TIFF 2009: The Warrior and the Wolf

The Warrior and the Wolf was a Chinese historical drama. The titular warrior hides out in a village during a break in the battle and meets a woman in the village and they develop a relationship. “The wolf” could metaphorically refer to any number of things and is open to interpretation, so I won’t give anything away by discussing it.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this one. While I found the basic plot satisfying, and the visuals nice to look at (especially one special effects shot of a desert sandstorm), there were some issues with the film that prevented me from really getting into it. First, I had a problem with the introduction in the first 20 minutes or so. It attempts to give the background of the war and the warrior’s involvement in said war in a non-linear way. It jumps back and forth in time and I had a hard time following what the current storyline was. I don’t have a problem with non-linear storytelling, but to use it to establish the foundation for the rest of the film didn’t work, and it affected the experience for the remainder.

The other big problem I had was with the relationship between the warrior and the village woman. It reminded me of the flashback sequence in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which was my least favourite part of that film). Boy meets girl, boy holds girl captive, boy rapes girl, girl inexplicably comes to love boy. Obviously within that culture and in that historical time period, gender roles were different, but I just couldn’t believe in that relationship.

At the end of the film, there was a Q & A session with the director and main cast. Someone asked a question regarding how the two stars of the film (Maggie Q and Joe Odagiri) and the director (Tian Zhuang Zhuang), who all speak a different native language, dealt with the communication barrier on set. The gist of their answers was that it wasn’t a barrier, and that the energy and the emotion of the film was understood by all, regardless of language. A nice sentiment, but unfortunately, I don’t think this energy translated to the screen. In the end, I think the movie felt like a series of well-done scenes, but didn’t come together into a coherent whole.

2.5 out of 5