This is a strange movie – 20 mins in and we’re still following around the life of a guy who doesn’t remember anything about his past. He’s played by Kane Kosugi, who wasn’t in the previous Tekken movie (he’s most recognisable as Scott Adkins’ adversary from Ninja II) but based on the name of this movie one might guess he’s the replacement actor for Kazuya Mishima – Heihachi Mishima’s son and Jin Kazama’s father. Not only has he completely forgotten where he is and who he is etc, but he seems to have a bomb implanted inside his chest and if he wants to live he needs to follow the orders of a strange man who calls himself The Minister (played by Rade Šerbedžija) who runs a cult of assassins all bound by the same threat.
It’s not until 25 minutes in that we see the familiar face of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who played Heihachi Mishima in the last movie, that the plot appears to be beginning to very slowly unravel. And when I say very slowly, I’m not exaggerating, since another 25 mins later we’re still none-the-wiser as to who this guy is and how he came to be in his current situation.
It’s not until near the end of the first hour that we finally learn, beyond doubt, that the lead character who we’ve been following around for nearly an hour, who’s lost his memory, is indeed Kazuya Mishima, when he remembers the location of his old apartment suite – he asks the receptionist what name he checked in under, and heard he used the initials K M. That still leaves a lot of unanswered questions, but at least we’re making progress since it’s already two thirds of the way through the movie. The big reveal doesn’t actually happen until 10 minutes before the end of the movie, and even then it’s not a big reveal – it’s bare minimum to keep the air of mystery going even beyond the end of the movie.
One thing’s clear though – this movie has a very different genre to the original Tekken movie, which had a much faster tempo and practically none of this slowly unravelling mystery vibe. It works quite well here though – it stays quite intriguing from start to finish, if you’ve not seen it before or at least can’t remember how it goes. The general standard of production, the quality of the action scenes, and the power of the mystery factor are all quite effective here. The acting isn’t terrible either.
It’s quite good from an educational standpoint too, for those who can read the subtle undertones and can already see the synergy with the kinds of methods used by shady agencies to control people in the real world. When I say quite good, I mean it offers a basic level of something to think about, minus the usual warp factors, which is refreshing.
Having said that, there’s still such little going on here, that I can’t fairly rate it on a par with the original. Especially when it comes to rewatching this movie – if you have any memory of what’s going on, that already leaves practically no substance left to enjoy upon rewatching it. For this reason I have to rate it Below Average but only just. There are a lot of respectable movies in & around this kind of rating, so I wouldn’t call it a failure per se – it’s just not something to be recommending too much.
The lead female in this movie – a fellow assassin called Rhona Anders played by Kelly Wenham – has the constant facial expression of a tantrum-throwing teenager, and the voice of a middle to upper class Brit trying to talk like a commoner, so typical of domestic British TV dramas. She’s also built with a stronger frame than the lead male – very butch, no finesse, just like her voice – as if she comes from WWE, and the other females in this movie are no different – this theme hasn’t changed since the first movie. The other main woman in this movie is the landlord of a cheap hotel, called Laura, played by Paige Lindquist, who has a quiet and alluring demeanour but is still physically butch enough to overpower the lead male.
This movie begins looking like a poor level of production, as it starts to build the backstory of the dystopian world where the lead character, Jin Kazama – played adequately by Jon Foo (with vibes of Justin Chatwin from Dragonball Evolution the year before, or Michael J Fox from Back To The Future) – is constantly evading law enforcement just to put good food on the table.
When Jin’s mother dies, about 20 minutes in, and he enters the Iron Fist tournament in the Tekken estate that rules America in this dystopian world, the movie starts to come alive. In his trial to become the people’s champ, he fights Marshall Law (played by MMA champion turned moviestar Cung Le). In this bout we see many classic movies from the Tekken video game series, both on Jin Kazama’s side and on Martial Law’s side.
Naturally, people who used to play the Tekken game are going to be more into this movie than those who didn’t, and I used to be pretty good at Tekken 3 back in the day, but I quit playing PlayStation games when I became an adult! As a teenager and a master of fighting in Tekken I used to think how my life would be so much better if all the time spent mastering Tekken were spent mastering martial arts moves in real life instead. I did eventually get very good at martial arts in real life and I don’t have any regrets about quitting the PlayStation in my late teens – if anything, I should have quit computer games altogether including PC games which I wasted a lot of time on in my 20s & 30s. These days, in an effort to make better use of my time, I limit my gaming to a little bit of simple, timeless, non-addictive games like Chess (especially the Crazyhouse variant), and even Chess can be a waste of time according to arguably the most talented player of all time, Paul Morphy, who quit the game at an early age after famously saying something like “the ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman; the ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life”.
