A Warrior's Heart

Comments (0) By Eric Hynes Wednesday, Nov 30 2011

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A Warrior's Heart
Directed by Michael F. Sears
Opens December 2, Quad Cinema

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The latest film to ride Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth as if it were a nonconsensual pony, A Warrior's Heart tries to fashion a hero's journey out of a Seventeen spread. Two peripheral pretty faces from team Twilight star in this story about a high school lacrosse player's fitful passage from temperamental military brat to marginally more mature military brat. When his Marine father is transferred from California to D.C., Conor (Kellan Lutz) struggles to insert his overweening ego into a prep-school squad, then struggles worse when Dad is redeployed to and killed in Iraq (but not before tapping out one last lacrosse-themed text to Conor, blood, vomit, and flaming Jeep be damned). Soon, Conor's alienating his new girlfriend, Brooklyn (Ashley Greene), stick-chopping opponents, and going postal on a trophy case, for which he's inexplicably incarcerated, then released into the custody of a Native-American Marine named, hell yes, Duke Wayne (Adam Beach), who maroons him on a reservation and administers earthy wisdom via sledgehammer and sleeper hold. Director Michael F. Sears might not know how to record or construct a scene, but he's savvy enough to make sure his PG movie gives props to Uncle Sam and Jesus, and ogles Lutz's naked torso as doggedly as the family-friendly rating allows.