TheDenizen talks Ninja Part II

Alright punks, TheDenizen is back with more movie reviews.

I mentioned in my first blog that I like violence, and I really, really do. To me, violence is one of the few bright beacons of joy in an existence completely saturated with stupid people doing stupid things. I hate people in general, and that tends to go hand in hand with enjoying seeing extreme violence inflicted upon them.

It's for this reason that I still haven't seen Ninja Assassin: there's nothing worse than sitting in a movie theater crowded with idiots, so I have a cardinal rule about NOT seeing movies in the theater until they've been out for at least a week. The crowds thin out significantly by then and I can choke down my murderous rage for longer. I made an exception to this rule ONCE in the last 10 years for LOTR: The Two Towers and it was 3.5 hours of torture, as I spent the entire film's running time stifling the urge to savagely donkey punch the retarded chatty fucks filling the row in front of me.

Anyways, I'm finally seeing Ninja Assassin tomorrow most likely (and will post my thoughts to compare/contrast with the HeadNinja), but I've spent a bit of time over the last few days revisting more old school ninja *ahem* "classics" to put me in the mood. Let's get to it.


Ninja Terminator - Godfrey Ho is like the king of the shitty 80's ninja film, and this is one of his finest hours. He takes a bunch of footage from an old 70's triad movie, shoots a bit of new ninja footage, and then splices it all together in the hopes it somehow makes sense using voice overs. It doesn't (he also blatantly rips off music from Star Wars and Clockwork Orange). This flick concerns a band of three ninja who betray their clan and steal the three part Golden Ninja statue, which gives the possessor physical immunity. The rest of the movie is just various ninja/triad groups fighting and trying to steal the pieces back.

Richard Harrison looks ridiculously out of place as a middle aged white ninja named Harry, who delivers orders to his underlings via his Garfield phone and sports more eyeliner than BigKaboom at a Smiths concert. The evil Ninja Empire issues death threats by sending little tiny robots to deliver menacing VHS tapes to their victims - seriously, they look like Transformers toys. There's a totally pointless G-rated sex scene between two minor characters, scored with "Echoes" by Pink Floyd.

Lots of cool ninja stuff with smoke bombs, shuriken, caltraps, etc at the beginning and end, but most of the middle is taken up by the kung fu fighting of the older triad picture. Thankfully those fights are plentiful and actually quite well choreographed and filmed. Jaguar Wong is a badass dude who smirks constantly while beating the shit out of everyone, and the main villain is played by Korean superkicker Hwang Jang Lee. Lee played Silver Fox in the Secret Rivals films, but for some reason he wears a preposterous blonde ladies wig and a white dress suit for 90% of this movie. I'm sure it made sense to Godfrey.

Life of Ninja - I had great hopes for this movie: a kung fu/ninja flick starring Chen Kwan Tai and Yasuaki Kurata? Can you say "massive fucking potential"? It starts off with a bunch of ninja in a cave going through rigorous training exercises - nice. Then about 30 seconds later any notion of this being a serious movie are tossed gleefully out the window as the focus changes to female ninja and their training methods. This includes a mud wrestling match to the death that plays over most of the opening credits, and repeated half naked dipping into an icy pool. Thankfully after that, the weak exploitation stuff falls to the wayside and unadulterated asskicking takes over.

The plot concerns a total prick of a Hong Kong businessman who is being targeted by Ninja for assassination, and the Chinese kendo instructor (Chen Kwan Tai) he hires to protect him. Lots of cheese on display here, like when a female ninja hypnotizes another girl with bright blue orbs that shoot from her eyes, or when a guy gets attacked with a machete in the shower and responds by spraying his attacker with the shower head. There's also plenty of brutal fighting in the flick, including an insane beatdown when Tai takes on about 15 ninja single-handed, using only a pair of tonfa. HELL YEAH. Of course the final battle between Tai and Kurata is incredible, although for some reason, they filmed about 1/3 of it in the pitch black, and you can't see a thing. When the lights are on though, the two veteran screen fighters put on a clinic, with Kurata even busting out some lightning fast monkey style at the end. Me likey.

Ninja 3: The Domination - This flick starts out really promising with a ninja slaughtering about 30 people at a golf course, including a bunch of cops, before being cornered and gunned down. The ninja sees a girl before he dies and magically transmits his spirit into her, and the next 45 minutes of the movie is the girl and her cop boyfriend trying to figure out why she's suddenly got an interest in Japanese swords and keeps blacking out. There's all kinds of stupid Poltergiest/Exorcist crap in there to pad the running time, plus Sho Kosugi standing around looking tough in an eye-patch. Finally around the hour mark, we get another police massacre at a graveyard before Sho goes into action...first fighting the girl to force the ninja spirit back into it's own body in a blur of cheap effects, and then kicking his ass.

All around, a pretty shit movie with way too much melodrama and not nearly enough ninja antics. It wasn't even goofy enough to laugh at, except for the clothes people are wearing in the gym club scene. Lucinda Dickey plays the main chick, and she's kinda cute, like a mix of a young Geena Davis and Linda Hamilton, but she never gets her cans out, and she falls for this dweeby little guy with a furry back and shoulders. Weak. At least lots of people get killed.


And there you have it. My bloodlust is whetted. My shuriken sharpened. I've got my ninja headband. Ninja Assassin here I come.