What a view | HBO’s Warrior returns for another bout of blood-soaked martial arts
- Based on an idea by Bruce Lee, the new season starts as it means to go on – with extreme violence
- Chinatown tongs, madams and gangsters battle for supremacy in late 19th century San Francisco
Racism has a long and ignoble history as a pillar of American law enforcement. But San Francisco in the late 1870s had bigger problems than bigoted policemen and their venal city hall overseers, or even gangs of rough-hewn Irish labourers promulgating, with clubs, knives and dynamite, the anti-“coolie” and “yellow peril out” message.
Starting on October 3, at 10am on HBO Go and Cinemax, season two kicks off where season one ended – and as it means to continue – with extreme violence while turning the set piece spotlight onto Koji’s exemplary skills as a precision weapon. And whatever the proportion of actual martial arts to choreography, the fights always look sinew-rippingly realistic.
Olivia Cheng returns as mamasan Ah Toy, who outshines the girls in her charge and has her own, lethal take on the racially motivated barbarity. Hoon Lee is back as tricky businessman Wang Chao, goods supplier to all sides and beholden to none; Dean Jagger once again dons the flat cap of beefy, brutish Irish workingmen’s leader Dylan Leary; and Joe Taslim, as Ah Sahm’s nemesis Li Yong, remains boss of the most frightening eyebrows ever to signify evil on a martial artist’s face. All have their reasons for chasing a version of the American dream.
Raucous, hazardous, with an almost tangible grubbiness, the cobbles and stinking alleys of Warrior bring the streets of old San Francisco triumphantly to life. Who cares if they’re a set in Cape Town?