This movie gets off to a dark, gritty start that’s quite hard to watch; but this may be a necessary evil to build up towards what happens later in the movie. It’s definitely focused more on the gritty side, than the coolness, compared to the original, but it makes use of modern sound and visual effects for a deeper impact than the original movie from 1995 which was very cool but lacked seriousness, depth & grounding. This movie has a generally higher quality of production than the original, even if a less cool plot, and it has a higher quality of acting generally, even if the characters are less funky. Overall there’s a much more serious tone this time round, but that doesn’t mean it lacks cool effects, it’s just very careful and conservative with their use, and makes a real statement any time the special effects come out.
Throughout the first half hour this movie’s plot develops nicely – it gets increasingly intriguing and you end up kind of hooked. By 25 minutes in, things have become quite clear – we can see who the star of the show is, and some of the other main characters, and what general direction the movie is taking.
45 mins in, things get a bit dark & depressing again. The dark patches continue to be mixed in with uplifting elements for a good half an hour until everyone fights and the lead character’s powers come out for the first time, which is closely followed by the same thing happening to his comrade Jax, then things start to get quite exciting again. The lead character in this movie is not Liu kang this time, although he is a major supporting character here. The lead character this time round is Cole Young (played quite well by Lewis Tan) – a descendant of Scorpion whose entire bloodline was thought to be killed by Sub-Zero but one baby remained, looked after by Raiden, then Scorpion came back from the dead to help his descendant defeat Sub-Zero in the 90th minute, helping to create an epic final battle.
The cast is comprised of a mix between strong, weak and mediocre actors. Strong actors here, aside from Lewis Tan in the lead role, include Joe Taslim playing Sub-Zero very well, and Hiroyuki Sanada playing Scorpion quite well too. Josh Lawson also does a decent job as Kano, and Mehcad Brooks is not bad in the role of Jax.
Raiden (leader of the good guys), Shang Tsung (leader of the bad guys), Liu Kang (good guy) and Sonya Blade (good girl) are all key characters here too, but their respective actors didn’t impress me. Random stuntmen could have probably done their jobs just as good if not better.
Considering its strengths and highs, I’m going to rate this movie generously, scoring it Pretty Good, which puts it a couple of levels above the original – a serious accomplishment. Now imagine if the four key characters listed above had much stronger actors playing those roles – I’d have to rate it even better, and it would be pretty close to the level of the best action movies ever made.
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 good start, with a highly memorable scene where Logan aka the Wolverine is set free by a prison guard in Japan, when Japan is seconds away from getting nuked. Whether you believe nukes are real is another matter – this movie promotes the mainstream narrative and we’ll leave it at that. Logan instantly returns the favour, by saving the guard’s life, by helping him hide down his prison tunnel and shielding him with its door. This scene was set back in the days when Logan had organic claws, before his entire skeleton and claw system was replaced by Stryker with practically indestructible Adamantium.
Then we see logan wake up from a nightmare, in a more recent time, and he’s accidentally killed his X-Men comrade and girlfriend, Jean Grey, having dug his metal claws into her belly while sleeping. Then he wakes up again, in the present day, now living on a snowy mountain, and he’s let his hair grow long. Then he strolls into town, and the movie begins to get much more into an exciting genre. Firstly, he comes across some extra irresponsible hunters, then when he’s in the process of dealing with them and about to take things to the next level, some red-haired Japanese samaurai chick called Yukyo steps in, takes over the show, and escorts him to her car in a befriending manner. The script that follows is an intriguing one, especially considering the interesting characters involved.
This appears to be a much classier Wolverine movie than the last one from 2011 – not only due to its setting in Japan, although that may be a big factor because it allows for the more decadent and intense culture of top Japanese warriors & businessmen creeping in. Backed by themes of Samaurai, Ninja, Yakuza and a touch of witchcraft-type supervillainy plus plenty of plot twists, this makes for quite a captivating movie for the discerning action hero movie connoisseur.
