'The Warrior's Way' is the wrong way

The Spaghetti Western is revived as a Ramen Noodle Western with the wild, wacky "The Warrior's Way," a genre mash-up that never quite achieves "so very bad it's good" status.

It's Cowboys vs. Ninjas in this fantastical exercise in martial arts magical un-realism. But Korean swordsman Jang Dong Gun has a simmering charisma and a great hair stylist. And the thing is played for laughs, or was edited for laughs after the studio realized what writer-director Sngmoo Lee had delivered.

Jang plays an assassin who has all but wiped out a rival clan. Then, a cute baby stops him in his tracks, and he saves it and flees to the West - the Old West - to hide.

He ends up in Lode, "The Paris of the West," essentially the dusty leftover sets from "The Book of Eli," augmented by more green-screen landscapes than "300" and "Sin City" put together. Our assassin ends up running a Chinese laundry.

The fetching Lily, a girl with a tortured past - she literally was tortured - shows the new fellow she calls "Skinny" around Lode, which is peopled with circus folk who hope the Ferris wheel they haven't quite finished will bring the town back to life. Lily, by the way, is played by eye candy Kate Bosworth, drawling as though she's auditioning for a dinner theater tour of "Steel Magnolias."

Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush, who may very well get another nomination for his work in "The King's Speech," is slumming here as the town drunk, and a not-very-amusing one at that.

The action bits are stylized and kind of cool, and the charismatic Jang pulls them off with aplomb.

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Yeah, it's nuts. No, it's not that much fun. Action comedy, Asian sword-slasher pic or martial arts mystical mumbo jumbo, this warrior never quite finds his way.