Scott Adkins (The Expendables) stars as Casey Bowman, who returns home one day to find someone has brutally killed his wife Namiko (Mika Hijii) and their unborn child. Bereft, Casey has only one thing to live for… Revenge. The only clues to Namiko’s killer are the barbed wire marks left around her neck. So, with the help of his trusted friend Nakabara (Kane Kosugi), the trial sends Casey from Osaka to Bangkok to the jungles of Rangoon in search of the assassin. Honing his battle skills to a new level, Casey is as discreet as he is deadly, as he becomes a warrior that truly deserve the title Ninja.
When I was younger I was an avid fan of the martial art film. I loved me some Bruce Lee films, and Jackie Chan films. As I got older, I fell out of love with the genre, as I wanted a film with a little more substance. The Martial Arts genre has started to make a comeback, especially with The Raid films etc. So when I was asked to review the DVD, I jumped at the chance.
The film reminded me a lot of the kind of films which I liked as a child. It was an almost B Movie like film, with some questionable dialogue, and some scenes which made me sit up and think “WTF?”. For example, there is a scene where Scott Adkins walks over hot coals, and for some reason this gives him a supernatural power to “see” his wife being murder. Well that’s what I took from the scene.
The storyline of the film is nothing new. They try and change it up during the film, but it feels like they do that because they are coming in under the run time of the film, and not because it was thought of before. The film just has that feel that things were tacked on at the end in order to make it run longer. Much like the ending of The Lord of The Rings – Return of the King, you think it’s over, only for there to be another scene. The difference being LOTR is 201 minutes whereas this is only 91.
The fighting in the film is again, decent enough. Nothing to set the world on fire, but it has its moments. The fight sequences have slow motion aspect to it, which I really like in Martial Art films. It allows the audience member to take a breath so to speak during the choreography. But the fighting seems very choreographed, so much so that it doesn’t have that natural feeling to it. You can see the “beats” that the actors are taking in between moves. The fighting has that staged feel to it, rather than something that happens in the moment.
In closing, Ninja Shadow of a Tear feels like a great homage to old school Martial Arts film (whether that is the intention or not) and whilst it doesn’t add anything new to the genre, it is a decent enough paint by numbers film, in terms of everything associated with it, from the fighting to the acting to the storyline.
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[rating=2]
Ricky Diaz
Genre:
Martial Art/Action
Distributor:
Lionsgate
DVD Release Date:
12th May 2014 (UK)
Rating: 15
Special Features:
Making of Ninja:Shadow of a Tear
Aspect Ratio
Anamoprhic 1.85:1
Audio
Dolby Digital Surround 5.1
Run Time
91 Minutes Approx
Languages
English and Japanese
Subtitles
English for the Hearing Impaired
Director:
Isaac Florentine
Cast:
Scott Adkins, Kane Kosugi, Mika Hijii, Shun Sugata
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