A friend with whom I share a mutual love of HK Cinema/Kung Fu movies, forced me to watch Cinemax's show "
Warrior". I'm about a third of the way through it. I'm... kinda loving it?
Fair warning ahead of time: it's a Cinemax show, so you know the amounts of nudity, swearing, graphic violence (both regular and sexual) in your average Game of Thrones season? It's like that but dialed up considerably. So if any or all of that is a deal breaker, know before going in.
All that said, it's pretty good? Even though I'm not regularly a fan of such things. The show is made by Justin Lin, so it's very stylistic and wonderful to look at. And apparently, the core idea of the show comes from a Bruce Lee show pitch from back when he was alive and trying to get a TV show made, which the show's marketing is all oriented around. Hard to say how much of his actual pitch made it into the show. The show sells itself on a Kung Fu/Spaghetti Western fusion, but it ends up feeling more like an Asian-American Boardwalk Empire/Gangs of New York historical-fiction drama than that.
The basic premise of the show is kinda simple: a Chinese Immigrant (who is really good at Kung Fu) comes to Gilded Age San Francisco, and gets embroiled in the Tong Wars of the time. (Essentially local Chinese gangs.)
Like I already said, it's a rather brutal show. Not just from the violence and sex, but also just hey - this show is all about highlighting the Asian-American experience and how much violence and racism Asians historically were met with in this country. But while it's kinda hard for me, as an Asian-American to hear the word 'chink' said a million times an episode, it's actually really cool to both see a slice of American history that's important but always buried/forgotten, as well as a show where our representation is not just a tokenism, but front and center.
Also, the fight choreography is actually pretty decent!
I don't know if this show is for everyone. Again, the sex and violence is pretty intense, along with a lot of machismo/toxic masculinity. The later of which I feel actually gets a halfway decent exploration? But yeah. Good period piece, good action show so far.