Theme: Samurai

The Man With The Iron Fists (2012) – RZA, Russell Crowe, Dave Bautista and Lucy Liu

I have to say, this is a very weird movie. On the one hand it’s an eccentric satire of a kung fu come samurai flick, full of bastardised Laozi quotes, stinks of B movie vibes, and has the atmospherics of a kids’ cartoon; while on the other hand, it’s got stars like Russell Crowe, Dave Bautista and Lucy Liu, not to mention Cung Le, Rick Yune, Jamie Chung, Byron Mann, and RZA who also directed this movie and co-written it with the help of Eli Roth – a horror movie director who no doubt was somewhat responsible for the eccentric blood splattering that contributed to the weirdness of this movie.

For all these reasons, I can’t rate it any higher than Bang Average – I doubt anything in this weird genre can – but it’s also not any worse than average. Indeed, it’s probably as good as a movie can get in this weird slightly-eccentric slightly-satirical slightly B-movie type of oriental martial arts flick genre. It does a fair job of sustaining attention throughout, considering its shortcomings. I just want to know how the producers managed to convince the high level cast members – especially Russell Crowe – to get involved in such a B-movie level of production. In fairness, once they knew Crowe agreed, the rest were probably easy to convince, but how did they convince Crowe to stoop to these levels? He could have probably hired a better production team with his own money and not noticed anything missing from his fortune, so why waste his time on this tripe? I have no idea.

Sequel

It should come as no surprise that Crowe did not return for the sequel in 2015, which went direct to video. But they did manage to get Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa involved, and Rick Yune came back, plus of course RZA, although he didn’t direct the sequel – that job went to Roel Reiné this time – but RZA did co-write it again, with the help of John Jarrell this time round.

The quality of The Man With The Iron Fists 2 (2015) is a couple of levels down from that of the original. It has practically no special effects – just a bit of slow motion at times, and it has very little cast power too. It has a few mildly watchable parts but they’re too few & far between, and mostly too late in the movie – I had to skip through the vast majority of this movie while looking for anything watchable so I have to say the movie overall is generally unwatchable by my standards. For more than the first half of the movie, it’s pretty much solid boring drama. The last half hour or so is barely watchable, but on a better level than the prior hour.

The Wolverine (2013) – Hugh Jackman and Rila Fukushima

The Wolverine (2013)

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)

The Hunted (1995) – Christopher Lambert

The Hunted (1995)

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.

47 Ronin (2013) – Keanu Reeves

47 Ronin (2013)

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).