Warrior: A Knockout

Just because guys are pounding each other into mulch doesn't mean "Warrior" is a dumb flick. Consider this: it also gives us Beethoven's Ode to Joy on the soundtrack, passages from Melville's "Moby Dick," and a refresher course in Newton's Laws of Physics. And that's not all. The story is, like, biblical, dude. As in the Good Book.

Maybe now the movie sounds like a three ring circus. But the Movie Slut assures you there's only one ring in which a winner-takes-all martial arts wackathon is taking place.

The real strength of this ambitious film is that director Gavin O'Connor makes us care —reely, reely care— about who wins.

And then there's the one-two punch of the casting. Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy as the muscle men and Nick Nolte playing sort of himself as a washed up trainer.