Anyway, back to the Tekken movie. The fight scene energy is generally pretty good on top of being quite true to the characters’ signature moves in the game.
I haven’t generally been a fan of Luke Goss in the lead role of action movies – he just don’t seem convincing enough – but his role here as Jin’s old-school street-smart manager suits him very well.
If not for its extremely simplistic plot, and its generally mediocre level of actors, this movie could have easily been several levels better, but as it stands, it rate it Bang Average, and that’s even a bit generous considering its poor rewatchability until you’ve almost completely forgotten how it goes.
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa does a decent job as Heihachi Mishima, leader of the Tekken empire until his son steals the throne, and his son Kazuya Mishima is played quite well by Ian Anthony Dale.
The lead female, Christie Monteiro, with whom Jin gets quite close, is played by the pretty but butch Kelly Overton who based on her physique, appearance, dress style and demeanor, I’d have guessed had a background in pro (pretend) wrestling. She’s not a bad actress and in terms of star power she’s probably a good match for Jon Foo, if not a little overpowering.
Sequel
If you enjoyed this movie, don’t miss its only sequel, Tekken II: Kazuya’s Revenge (2014) which is a different kind of action movie altogether, but still quite enjoyable if you’ve not seen it before or don’t remember how it goes.
Based on the very popular video game called Mortal Kombat, which at the time was in hot competition with Street Fighter, this incredibly cheesy movie is a classic combination of slightly cheap and very catchy. It’s no blockbuster and has no A-lister stars in lead roles (although the beautiful Talisa Soto (from Licence To Kill) plays a minor role here, as Princess Kitana) but it does have some very suitable cult icons in major roles such as Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who plays the main antagonist (a sorcerer called Shang Tsung), and Christopher Lambert as Lord Raiden who is a mostly back-seat leader of the protagonists with outstanding magical powers but limited scope for using them (also spelt Rayden to avoid copyright issues with a 1990 arcade game called Raiden by Tecmo).
This movie is slightly one dimensional, as any movie would be on a less than blockbuster budget, and since it’s made in the 90s its CGI effects look cheap by today’s standards (don’t miss the remake from 2021); but this movie still does a pretty good job at sustaining attention by following a fantastical storyline, being consistently action packed, and having frequent bits of good humour in the intermittent quieter moments.
If you’re old enough to be a fan of the old Mortal Kombat video games, you’ll be extra fond of this movie series in a way that more recent generations just won’t understand.
Considering its unique balance of strengths and weaknesses I could make a case for rating this movie anywhere between Bang Average and Pretty Good, but we’ll go for Above Average in this instance, where it sits right at home with a lot of similarly super cool and very busy but somewhat shallow movies.
Everything lacking in this movie, such as modern effects and a bit more grounding, is kind of present in the 2021 remake, however, that movie lacks much of the cheesy iconography and coolness of this one. If we could somehow combine the best of both of them, we could easily end up with one of the best action movies ever made.
Bear in mind also, the role of Johnny Cage in the video game was originally intended for Jean-Claude Van Damme, but he ended up going elsewhere and eventually did a deal with the main rival video game Street Fighter and appeared in the film adaptation of that game alongside Kylie Minogue (who many years later he admitted to having an affair with during the making of that movie). Their chemistry was great and the movie was fun and the Street Fighter video game was kind of the more dominant one, but when it came to the movies, the Mortal Kombat movies were by far the best, so maybe Van Damme picked the wrong side! Anyway, Johnny Cage in this movie was played by someone seemingly random (Linden Ashby) with a bit of kickboxing type experience but nowhere near Van Damme’s physical talent or charismatic star power. He’s still good fun, but he’s no Van Damme.
Talisa Soto kind of stole the show here with her beauty even from her minor role and without a strong dance partner, while aside from that, Lambert & Tagawa stole the show with their incredibly cheesy charisma. Lambert especially is probably what’s most memorable about this movie. The special effects behind the likes of Raiden, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Reptile & Goro are pretty good too, for a mid 90s movie. Their outfits are pretty good too. And the theme tune music is outstanding, when it appears, but it doesn’t appear often enough or varied enough for my liking – it’s an outstanding concept that deserves to be expanded on and utilised more in this movie, but this is only something proven by its long-running cult following over spanning many decades – it was probably not something so easily provable and commercially justifiable at the time of making this movie.