The pace, sound and cinematography are also well executed, giving this movie a modern, premium feel.
Having said that, there’s a good hour in the middle of this movie, from 35 mins till 95 mins, where the Wolverine is weakened and unable to heal himself – this gets a bit depressing at times. There’s still plenty of good action during this hour, but there’s a very depressing overtone to it all. Fortunately after 95 minutes he finds the source of the problem and cures himself, then the movie is capable of a higher grade of entertainment for those who like smooth, no-nonsense action hero performances. Unfortunately though, this only lasts 15 minutes until Logan is trapped and put in another very uncomfortable situation. This movie misses a lot of opportunity for cool Ninja antics minus the uncomfortable stuff, but I guess Hollywood can’t help themselves when it comes to mixing Horror and Drama in with every other genre, and this is really the key reason why I’m rating this movie just Above Average when it could easily have been more highly rated if it swapped most of its horror genre material for some cool extra action and ninja training scenes for example. Still, you can’t please everyone – there will be those who want more of the ugly Horror and irritating Drama. Indeed, this movie seems to be getting a bit lost between genres and that’s really the basis of its downfall I think, irrespective what my personal preference favours.
One of the most intersting scenes is at the very end, amongst the closing credits, where Magneto appears, along with Professor X back from the dead, both asking Logan for help due to dark forces threatening the fate of the world. Now why couldn’t they have a bit of that going on within in the main body of the movie itself? Especially since there were so many scenes of Jean Grey speaking to Logan from the dead – she could have helped out in a more significant way at least once.
The main cast members of this movie include Hugh Jackman as Logan aka Wolverine; Rila Fukushima as Yukio; Svetlana Khodchenkova as Viper; Tao Okamoto as Mariko Yashida; Hiroyuki Sanada as Shingen Yashida (Mariko’s father); Hal Yamanouchi as the Silver Samurai (Mariko’s grandfather, and head of the corporation, making him officially the most powerful person in Japan); and Will Yun Lee as Kenuichio Harada (leader of the ninja clan)
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.
You Only Live Twice is the fifth Bond film by Eon Productions and the fifth outing of Sean Connery as James Bond. He does an excellent job as usual.
This time, the movie is set mostly in Japan. We see sumo wrestlers (including one of Bond’s early adversaries – bringing back vibes of Oddjob from Goldfinger) as well as ninjas (in white gis doing mostly other Japanese martial arts – obviously expecting a naïve audience) plus plenty of beautiful Japanese women – especially the main woman in this movie – James’s initial liaison in Japan, called Aki, played quite well by Akiko Wakabayashi. Akiko seems bright and beautiful, in contrast to James’s cover wife towards in the end of the movie – an agent named Kissy Suzuki, played adequately by Mie Hama. She’s pretty but not stunning, and has a typical bimbo gaze & demeanour.
Aki’s boss (Tiger Tanaka) is played quite well by Tetsurô Tanba.
The main enemy in Japan (Mr Osato) is played well by Teru Shimada, although his company is just a front – he works for Spectre (the main enemy in every Bond movie by Eon up to this point).
Spectre’s boss – their ‘Number 1’ agent – never reveals his face until the end of this movie. Until this point we’d only ever seen his hand stroking a fluffy white cat as he sits in his chair barking orders – this time we learn his name is Ernst Stavro Blofeld and he’s played adequately by Donald Pleasence. He’s a bit of a Dr Evil type character.
Karin Dor also plays a significant role in this movie, as Helga Brandt – a female Spectre agent who Bond thought he seduced, but failed. She later gets killed by Blofeld – she’s dropped in a pond of piranhas, for unwittingly allowing Bond to escape.
This movie is responsible for one of the most iconic & memorable sets in Bond history – the lair built within a volcano, with a sliding roof that, when closed, makes it look like the volcano is full of water to anyone looking down from above. The freeing of prisoners and taking over of that volcano base probably inspired similar antics in The Spy Who Loved Me starring Roger Moore 10 years later – the similarity here may also have something to do with the fact that both movies were directed by Lewis Gilbert – they were his first two of three Bond movies he directed.
