I could happily reel off some jive about the Ronin figure's influence upon the Western genre here, but this is seriously the wrong film for such things. The Warrior's Way is a live action cartoon of a movie built largely to pit cowboys, ninjas and for some reason, a circus in a three way battle royale.
The plot is a series of broad strokes, everyone has a dark past and some savant like skill. The fighting is extremely stylised and balletic and all the sets intentionally look like the facades they happen to be.
While I'm freely throwing around comparisons to related media, anime is probably the key component. Yang is the greatest swordsman who ever lived, something a caption appears to helpfully clarify. As an unstoppable badass who carries a magic sword and laughs in the face of physics he's never placed in any real danger, instead tension being derived from just how badass his victory will be. We're not quite talking about the Hundred Crack Fist of the North Star, but it's not a million miles away. At one point he hits a guy so hard that there's a flashback sequence. This sort of thing could quickly outstay it's welcome if you're the kind of arse for whom realism is synonymous with quality, but for the rest of us the time dilation, wire work heavy dance-fighting probably proves it's moneys worth.
It's all really rather silly if I'm being honest here, but without a trace of pretense and a clear understanding of it's knockabout comic book quality, I found it a solid watchable affair. Dare I say, even fun.
It won't touch your soul, question the nature of man's inhumanity to man or even conclude the age old cowboy/ninja debate, but with an odd charm and decent side of shooty/slicey action, there are worse ways to have spent 100 minutes.
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