Other cast members include Robin Shou who played Liu Kang – probably the main protagonist here; Trevor Goddard who plays Kano, one of the antagonists, responsible for luring Sonya onto the boat and into the tournament; and then there’s Bridgette Wilson who plays Sonya Blade, a special forces operator who unwittingly ends up on the team of protagonists defending the realm of Earth.
Sequel
While Mortal Kombat (1995) was a generally respectable movie with a touch of B-movie cheese; its immediate sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) looks more like a straight B-movie. Continuing from the story at the end of the original, at first it’s nice to see the beautiful Talisa Soto returning in a more significant role here, but she’s kind of landed in the sh*t with this one. It’s a shame to see her lower herself to being present in this level of production – the cinematography is thoroughly unclassy and the script leaves much to be desired this time round. Literally none of the other actors returned except Robin Shou as a mediocre Liu Kang. I guess Lambert and Tagawa were either not interested or couldn’t be afforded, and that should tell us all we need to know about the quality of Annihilation. Considering how Lambert kept making the Highlander movies until they became unwatchably bad, it should come as no surprise that this movie is really quite unbearable at times since he’s been replaced by James Remar, who is not really a bad actor per se, but doesn’t have Lambert’s funky touch. I couldn’t help but fast forward through the very monotonous parts of this movie, of which there were many, thus I have to rate this one Barely Watchable, which is a massive step down from the original which I rated Above Average due to its impressive coolness on top of its respectable production level.
If you really want to enjoy another good Mortal Kombat movie, don’t miss the modern remake from 2021 which is no worse than the 1995 original. Don’t even bother with Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) if you ask me, just give it a miss.
This movie gets off to a great start, with a funky yet chilling opening delivering vibes reminiscent of The Matrix or Equilibrium which both came out just a few years prior. It’s a relatively simple opening scene but sets the atmosphere very nicely – not perfectly, but not far off either – it’s got to be one of the best opening scenes ever made in an action hero movie I think. You could call it an understated masterpiece thus far.
The following scenes are quite interesting and captivating, and carry an element of the same vibe from the opening scene, but to a lesser degree, as the antagonists pose a real threat to Elektra, and the movie turns out to be Decent but not nearly as good as it could have been. I would rate this movie just one level down from the best action hero movie with a female lead (such as Wonder Woman which has a better plot as well as better peak adrenaline moments, but a similar level of horror and drama creeping in).
Jennifer Garner stars as Elektra in this movie – she’s an assassin with subtle superpowers. Aside from lacking the animalistic side, her character has a lot in common with Halle Berry’s Catwoman which came out the year before this movie, and the year after Daredevil where Elektra was also featured as a major character. That’s three years running of this type of lethal female action movie heroine. There was also Æon Flux in 2005 and Ultraviolet in 2006 – both respectable female assassin movies from around the same time, with similar levels of martial arts and athleticism too, although not on the same level as Marvel’s Elektra and DC’s Catwoman production-wise.
Elektra has some kind of Spidey Sense, like Daredevil’s super hearing ability, giving her an early warning when anyone potentially dangerous is approaching from very far away. But much more than that, she has the ability to see the near future, giving her the chance to change it and catch people by surprise.
That’s not even the height of unrealism in this movie – there are also demons taking the form of ninjas (within the antagonist ninja clan called The Hand) who turn to smoke when they die. And there are some weirder demons looking like oddball mercenaries, having special powers to do certain magic tricks. For example, one called Tattoo, played alright by Christopher Ackerman, has tattoos of animals that come to life. Another, called Typhoid Mary, played adequately by Natassia Malthe, blows kisses and waves hands that suck the life out of plants and people. Then another, called Stone, played alright by Bob Sapp, is big bulletproof black man, like Marvel’s Luke Cage, while also throwing sticks powerfully enough to chop down big trees. This team of weird demons is led by the boss’s son (from The Hand), played adequately by Will Yun Lee whose scenes work well in a way, but he’s also a bit too fresh faced for the role, like some kind of K-Pop boyband member, unlike his father played more convincingly by the scorched face of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. Fortunately, they’re still not quite good enough to kill Elektra.
