Posted in: Cinemax, HBO, Review, streaming, TV | Tagged: Andrew Koji, bruce lee, cinemax, hbo max, Jason Tobin, Jonathan Topper, Olivia Cheng, shannon lee, warrior

Warrior: Martial Arts Western Was Made for Bruce Lee & Action Fans

Warrior is an underground hit of sorts as a Cinemax original series. It's an unusual stigma since the premium network isn't really known for delivering such programming as its more popular counterpart on HBO. Now that the series, which was just renewed for its third season, has transitioned to HBO Max, perhaps it will gain far more notoriety befitting of its prestige. When people first hear that it is inspired by the writings of Bruce Lee and is executive produced by his daughter Shannon Lee, you might think it might resemble the ABC original 1972 TV series Kung Fu that starred David Carradine. There was the controversy that the Ed Spielman, Jerry Thorpe, and Herman Miller-created series was completely ripped off from Lee's story. The Jonathan Tropper-created series couldn't be further apart from that story or the current remake from The CW.

The martial arts western is surprisingly as practical as it is brutal for its depiction of 19th century San Francisco focusing on three fronts during the Tong Wars. The first is the Chinese comprised of three factions Hop Wei, Long Zii, and Fung Hai. The latter two are in an alliance against the much larger Hop Wei. The second is the Irish, who are largely resentful of Chinese labor presence. The third is White politicians and police trying to prevent the city from plunging into total anarchy. The main character is Ah Sahm, played by Andrew Koji, who largely embodies the martial arts lead that Bruce Lee would have played as Warrior was his original creation.

Unlike the Carradine character in Kung Fu, Ah Sahm doesn't use his expert martial arts skills to solve isolated problems on a week-to-week basis to fight injustice. In fact, Ah Sahm joins the Hop Wei, run by Father Jun (Perry Yung), and bonding with his son, Young Jun (Jason Tobin). Young is impulsive, much to his father's disapproval, but an effective soldier. A persistent chip on his shoulder, he has to prove himself in order to step out of his father's shadow. On the other side is Mai Ling (Dianne Doan), Ah Sahm's sister and wife of Long Zii (Henry Yuk). Despite their blood bond as a family, they're on opposite sides of organized crime. One thing that keeps Ah Sahm as the protagonist, which you can easily get lost in the chaos and nihilism, is that he is never the instigator to act out of malice no matter how much the odds are stacked against him. The family dynamic from all major parties becomes pretty layered when it comes to each character's motivation.

Mai Ling mostly operates out of the shadows doing what she can to help run the Long Zii diplomatically and politically in every sense. Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng), who's aligned with the Hop Wei, is probably the best well-written madame character on TV. Not only does she, along with Mai Ling, have to work so much harder as a 19th-century woman to gain the respect of her male peers, but as a Jill-of-all-trades, does so much more to affect her narrative of living a double life as a brothel owner and ruthless assassin. In season two, the developing narrative between her and Nellie (Miranda Raison) provides a rare light at the end of the tunnel for such a dark time, not to mention a positive portrayal of an LGBTQ relationship where the actual relationship doesn't become some low-hanging fruit for cheap nihilism. I'm saying this as a series that's largely defined by its bigotry and banality.

As far as the Irish go, I wish we had more to go off than Dean Jagger's Dylan Leary. There are many who resonate with his nationalistic pride, frustrated by the rampant poverty and politicians not hiring enough of his people. It seems like Warrior has trouble trying to define where they wanted to go with Leary because while he's clearly committed several nefarious acts as an Irish patriot and racist, the series also makes a concentrated effort to ground and soften him by having him fall in love with Sophie Mercer (Céline Buckens), a well-to-do socialite. Further complicating things are the White politicians led by San Francisco mayor Samuel Blake (Christian McKay), who's in the middle of trying to appease his business partners who hired the cheaper Chinese labor and dealing with the growing unrest from the impoverished "working man" Irish headed by Leary. His advisor is the Deputy Mayor Walter Franklin Buckley (Langley Kirkwood), acting behind-the-scenes schemer as Warrior's version of Littlefinger from Game of Thrones. Sophie's older sister Penelope (Joanna Vanderham) is dealing with her own issues of misogyny, trying to get taken more seriously beyond just being Samuel's wife, cursed with the kind of naïve Ned Stark nobility without the shocking death attached.

The final major cog in the series is the largely hapless San Francisco Police Department headed up by "Big Bill" O'Hara (Kieran Bew). If you want to check off every single bad cop cliché from taking bribes, looking the other way in the face of injustice, not-so-subtle racism, etc., you got it. The series does make an effort to elicit sympathy for the character along with his boy scout right-hand man Richard Henry Lee (Tom Weston-Jones), who came from Georgia. The auxiliary characters like Hoon Lee's Chao, Maria Elena Laas' Vega, and Dustin Nguyen's Zing carry so much of the show on top of the loaded ensemble cast.

How Warrior Tackled the Language Barrier

When it comes to historical dramas, Warrior had a unique way of tackling assimilation, immigration, and the language barrier between English-speaking White characters and their Cantonese-speaking Chinese counterparts, but some were also bilingual. For the record, every single performer with lines is fluent in English, so most of the dialogue spoken is English to the audience. When it came to the Asian actors communicating with one another, they speak English, but to an outsider, it would appear naturally as Cantonese as we also shift to the White characters' point of view as they wouldn't understand. It's not only those differences, the show clarifies a character like Koji's Ah Sahm can speak Cantonese and English well with full comprehension. Tobin's Jun doesn't understand any English, but the actor conveys most of his lines in English to his Asian co-stars. The nuance is most prevalent in Cheng's Ah Toy, where she speaks English fluently to her Asian co-stars, but in her scenes with her Caucasian peers is purposely broken English to convey her character's limited language skills.

Without diving into further narratives of the deep series, the drama is top-notch, showing the rooted cultural problems of the era. I'd be remiss, not to mention the fight choreography, which is about as realistic as it gets without ever diving into caricature. Both Lee and action fans, in general, won't be disappointed. I'm definitely looking forward to season three on HBO Max.

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