Ninja: Shadow Of A Tear was my most anticipated of all the movies playing Fantastic Fest 2013. And with those kinds of expectations, you’d think I might have been setting myself up for disappointment. But you’d be thinking incorrectly. I am just coming out of the world premiere of what I’ll stubbornly continue to call Ninja 2 and the film blew the roof off of the auditorium. Spontaneous applause, laughter, and cheers of shock and awe were abundant. And no, they weren’t all coming from me.
But seriously, between my love for director Isaac Florentine and star Scott Adkins’ previous collaborations Undisputed 2 & 3, as well as Ninja 1, and the incredible trailer that had been cut together for Ninja 2, I had a realization that I was potentially wildly miscalculating how much this movie might rule. What if it didn’t live up to that trailer? Would I be crushed emotionally and spiritually? Because the reptile part of my fan-brain took over on this film and I just lost my mind in anticipation for it.
Not only did it not disappoint, but it genuinely ranks among the greatest action movies of our era. After my description of the atmosphere in the theater, it might be easy to write off that previous sentence as the lunatic ramblings of a pre-disposed-to-loving-it fanboy who is letting festival fever sway his judgement. But anyone who has experienced the prior collaborations between Isaac Florentine and Scott Adkins will know that I’m not a lunatic, and that the work they are doing is truly something special.
Florentine and Adkins are almost a perfect storm for action cinema. Adkins is an extremely talented martial artist with the good looks and chiseled physique of the greatest A-listers around. And his acting skills have steadily improved from some of his earliest projects, turning him into a bit of a triple threat. So when Florentine brings his own martial arts training and his incredible vision for action choreography to the table, pointing his camera at a leading man who can perform unholy martial arts mayhem, take-after-take, with no stunt double forcing him to cut out to wide shots or chop the action scene to pieces… you get lightning in a bottle.
The action cinema that this formula brings to the table is something wholly other than what Hollywood is foisting upon us these days. The scale and scope of our modern blockbusters are truly impressive and bring us groundbreaking visuals which are literally out of this world. But often when the action does get tight or close-quartered, many blockbusters go for an intimate, shakey, choppy style to inject a little bit of energy or to conveniently mask their stunt doubles.
Florentine and Adkins aren’t having any of that.
They are bringing us something that feels totally fresh and new, but in reality it is taking us back to fundamental elements. The thrills of these guys’ films come from seeing the human body stretched to it’s limits, and seeing bravura camera work on what you instinctively know is a lower budget film than any big PG-13 action epic from a studio. How these men are doing what they do, on the tight schedule and budget that they had, is nothing short of breathtaking to even borderline fans of action cinema.
I’ve talked a lot about Ninja: Shadow Of A Tear’s director and star, but have barely touched on the story or fight sequences of the film itself. This continuation of Ninja follows our hero Casey to Burma to take out a drug lord who is responsible for the death of Casey’s wife Namiko (Mika Hijii.) He is assisted in his quest by an old friend Nakabara (Kane Kosugi, son of Sho Kosugi!) Although this plot line takes us out of Japan and away from many of the visuals and tropes of the first film, it also provides a perfect platform for Casey to be stripped down to a more brutal and murderous version of the principled, collected, and fresh-faced character from the first film. Here, Casey’s quest for vengeance will offer a brutal and rage-filled man who can only be stopped when the director imposes an epically badass freeze frame on him.
The plot is, in many ways, just a framework to justify a number of phenomenal fight sequences. But even beyond that there is a lean, mean, streamlined nature to the story, and just enough drama and character beats to make it feel like a real movie. And not just a real movie, but an action entry that pays homage to the great Cannon Films of the 1980s and elevates that formula with a key element that was so often missing from the Cannon brand: quality.
And I’m Out.