Overall I rate this movie as OK – about the same as every other Bond movie so far in the series up to this point, with the exception of Goldfinger which was probably slightly better.
Fun fact 1
My favourite movie of all time is Bloodsport, inspired by the alleged real-life story of Frank Dux who has been widely exposed as a pretender these days. When asked who trained him, he said ‘Tiger Tanaka’, and this worked his way into the movie where Van Damme’s character Frank Dux is trained by a Mr Tanaka. I guess he got the idea from You Only Live Twice and didn’t expect Bloodsport to become the massive cult classic that it became, which has had both positive and negative effects on his reputation due to this controversy.
Fun fact 2
After this movie, Sean Connery asked for a significant pay rise, but Eon Productions refused. So the next Bond movie – On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) – starred George Lazenby instead. It was a commercial success, but was still considered a flop in comparison to You Only Live Twice. Lazenby also refused to do a second movie, due to lack of gadgets in his first one. He’d also never acted in anything before this movie. And he was told by the producers not to turn up to the movie premiere unless he shaved his beard and cut his long hair, but he turned up anyway, without shaving or cutting anything. I have to respect him for that, even if he makes a weak James Bond.
So Eon eventually agreed to Connery’s terms for one more outing – Diamonds Are Forever (1971) – marking the 6th & final outing of Connery as Bond on an Eon Productions film, before eventually finding a suitable replacement in Roger Moore, whose era began with Live And Let Die (1973). Roger Moore made 7 consecutive Bond movies, which took us through to the mid 80s and was followed by a couple starring Timothy Dalton which took us through to the 90s. But Connery made one more attempt at a Bond movie, outside of Eon Productions, before the Roger Moore era had ended – Connery was commissioned to star in Never Say Never Again (1983) in the second of the only two Bond movies ever produced outside of Eon Productions. It featured Kim Basinger as well as Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean) and a bunch of other strong but lesser known actors, and was picked up for distribution by Warner Bros, so it’s a very serious movie still.
Batman Begins (2005) is a star-studded action-drama thriller starring Christian Bale (of Equilibrium, 2002) as Bruce Wayne and Batman. In Batman Begins, we see Bruce Wayne’s growth from childhood into adulthood, we see how he became the Batman, who he formed his initial friendships & alliances with, who he became early enemies with, and we follow his first few missions as the Batman.
Also starring Liam Neeson as the Ninja clan leader who helped train Batman near the start of the movie, while harbouring a dark intentions that come back into the plot towards the end of the movie.
Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman play the roles of Batman’s senior helpers – Alfred the butler, and Mr Fox the technologist who was a former board member and friend of Bruce Wayne’s late father.
Gary Oldman (from Léon and The Book Of Eli) plays the detective who Batman forms an early alliance with, and Katie Holmes (ex-wife of Tom Cruise) plays the lead female who Bruce Wayne grew up with and Batman rescues.
Tom Wilkinson plays the main bad guy early on, and Cillian Murphy plays the main baddie in the middle of the movie.
Generally, it’s a great cast with great acting ability expressed throughout the movie. Batman’s car and technological gadgets are also very nice.
But it’s disappointing that we get some annoyingly hard-to-see fight scenes where everything’s dark and the camera keeps switching between pieces of unclear footage – this is not the kind of action scene I enjoy to watch, but I appreciate there’s no real martial arts skill to be demonstrated by any of these guys and this is a way to cover it up and make it still look credible for drama lovers and suspense or even horror genre fans. Indeed, this movie gets a bit boring with a lot of drama genre creeping in, but when the plot gains legs and the action picks up it becomes very entertaining from time to time.
There’s a great plot twist about half an hour before the end of the movie, when Liam Neeson’s character comes to Gotham.
All in all, I rate it pretty good for fans of this kind of mixed action-drama genre; but for pure action hero movie awesomeness, I rate this movie just ‘OK’ on a par with golden oldie action dramas like Lethal Weapon that have minimal special effects and gadgets etc.
