After The green Hornet was canceled and before he left to become a superstar in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee wrote a treatment for a show about the Tong Wars in San Francisco in the 1870s. It was found after his untimely death in 1973. Forty-six years later, that treatment was finally turned into a series, which landed in the hands of the kings of the action Jason Lin and Jonathan Tropper. The result is Warriorwhose first two seasons originally aired on Cinemax (season 3 aired on Max) before coming to Netflix in February 2024. Does it honor Lee’s vision?
WARRIOR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Initial shot: A man looks at a drawing of a girl just before leaving the hull of the ship he was on. “Saint Francis, 1878.”
The essence: Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) has arrived from China to San Francisco as many immigrants from his country did at that time; be cheap labor for rich businessmen. But he is not your average “onion,” the pejorative name for these immigrants; he is there on a mission. Oh, and he speaks English, a product of having an American grandfather. Oh, and he kicks some major ass, as we see when he sends three belligerent police officers in search of immigration documents. Chao (Hoon Lee), a fixer for Chinatown’s gangs (aka tongs), sees this and takes Ah Sahm to the Hop Wei tong and offers him to their leader, Father Jun (Perry Yung).
While Ah Sahm is not your standard sycophant (Father Jun has to admonish him for not bowing to him before leaving), his skills impress Jun’s son Young Jun (Jason Tobin), who takes him to a brothel run by Ah Toy (Olivia). Cheng). When he questions Ah Toy about the habits of the girl he is looking for, the news reaches the members of the rival group. After eliminating his thug, he is branded as a loyal member of Hop Wei.
Meanwhile, a battle is brewing between Irish workers and the Chinese immigrants taking their jobs. After an incident in which two Chinese people are killed, Walter Buckley (Langley Kirkwood), deputy to Mayor Samuel Blaks (Christian McKay), tasks Sergeant “Big Bill” O’Hara (Kieran Bew) with leading a Chinatown squad. It’s a task he reluctantly accepts, but one of the people he chooses for the task force, Georgia-born rookie officer Richard Henry Lee (Tom Weston-Jones), who stopped the attack, wants to be there.
Ah Sahm finds the woman he is looking for, who turns out to be his sister. She came west two years earlier to escape her violent husband; Now she is Mai Ling (Dianne Doan), wife of rival Tong leader Long Zii (Henry Yuk), who sees that her fragile deal with Hop Wei over the opium trade in Chinatown is about to collapse.
Our opinion: WarriorBased on writings about the Tong Wars by none other than Bruce Lee, it was co-created by Justin Lin (Star Trek Beyond) and Jonathan Tropper (suffering soul) (Shannon, Lee’s daughter, is also an EP), so expect plenty of action. And the fight scenes are pretty action-packed; There are three major scenes in the first hour-long episode, all fairly compact. It’s the rest of the first episode that has some problems.
We understand Lin and Tropper’s desire to make the show accessible despite it being a period piece; they are not interested in doing Warrior in the knick either The alienist, so they resort to more modern language, especially when English is interpreted by the Cantonese that the people of Chinatown use among themselves. Let’s just say it’s not the Queen’s English, full of f-bombs and a colloquialism for a part of a woman’s body that we’re pretty sure wasn’t prevalent in the 1870s. But the Chinatown portion of the show plays out more or less like a high quality martial arts film, so the stylistic choices there can be forgiven a bit.
But we’re not sure why Tropper and Lin decided to include so many stories in the first episode. Watch the opening credits for Warrior and the cast list goes on forever, and in the first episode, it seems like they are serving all of those characters with their own stories, sacrificing time for the more interesting story, which is the Tong Wars in San Francisco, as well as Ah Sahm’s meeting with his sister. We’ve seen more than enough mustachioed, racist, corrupt cops with Irish accents to keep us happy, so we’re not sure why the story of O’Hara and his Chinatown squad exists. It just takes away from the fun that is the Chinatown story, and it feels like the creators are forcefully merging a fun martial arts action series with a serious Peak TV period drama.
Sex and skin: Lots of Nudity: Young Jun is having a threesome at the brothel when the rival tong’s thugs burst into the room; Penelope (Joanna Vanderham), the mayor’s new wife, strips naked in front of him, but he seems uninterested; We later discover that he has his own sexual inclinations. Ah Sahm sleeps with Ah Toy, who we discover also has a side job that’s surprisingly more interesting than being a madam.
Parting Shot: Ah Sahm, ready to fight to get his sister back, practices moves in his room.
Sleeping star: We liked Olivia Cheng as Ah Toy, who is both book and street smart and, as we see at the end of the first episode, quite skilled with a sword.
Most pilot line: “Son, I don’t understand a word you said, but I like the way you said it. You’re Hired” O’Hara to Lee after Lee ignores a fellow officer who threatens him simply because he is from the South.
Our call: SKIP IT. There are too many things happening in Warrior to enjoy it as it should be, which is a fun and not so heavy martial arts action series.
Joel Keller@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and technology, but make no mistake: he’s a couch potato. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.
Stream Warrior at MaxGo