Common is set to play the lead in an upcoming TV adaptation of Black Samurai,
The series, based on the 1974 book series and 1977 film, follows Defense Reserve Agency Guardian of Nations (D.R.A.G.O.N.) agent Robert Sand, who is rescued by a samurai master and trained in martial arts.
Per Variety, the producers — and, for whatever reason, RZA is among them — are shopping the project to various networks; once that happens, the search for a writer and director will begin. Who needs either of those things?
The pitch is "make the Oscar winner (for original song, but whatever) who was the Bouncer in The Wiz Live! play a samurai" and it has basically already won Common an Emmy.
What exactly is one to make of The Warrior's Way? It opens in typical Samurai-slasher fashion, but hold up - its narrated in a Western drawl and the star is actually a Korean.
Noe of the above details significantly derail the story, which weaves nearly all of the standard plot lines: warrior, weary of bloodshed, seeks solace in the anonymity of a small town; local girl takes a shine to him, even as she plots revenge on the evil renegade colonel (Danny Huston, happily villainous as usual) who almost killed her as a teen; said small town seeks ways to throw off the shackles of colonel's tyranny and rejuvenate itself. And oh yeah, there's a parallel story that th members of the warrior's clan of killers are after him for not killing the last remaining member of a rival clan - of course its kind of hard for even a battle-hardened samurai to put a sword through the heart of an infant girl, but the master doesn't care. If won't kill, as he's been trained to do, then he must be killed.
All these threads are wound together ever tighter, and against the backdrop of the turn of the 20th Century in the American Badlands, with highly stylized skyscapes, mostly blood red, matching the action on the ground, fluid fighting scenes and an all too brief interplay between lead Dong-gun Jang, and Geoffrey Rush, the latter as the local drunk who's hiding a fighting man inside.
By the time the credits roll, there's enough blood and carnage to fill another hundred action movies, and yes - there's more than the hint of a sequel. But there's just that little bit of existentialism in Warrior's Way, just enough 'odd' for it to stand out among the other 'Kill Bill' imitators out there.
There may not be enough for you to rush to the cinema, but if you can stand the mayhem, Warrior's Way may prove worth dissecting on a late night on the couch, over a beer or two.