Sequels
If you loved this movie, you might also love its immediate sequel The Dark Knight (2008) which brings back most of the same major cast members and gets regularly called a masterpiece by movie critics, although it doesn’t work so well for me – the star of that movie is actually the Joker rather than the Batman. Maybe it’s good for drama and horror movie fans, but it’s not so pleasant for smooth action hero movie connoisseurs to enjoy. But if you do enjoy the sequel, you’ll be pleased to know most of the same guys come back again for a threequel, The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
This one is a bit dated but probably had a fair budget in its day. Not exactly a blockbuster but it has classic Christopher Lambert in his element – this may be his best ever movie. It has a Ninja/Samurai theme throughout, with a decent quality of acting all round, thus is consistently entertaining for those who are keen on this genre. Not a bad plot although it could have been a bit more creative. Still, it’s a decent film for those who haven’t seen it and are into this type of movie generally. I’d rate it a 7.5/10 alongside movies like Jet Li’s The Master which is a good comparison because it has a seemingly similar budget, a similar quality of acting / investment in cast, similar input on plot, similar year of production and all round similar style and quality of movie with the exception that one is about kung fu and one ninjutsu/samurai so if you like one you’ll probably like the other too.
This movie has a bit too much explicit blood & gore squirting around – they must have spent a lot of money on red paint. It’s got a bit of a sadistic side.
The script is intermittent with interesting bits interwoven with boring bits. There’s plenty of gritty and monotonous action mixed in with the more exciting bits. There’s a lot of decent action still, and it’s a fascinating basic concept. Some of the mood setting / atmosphere building is really top level, but there’s plenty of cold, dull & dry patches too, so it’s likely to receive mixed reviews and overall I rate it as Pretty Good and on a similar level to Scott Adkins’ movie Ninja which came out in the same year (2009).
The main Ninja in this movie, Ninja Assassins, is played by Jung Ji-Hoon, a South Korean pop star also known as Rain. He plays a good guy who left a nasty clan of assassins. He befriends a detective played by Naomie Harris. They both do a decent job in this movie – not top-level acting, a bit cold & dry at times, but quite fitting at other times – far from terrible acting – they both did alright. There’s also a decent supporting performance by Ben Miles as Naomie’s colleague in the agency, and a fair performance by Sho Kosugi as the leader of the Ninja Assassin clan.
This movie was produced by the Wachowski brothers (as they were known in 2009, although they prefer to be called sisters now). This is the same duo behind The Matrix, as well as V For Vendetta and Jupiter Ascending – hence the awesome special effects in places, the respectable cast members, and the dodgy innuendos (kidnapping children and torturing them to breed heartless obedient assassins).
There’s a lot of blade fighting in this movie – from swords to throwing stars to knives attached to chains. But the combat techniques are rarely clear – there’s a lot of flashing between camera angles, and loud music, and unclear tricking in low light, probably to mask the fact the lead actor is not well trained in martial art in real life. Jung Ji-Hoon said, for this movie, he trained several hours a day for six months straight. He learnt bits of all sorts of martial arts, including generic Kickboxing, Karate, Kung Fu, Tai Chi, TKD, and specifically for this movie, a lot of Ninjutsu work, especially weapons work – especially the Shuriken (Throwing Star) and Kusarigama (Dagger Chains). But he was still a relative novice, so the stuntmen looked after him well.
The ending is decent, with special forces bursting into the ninja school before they kill the main man; then he fights his main rivals back to back – the ‘older brother’ (the fellow ninja who happily killed his girlfriend according to clan policy) followed by the teacher of the clan.