Garner pulls off the lead role pretty well. She’s a talented actress and is not terribly unattractive either (although the beauty contest in this movie is won by Norwegian-Malaysian actress Natassia Malthe playing Typhoid Mary). Garner’s a bit of a tomboy, but no more so than most female leads of action hero movies. She’s is quite athletically built and this makes her well suited to the role of Elektra – a martial arts expert and assassin who moves like few others in the world can (due to camera tricks).
It’s also good to see Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Shang Tsung from the 90s Mortal Kombat movies) playing the leader of The Hand (the ninja clan that’s been trying to kill or capture Elektra for a long time). He does a great job as usual.
Croatian actor Goran Višnjić (with vibes of a cross between Charlie Sheen and Matt LeBlanc, minus the comedic touch) does a good job as the father of a teenage girl who is being hunted because she’s “the treasure” – the main prodigy child within her generation showing great potential to be a top assassin. Kirsten Prout plays the girl adequately – she’s a decent young actress who has plenty IQ for the role but not nearly so much athletic talent as would be ideal. She has a puffy goldfish face, poor coordination and a gormless bratty demeanour – the sneaky, impatient bratty side of her seems intentional but her lack of athletic poise stands out when she’s meant to be a top ninja prodigy with partly established skills.
Terence Stamp does an alright job as Elektra’s former ninja clan master, called Stick, who comes to her rescue when she’s on the verge of defeat, and takes her back to the dojo along with the father & daughter she was sent to kill but decided to protect – her contract was sponsored by Stick, somehow knowing Elektra would protect them instead of kill them. These are some cool scenes to enjoy – from the near assassination to the protection to the rescue to the training back at the dojo and the feeling of it being a safe place for a while.
In stark contrast to the awesome opening for action movie junkies, the last 5 or 6 minutes of this movie is little more than an extended soppy mess for drama mushes. What a missed opportunity and switch up of genres. These drama-loving directors just can’t help themselves, even when they have 95% of a good action movie completed already. Given the lack of depth to the plot, the excessive dose of horror genre creeping in as the movie matures, and the undesirable soppy ending, I have to rate this movie no better than Decent, on a par with movies like Daredevil (which came out 2 years prior and also featured Jennifer Garner as Elektra in a major supporting role). Just one level down from the best female-led action hero movies of all time (like Wonder Woman), even though from the outset Elektra clearly had the potential to be so much better – it just went gradually downhill as the movie progressed and unfortunately shifted genres from smooth action to borderline horror to soppy drama in the end.
Licence To Kill has an interesting creative opening involving James Bond and his CIA friend Felix Leiter. They’re both dressed up ready to attend Felix’s wedding, but they get called to a mission at the last minute, so they give chase a drug cartel boss, who escapes in a plane, so James & Felix get back into their large coast guard helicopter and pluck the plane out of its flight path, leaving it hanging mid-air by its tail. Then they parachute back to their wedding procession which is already underway. It’s a fairly creative opening but it’s no 00 vs SAS training exercise like we had at the start of the last Bond movie, The Living Daylights (1987) which I think was far more on-genre as well as more concise and generally more on-point too.
James Bond is played very well by Timothy Dalton here, in his second of only two ever Bond movies that he starred in. His career as Bond was cut short due to the producers being busy with a lawsuit over distribution prices that lasted 5 years (1989-1994), by which time Dalton had lost interest in being James Bond. Dalton was already signed up to do another Bond movie in 1991 but the delays due to the lawsuit essentially ended his contract in 1990 and Dalton had completely lost interest in being Bond by the time the producers were ready to begin his next movie, so they got Pierce Brosnan instead, and so began the Brosnan era.
Felix Leiter is played adequately by David Hedison here, who played the same role in one other Bond movie, 16 years prior – that being Live And Let Die (1973), which was Roger Moore’s first outing as James Bond.
The theme tune to Licence To Kill is quite funky, and quite R&B compared to usual. Sung by Gladys Knight, it’s not a bad tune, but it still doesn’t quite have the same kick as the best theme tunes like the theme tune for A View To A Kill which feels much more Bondy and impactful, while the Licence To Kill theme tune, as good as it is, is relatively demure.
