Why You Should Get HBOMax: Warrior

 

    With two posts we’ve officially got a  series cookin’, baby. My last one hinted at this, but the next of HBOMax’s underappreciated all-stars is another Cinemax show, Warrior. Based on a treatment written by Bruce Lee before he died and even produced by his daughter Shannon, it tells the story of Chinese immigrant Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) coming to San Francisco during the Reconstruction and infiltrating the criminal underworld of Chinatown to find his estranged sister. He joins up with the heir apparent of a local gang, Jason Tobin as Young Jun, to investigate. Meanwhile, the crucible of turn-of-the-century America is heating up San Francisco as the rest of the cast try to take control of the city.
    True to Bruce’s legacy, this struggle involves no shortage of beautifully constructed ass-beatings every single episode. Andrew Koji carries the lead role extremely well through the show’s intricate fight choreography. Warrior brings us everything from huge brawls and one-versus-many fights to brutal one-on-one matches and western style shootouts. In one fight Young Jun powerslides across the room like a rockstar while repeatedly stabbing a guy in the stomach with two knives. This is cool enough to include for its own sake, but a show that’s this much punching by volume has to push the story forward with its action. Luckily, Warrior excels at this as well. Ah Sahm is a character who is constantly making mistakes and getting himself and those he cares about in trouble, but the one thing he knows how to do is fight. It’s clear that his reliance on his strength is creating more problems than it solves, however, since by the end of the first episode he figures out his sister didn’t want him to find her. Still, he fights to assert his agency in a country that doesn’t care about him.
    I talked about this at length in my entry on The Knick, but suffice to say Warrior is another show that fully leverages its historical setting to address broader themes. Lots of people have the tendency to give genre fiction short shrift but Warrior is a badass sexy Kung Fu Western that is also about things, and there’s no conflict there. Unlike The Knick, Warrior centers the experience of the marginalized narratively instead of it being an incursion our tortured genius has to get over. The opening scene of the show is Ah Sahm beating the hell out of immigration officers harassing somebody too weak to take them on. This gets him noticed and recommended for organized crime, and while the Chinatown Tongs are no stranger to unsavory exploits, it’s the only real recourse they have to control their own lives. Politicians, police, rivals in Chinatown, and belligerent racists close in on them from all sides. Most of these people are themselves trying to do good or protect their loved ones in a place broken by inequality. The mythical good cop (Tom Weston-Jones) is assigned to the Chinatown beat under a senior officer on the take (Kieran Bew), and the crushing cruelty of the system he’s a part of overwhelms all his actions. The leader of the Irish labor union (Dean Jagger) is a corrupt bully who violently opposes immigration while representing the so-called progressive movement of the Gilded Age. These characters are complex and compelling without falling into “Are racists actually bad?” nonsense because we’re always hoping Ah Sahm will punch these guys in the face eventually.
    Warrior also does the Hunt for Red October thing where it’s implied that the Chinese characters aren’t speaking English to each other even though the camera “hears” it in English. I’m mostly neutral on this choice and see why it might turn some people off but it does mean my dyslexic dad can enjoy the show. (dubs are an important accessibility feature just like subs are!) There are key moments where it matters what language a character is or isn’t hearing that it switches back to “true” audio but it works this elision with elegance. It’s less evocative of classic Hong Kong action this way but it pulls it off.
    Warrior was another of Cinemax’s orphaned originals but got picked up for a third season recently by HBO proper after they saw success with hosting the backlog. You’ll need to catch up on HBOMax so that you can tune in for the latest season live and get the show to make infinite money, please. It’s hard as hell to shoot good action and even then it won’t always end up delivered in an end product this high quality, so show some love to the people who cut no corners.