Scott Adkins has made many strong contributions to the English language martial arts action hero movie industry, and Ninja (2009) is easily one of his best. This movie sees the main character grow up in a Ninja school in Japan, competing with his ninja brother to inherit the position of Soke (master) of the school. The main antagonist, upon being disrespectful and outcast by the old master, then kills the him and everyone found in the school that night, while hunting down the old master’s daughter who fled to America with the movie’s main hero to hide and protect the sacred armour & weapons that have been kept by the school for hundreds of years. American police obviously get involved, as does an organised crime syndicate, but they aren’t able to do much against the talented ninjas. With a likeable lead man & woman, and credible moves, equipment, bad guys, cops, and good busyness from start to finish, this movie is just one or two levels shy of the best martial arts action hero movies ever made, in my opinion.
The main cast members giving decent performances include: Scott Adkins as the main star (called Casey Bowman in the movie); Mika Hijii the lead female (called Namiko Takeda); Tsuyoshi Ihara the main antagonist (called Masazuka), and Togo Igawa the teacher of the clan (called Sensei Takeda) who gets killed by his outcast student Masazuka about a third of the way into the movie.
This movie has a bit too much blood & guts spilling around early on – not as much as in Ninja Assassin of the same year, but still a bit too much for my taste – that kind of thing messes with the mind of the viewer. This movie has many similarities with Ninja Assassin, right up to the ending where the art of quick movement & disappearance is displayed alongside the art of sensing the location of the quick mover. Maybe it’s some kind of competition who can do best with the same kind of script on a given year, a bit like how there were two Hercules movies in 2014 – the one with The Rock, and the one with Kellan Lutz (where Scott Adkins played a supporting role) – both good movies in both cases.
Ninja (2009) has a very tasty plot development after half way through the movie, when the police arrest Casey and Namiko, then Masazuka hunts them inside the station.
The action and drama is quite continuous and exciting from start to finish. Minimal boring patches. The mood setting is of variable quality throughout – it could sometimes be a lot better with the help of better sound effects and more finessed screenplay. Scott has a bit of a “girl next door” vibe, as do the other main characters here, but they still all do a decent job.
When Scott tries to look intense, he overcooks the external expressions, because it’s just not his true character. This is what makes Van Damme and Seagal movies so good – they genuinely believe they are hotshots in real life, so it’s not even acting, it’s their real character shining through. In this way, Scott Adkins is like the polar opposite of Denzel Washington, because Denzel has a confident penetrative gaze without trying too hard, but has minimal athleticism and zero real physical martial arts acumen, while Scott is a supreme athlete and a top level martial arts trickster but over-cooks his serious gaze to the point he’s almost gurning. He’s like a promoted stuntman. But neither of them are deeply equipped with practical, subtle self-defence skills. Guys like Steven Seagal, Jackie Chan and Jean-Claude Van Damme would probably wipe the floor with Scott Adkins in a real fight, and a prime Bruce Lee would probably wipe the floor with all of them simultaneously. Still, Scott does better aerial tricks than all of them, and can probably handle himself comfortably against the average man.
The Sequel
If you enjoyed Ninja (2009) don’t miss its sequel – Ninja II: Shadow Of A Tear (2013) – also starring Scott Adkins. It doesn’t strictly follow the same storyline with all its features, but has a fairly similar feel and is roughly the same quality of movie, with its own fresh plot.
See also, The Art Of Action
Don’t miss Scott’s podcast series called The Art Of Action on his own YouTube channel, where he’s done some phenomenal interviews with superstars like Keanu Reeves and Steven Seagal, as well as lesser known legends like Kurt McKinney from No Retreat, No Surrender. Since he’s essentially one of them, Scott commands far more respect than the average interviewer and is able to extract some incredible stories and information never heard before.
This movie sequel is about as good as the original Ninja movie from 2009. It carries some of the same core characters and plot references, but has plenty of new plot material to work from. In this movie we see another vengeance-led mission except this time Scott’s character has nothing to protect – he’s lost everything and is on a “kill ’em all” kinda mission now as he tracks down the untouchable druglord who he thinks killed his pregnant wife, taking out everyone he encounters along the way. It’s a solid movie, about as good as the original – some things are better, some things are worse. This time it’s not set in America though, it’s set in Thailand & Burma.
