, I’ve long wanted to see more people who look like me at the center of these shows. This is part of what felt so intriguing about the recent debut of Netflix’s popular Bridgerton , which transplants characters of color into a Jane Austen-style romance. But representation can feel like a shallow concession when portrayed without consequence, subbing out would-be white characters for nonwhites with little more than an obligatory nod to the realities of racial dynamics. That’s why I’ve found Warrior so satisfying to watch: Here is a little-known piece of actual Chinese American history, rooted in America’s history of immigrant exploitation, playing out on screen.

The fact that Warrior is imbued with the legacy of Bruce Lee, an icon of Asian American cinema, just adds to the show’s Asian American specificity. The influence of Justin Lin, action-movie mogul and one of the most powerful Asian American creatives in Hollywood, is most obvious in the series’ terrific fight sequences. However, I was reminded more of Lin’s underrated first film Better Luck Tomorrow , which also depicted Asian Americans — freed from the stereotype of silent obedience — breaking bad.

But I don’t mean to make the show sound preachy or pedantic. I promise, Warrior is just really fun to watch. Its martial arts sequences are standouts, as complex as they are bloody, and the dialogue feels straight out of a dark graphic novel. Because the show originated on Cinemax, there’s a lot of sex and violence, as well as racial slurs that at times slip into “gratuitous” territory. But because Warrior feels like a deliberate tribute to grindhouse movies, it all sort of fits.

Sadly, the untimely demise of Cinemax in 2020 means that Warrior is effectively canceled. Now that it’s streaming on HBO Max, however, there is a glimmer of possibility the show will find a wider audience and maybe get picked up for another season as an HBO Max original. I hope it does. I’d love to see the universe of Warrior expand, especially to include other groups in late 1800s California; an episode that focuses on a Mexican American street-fighting host and the introduction of the show’s first Black character are signs the show, at one time or another, intended to do just that.

But regardless of whether the show is ever revived, Warrior ’s two completed seasons provide a satisfying storyline. The penultimate episode of season two, a violent clash in Chinatown following the lynching of a Chinese man — based on the real-world San Francisco Riot of 1877 — feels like a culmination of the series, despite the cliffhanger that follows in the next episode.

Ultimately, the episode that best encapsulates Warrior for me is a season one installment in which a spaghetti-Western-style shootout erupts in a saloon in Grass Valley, Nevada. The small business is owned and operated by a former Chinese railroad laborer who toiled for decades before using his long-saved earnings to build a homestead in the middle of nowhere with his American wife. Their life feels like the realization of a humble immigrant fantasy that, suddenly sieged by violence, is as precarious as it is rare. As Baby Jun, one of the show’s few second-generation Chinese migrants, says in the episode, “I’m sure no fucking American. I don’t belong anywhere.” Warrior is about the many Americans who have not (and probably will never) really belong, but who have no choice but to keep grinding for the chance at a small piece of the American dream.

Warrior is streaming on  HBO Max. For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the  One Good Thing  archives.

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"The Warrior" tells the story of a fierce warrior who changes the direction of his life after a mystical visionary moment. Lafcadia ( Irfan Khan ) is an enforcer in the employ of a cruel lord in the far northwest Indian state of Rajasthan. When a village cannot pay its taxes because of a bad harvest, the lord has their leader beheaded, and orders the warrior: "Teach them a lesson."

Lafcadia and his men ride out to the village and rape, pillage and burn -- and then the warrior sees a young village girl wearing an amulet given to her earlier that day by Lafcadia's son; he understands that in killing any child he might as well be killing his own. He has an inexplicable image of a snowy mountain vista, and he vows: "I'll never lift a sword again." The lord is enraged: "No one leaves my service. Bring me his head by dawn."

And so now the hunter has become the hunted. And the man who is hunting him, an ambitious warrior who was eager to replace him, faces a death sentence of his own if he does not return with the warrior's head, or one that looks almost like it. This description makes "The Warrior" sound violent, I know, but almost all the violence takes place offscreen, and the action is located primarily in the warrior's mind.

To save his life, and also because he is compelled to seek out the source of his snowy vision, he begins a long trek to the mountains of the north. He is accompanied by a orphaned thief ( Noor Mani ) whose family he may in fact have killed, and by a blind woman ( Damayanti Marfatia ) who is on a pilgrimage to a holy lake. "There's blood written on your face," she tells the warrior, and he tells the thief, "She's right about me."

The movie, which is opening in America without fanfare some four years after Miramax bought the U.S. rights to it, arrives from Britain trailing clouds of glory: It won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the BAFTA Awards, and was named Best British Independent Film at the British Independent Film Awards. Filmed on location near the Himalayas, it was written and directed by Asif Kapadia , a documentary maker for the BBC.

The film is interesting for what it does not show. Not only is violence offscreen, but so is a lot of motivation; it is only by following the action and then thinking back through the story that we can understand the warrior's thought process. And it is only because he eventually finds the source of his snowy vision that we understand the role it played early in the film. These are not flaws, just curiosities.

What is best in the film is its depiction of the warrior's epic journey, photographed with breathtaking beauty and simplicity by Roman Osin, who just finished filming the new British version of " Pride and Prejudice ." The lands through which the warrior travels are familiar to my imagination from novels like The Far Pavilions, and by not setting the film in a particular period, the story takes on a timelessness. It is about people stuck in an ancient culture of repression, greed and revenge, and how some are able to escape it by a spiritual path. Parallels with the current eye-for-an-eye diplomacy of the Middle East are inescapable.

It may be that some American moviegoers will find the film's form unsatisfactory. We are accustomed to closure and completion. If a threat is established at the opening of a film, by the end, we expect it to be enforced or evaded. We do not expect it to be ... outgrown. Our plots are circular; "The Warrior" is linear. There is a kind of strange freedom in the knowledge that a story has cut loose from its origins and is wandering through unknown lands.

Note: It is hilarious that this elegant and thoughtful film has an R rating "for some violence," while buildings are destroyed 9/11 style, thousands are killed and a nuclear cloud poisons a city in the PG-13-rated " Stealth ."

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Warrior (2005)

Rated R for some violence

Irfan Khan as Lafcadia

Puru Chibber as Katiba, his son

Damayanti Marfatia as Blind Woman

Noor Mani as Thief

Anupam Shyam as Lord

Sunita Sharma as The Girl

Directed by

• Asif Kapadia

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• Cast & crew

Soul of a Warrior (Pocket FM)

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Left for dead in the schoolyard, 14-year-old Nathan Hayfield is back for revenge. Once a weakling, Nathan is now among the strongest. No one can believe it's the same boy. And they're right ... Read all Left for dead in the schoolyard, 14-year-old Nathan Hayfield is back for revenge. Once a weakling, Nathan is now among the strongest. No one can believe it's the same boy. And they're right to question it because he's not the same boy at all. Left for dead in the schoolyard, 14-year-old Nathan Hayfield is back for revenge. Once a weakling, Nathan is now among the strongest. No one can believe it's the same boy. And they're right to question it because he's not the same boy at all.

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• May 5, 2023 (United States)
• United States
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