Not 20 minutes in and we’re already very well acquainted with the main antagonist in this movie, Franz Sanchez, played very convincingly by Robert Davi, having seen him evade capture then get caught in the opening scenes, then we see him get sprung free by a cop who took a two million dollar bribe. The crooked cop, called Ed Killifer, is played quite well by a young Everett McGill (quite memorable as the main antagonist, on the brawn side, in Under Siege 2, some 6 years after Licence To Kill, by which time he’d developed a grey-haired Clint Eastwood vibe, but in Licence To Kill he has dark curly hair, possibly dyed to cover some greys).
With the murder of Felix and his newly wedded wife, after the escape of Sanchez, then with James finding their bodies and there being an atmosphere of mixed sorrow and anger, this movie appears to be attempting to set up narratives and pull at heartstrings, perhaps to make up for a colder-hearted vibe in The Living Daylights, but in doing so, Licence To Kill is missing out on the concise action that people like me came for. It’s a step in the wrong direction, for my taste, even though it appears they’re trying to make an improvement, and undoubtedly drama lovers will like the new style, but I much prefer the previous style personally. The subsequent infiltration of the shark place is also terribly slow and suspenseful. The odd attempt at humour is also a bit awkward here.
Early in the second quarter, as Bond sneaks aboard a ship owned Sanchez’s business partner, Milton Krest (played quite well by Anthony Zerbe), we become better acquainted with one of the main Bond girls in this movie – Sanchez’s girlfriend, Lupe Lamora, played quite well by the beautiful ethnically Puerto Rican actress Talisa Soto, who we initially met in the opening scenes. Soto is Japanese for outside or outsider, so she may have some distant Japanese heritage, but it’s also Spanish for grove, thicket or small wooded area, which is an equally viable surname (think of George Groves). Either way, I’d say she’s one of the best Bond girls of all time – a nice continuation from the beautiful Maryam d’Abo in the last movie, The Living Daylights. Timothy Dalton is truly blessed with the best standard of Bond girl in his movies, while Connery and Moore suffered a terribly unpredictable variety of co-star calibres.
The diving scene around 45 mins in is pretty concise and continuously creative. Quite impressive there.
Around 50 minutes in, we meet the other main woman in this movie: Carey Lowell playing Ms Pam Bouvier – a former US Army pilot working with the CIA. She’s no stunner but she’s quite tidy (in her late 20s here) and is a pretty good actor too. She makes a fun character in this movie, but James clearly made the wrong decision rejecting Lupe to choose Pam in the end.
It’s good to see Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa – the legendary actor from Mortal Kombat (1995) with Christopher Lambert – taking on a minor role here as Mr Kwang. He’s always an entertaining character in an action movie – his simple deadly gaze alone is enough to garner intrigue. Speaking of ‘garner’, he was also in Elektra (2005) with Jennifer Garner.
Great to see Q visiting Bond, with a bag full of gadgets, while Bond’s gone AWOL on a mission to kill Sanchez. Played very well by Desmond Llewelyn – his role is quite extended here for a change, as he does more than just deliver gadgets.
There’s an interesting series of plot twists around 1 hour and 20 minutes in, as Bond gets jumped by some Japanese ninjas led by Kwang who turns out to be a deep cover agent from the Hong Kong Police narcotics squad (a cringeworthy example of cultural misappropriation). Then when Sanchez takes him out and finds Bond tied up as a prisoner (due to be sent back to the UK, but Bond tells Sanchez things were about to get nasty), Sanchez suddenly trusts & values Bond very dearly. This turns into another clever plot development as James makes Sanchez think Krest is a traitor without actually naming him (based on info James was told discretely by Lupe just seconds earlier), then Sanchez finds the stolen money planted by James on Krest’s boat. Sanchez’s right hand man, Dario, who points out James as an informant, is played quite well by Benicio Del Toro – he delivers a convincing performance, as a younger brother or son figure to Sanchez.
Wayne Newton makes a convincing and occasionally funny character too, as a televangelist personality called Professor Joe Butcher who’s merely covering for Sanchez’s large cocaine transactions.
The ending is one that’s memorable and longwinded enough to mean that I don’t look forward to it when it comes to rewatching this movie. Having said that, when actually watching the ending, it’s fairly well made – there’s no particularly dull patches and the action stays quite creative and well made, although the overall plot doesn’t change much from the time when Bond gets rumbled in the factory until the end of the truck chase – it’s all quite memorable plotwise during this time, which makes the ending a bit of a downer for rewatchers, although this is a common theme in action movies, but there are some exceptions where the ending is as buzzing & creative as the start.
