Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013)

Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013)

 

Starring: Scott Adkins, Kane Kosugi, Miki Hiiji, Shun Sugata, Markus Waldow, Tim Man, Mukesh S. Bhatt, Vithaya Pansringarm, Jawed El Berni
Director: Isaac Florentine
Action Director: Tim Man

 

Ninja: Shadow of a Tear is of those instances in which the sequel trumps the original. It is clear that Isaac Florentine and his crew actually learned from their mistakes. There is more and better action, a better final villain, beautiful SE Asian locales, a more believable plot, less horrible CGI blood, and more acting from Adkins. It is one of the top twenty (if not ten) martial arts films of the past 10 or 15 years and just gives us oodles of well-choreographed fight scenes, which is what we the viewer want.

Sometime after the events of the first film, Casey-san (a returning Adkins) has married his sweetheart Namiko (Rogue Ninja’s Miki Hijii) and has taken over her father’s dojo in Japan. To makes things even sweeter, Namiko is pregnant with their first child. Casey even has enough money to buy her nice jewelry! It’s all sunshine and smiles in the Bowman household!

One day, Casey has a violent run-in with some local hoods. Despite the random nature of the attack, Casey notices that one of them is an exceptional martial artist (most muggers can’t perform jumping triple front kicks) and is armed with a dagger with special characters engraved on the handle. Nonetheless, Casey keeps those facts to himself and resolves to not involve the police. Later that evening, Namiko is murdered at home while Casey is out buying her chocolate and algae for her pregnancy cravings. A distraught Casey assumes that the thugs from earlier were responsible, tracks them down, and murders them good.

A mourning Casey travels to his senpai’s dojo in Thailand to train off his bad emotions. Master Nakabara (Kane Kosugi, of Blood Heat and Coweb) thinks that the change in scenery will help Casey get over his wife’s premature death. After some time, one of the students (prolific stuntman Jawed El Berni, whose résumé includes Black Adam and The Suicide Squad) is murdered in the same fashion his wife was: choked/bled to death with a cord covered with metal barbs. Nakabara informs Casey that the only ninja to use that fighting technique is Goro (Shun Sugata, of Blade of the Immortal and Kill Bill: Vol. 1), a big bruiser in the Golden Triangle drug trade. Goro’s brother had been a ninja shadow warrior stationed in SE Asia during World War 2 and was killed in a duel with Casey’s own master, the late Sensei Takeda. Armed with this information, Casey heads over to Myanmar for some good ol’ fashioned ninja revenge.

The plot is interesting. I do like the faux-WW2 footage establishing the use of ninja in Burmese jungle warfare. It’s consistent with what we’ve seen in various movies (and was possibly quite true) about the Japanese wanting to take over all of Asia, the way the Nazis wanted to conquer Europe, Russia, and whatever country was too strong for Italy to take over. While we have seen a bit too much of Thailand in recent movies, the fact that much of the action takes place in Myanmar is a nice change of pace. I can only think of the fourth Rambo movie that also has been set there (in terms of action films).

Where the plot goes wrong is the general sense of time. It has none. You see, assuming this film is set in 2013, then that would mean that almost 70 years has elapsed since the end of the war. Goro would have to be in his 80s, although Shun Sugata was 58 when this movie was made. There is also a scene where Casey uncovers a grave in the Burmese jungle and finds what I believe is supposed to be a picture of Namiko as a child. If she was a wartime-baby, than she’d be about 70, not in her late 20s or early 30s.

While it is feasible that Kane Kosugi’s Nakabara could be the son of a WW2 veteran, it means that his dad would have been in his 50s when he was born. The writer should have gone for the characters being grandchildren of WW2 veterans as opposed to children. That would definitely have been easier to swallow. This is similar to The Texas Chainsaw 3-D, in which Alexandra Daddario’s character is supposed to have been a baby during the events of the original film (1974), but is only in her twenties some 40 years later.

So, the action. There is a whole bunch of it and I really don’t think that Adkins will be able to outdo himself in this one. Hwang Jang Lee would be proud of all the aerial kicks he does, while he gets the spin on some his whirlwind kicks that’ll satisfy anyone who’s been waiting since Righting Wrongs to see someone get it right. The choreography itself is excellent, with lots of actual exchanges that keep the fights from becoming Thai-style show reels. While most of the weapons on display are katana and knives, Casey does get to kill a lot of people with kama, or sickles. I also love that one of the main ninja uses a variation on the kusari weapon, but made with barbed wire. Mix that with the fact that said character has a quirky neck twitch and is a poet, and you got a memorable villain.

The action was handled by Tim Man, and you can bet your top dollar that I’ll be keeping an eye on the man’s work in the future. He obviously knows what he’s doing, which is more than I can say with many Chinese/Hong Kong action directors today. He honestly knows what his audience expects and gives it to them in spades. Sure, some of the fighting is a bit more wushu than karate and kenjutsu, but it looks great, benefits from some excellent camerawork, and comes so fast and frequent that only the stodgiest of purists will really care. Man shows up in the film as Goro’s second-in-command[1], and his duel with Adkins has the feel of one of those Mad Dog fights in The Raid: Redemption. Tim Man performs some great aerial kicks and the fight is an excellent exchange of powerful and flexible kicks, hand-to-hand fighting, and knife techniques.

The finale is considered by many fans to be one of the hallmarks of Western/Hollywood fight action. Without getting into any detail about the circumstances of the fight, Scott Adkins has to throw down with his senpai, played by Kane Kosugi—it’s not much of a spoiler, since Kosugi hadn’t actually had a fight before Casey went to Myanmar. Most viewers will figure out that you don’t not put your second-billed martial arts actor in a fight unless you’re saving him for something big. And big it is. Two of the best martial arts actors just go buck wild on each other for a good five minutes. Lots of wonderful kicking from both men, plus complex exchanges of handwork. Casey’s character is said to be a demon with the bo staff, so of course he picks one up when Nakabara comes at him with a katana. The latter also goes Darth Maul on Casey with the double katana, which is really neat. And yes, there is a lot of Hong Kong-style furniture destruction in this fight, guaranteed to make more frail viewers (and some of us veterans) wince in discomfort. It’s such a great fight that it makes you sad to know just how underused Kane Kosugi is in the martial arts genre.

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[1] - Watch for the end credits where Tim Man accidentally shows up twice on the cast list!

This review is part of our "September of Scott" at It's a Beautiful Film Worth Fighting For.