Written and Directed by Asif Kapadia Running Time: 1:28 Rated R for some violence. C+

The Warrior started off strong enough, but then fell into a long and at times very boring movie.

Lafcadia is a warrior who works for a local warlord. He is one of many who carry out the ugly deeds the warlord asks, including chopping the head off an old man for not having enough money for the warlord's liking. It is when the warlord asks his warriors to burn down the village the old man came from, that Lafcadia decides he has had enough. He takes his son Katiba and tries to escape to his old village in the mountains. But the warlord won't have anyone leave his command and instructs the other warriors to capture and kill Lafcadia. Lafcadia escapes, but the warriors find and kill his son. Still, he remains peaceful and continues on his journey, all the while being chased. He runs into a thief, and takes him on as a new sort of son. He will continue to look for peace, in a world full of madness.

The Warrior started off pretty well. It was visually stunning and considering in the first few minutes there was a beheading, I thought the movie would be fairly good. But when Lafcadia decided to go straight, the movie started to slowly go downhill and I found myself paying more attention to the guy with the loud breathing problem sitting next to me, than the movie itself. It's not that it was bad, just not very captivating. Irfan Khan (who looks like a dead ringer for an Indian Gary Sinise) was very powerful in the role of Lafcadia, but he didn't have a lot to do. The movie became a strange sort of road trip, with him picking up a thief and a blind grandmother along the way. That in itself could have turned into a nice comedy, but since it was a drama I'll let it go. Anyway, once he left his warrior past behind him, he became boring. It was just a lot of walking, without a lot of dialogue to go with it. Even his being chased wasn't very exciting. The other warriors would show up once in a while, get defeated and leave. Towards the end it got a little more entertaining, but it wasn't enough for me.

Now I realize not all movies have to have non-stop action sequences in order for them to be good films. There are plenty of movies that rely on visuals to keep the audience interested. And like I said, visually, the movie was shot quite well on what I'm sure was a low budget. The scenery was beautiful and the set pieces looked like they were shot on location, which made them more enjoyable and relatable. But when your movie is about a warrior going straight and being chased down by other warriors, you kind of expect something stronger. I can't really put my finger on what it was I didn't like, I just know that for a movie that was less than 90 minutes, it felt very, very long. I felt restless and wanted things to hurry up and move along. There was too much sitting around and thinking for my liking. I thought the acting was decent enough. It was mainly all about Irfan Khan and his facial expressions. The other warriors were good, the blind grandmother was kind of funny in her own way. The first son was ok and kind of annoying, but I guess he was supposed to be. The only other major character was the thief and from what I understand, this was his first acting role so I can forgive him for not being great.

So overall, The Warrior was a visually stunning, yet ultimately slow movie that started off strong, but couldn't hold up the pace.

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