Overall, I have to rate this movie about equal to the average Bond movie from the Connery or Moore era. That’s one level down from the best movies of those eras (such as Goldfinger, Live And Let Die, and The Spy Who Loved Me), and it’s a couple levels down from the previous Timothy Dalton movie, The Living Daylights, which I personally rate as the best Bond movie of all time, not because Dalton is any more convincing than an early Connery from Dr No for example, but because The Living Daylights had a much higher budget and is much more action packed – it’s a true modern action movie. Licence To Kill, by contrast, is a bit more one-dimensional and lacks a great chemistry like Timothy Dalton had with Maryam d’Abo both on and off screen. Taliso Soto is no less beautiful but their chemistry never really caught fire – I guess she’s more of a model than an actress, and she even intended to act like she couldn’t care less about switching from Sanchez to Bond and then again from Bond to President Hector Lopez (played lifelessly but I guess adequately by Pedro Armendáriz Jr) at the very end when Bond decided to reject her in favour of Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) for some unrealistic reason. This odd choice of woman is reminiscent of the cringe factor when Connery and Moore were overly romantic with an aging Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) before that actress was finally replaced at the start of the Dalton era. It seems much of the smart decisionmaking that came with The Living Daylights was already absent by the time Licence To Kill came about, even though they were both officially directed by John Glen, who also did Moore’s last three Bond movies (neither of his two best ones) so the injection of good thinking in The Living Daylights may have come from someone less under the spotlight. The budget for Licence To Kill ($36M) was also slightly lower than The Living Daylights ($40M). Maybe they were distracted by looming lawsuits in 1989. They came back with massively higher and constantly increasing budgets in the Pierce Brosnan era, which kicked off with GoldenEye in 1995 on a budget of $60M then went on to Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997 with a budget of $110M and the budgets kept going up throughout the Brosnan and Craig eras (with just the odd hiccup), although I don’t personally include the emotional Daniel Craig in my list of classic Bond movies – I think he’s absolutely ruined the Bond saga for the last 20 years – I can’t personally watch a single Bond movie he’s made. He’s worse than George Lazenby who did On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). But I’m a massive fan of Connery, Moore and Dalton as Bond, and I think Brosnan makes a bland but still quite watchable Bond. Those four eras form the complete list of Bond classics, as far as I’m concerned.
There are some great action scenes in this movie, with great backstory to them. But it’s also a very cold & lonely, depressing movie for the most part, and the ending reflects this most of all. So you may love this movie the first one or two times you watch it, as I did, but once I got used to it, I had to balance its pros & cons to arrive at the rating of Decent – one level better than a mere OK.
There’s way too much glorification of suicide in this movie. In reality, I believe there’s nothing honourable about suicide – it’s among the greatest of sins. And there’s nothing glorious about pride & honour – that’s a minor sin, best replaced with humility. So the fact that everyone voluntarily suicides to honour their “lord” in this movie, makes it quite off-putting. It’s quite sacrilegious in this way. But it still has some great action scenes with some great script detail and great screenplay by some great cast members, so I guess I have a love-hate relationship with this movie.
Keanu Reeves stars in 47 Ronin as a half-breed man trained by demons and capable of all their tricks. I’m not sure if half-breed means he’s half Japanese, half white; or if it means he’s half human, half demon. Anyway, he was wronged and banished from his hometown, then teamed up with other banished ronins (former samurai, whose master was killed) to take back his hometown and rescue the princess from a wedding she wasn’t comfortable with. That’s the story in a nutshell. The acting and action is good but the story is frequently gloomy and depressing so it’s a movie of pros and cons for fans of the smooth action hero genre like myself.
Keanu is his usual self. He does a decent job here and is supported by good choreography and special effects.
His main sidekick in this movie – a banished Samarai who frees him from slavery and joins him in rescuing the princess, is played well by Hiroyuki Sanada.
The leader of all Japan, who doesn’t get much screentime but still adds plenty of value to this movie, is played by the legendary Japanese-American actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (from Licence To Kill 1989 with Timothy Dalton; Showdown in Little Tokyo 1991 with Brandon Lee & Dolph Lundgren; Mortal Kombat 1995 with Christopher Lambert; Elektra 2005 with Jennifer Garner; Tekken 2009 & 2014, and many more movies aside from these classics).
