Ninja: American Warrior

I've reviewed a Godfrey Ho film before on this blog, and I am likely to review many more in the future.  But this one will be different.

You see, a friend and I decided to watch four Godfrey Ho films in a row, to see what affect it had on our insanity.  And it was part way through this, the last of the four, that I realized I had gone insane.  I could not comprehend what I was seeing.  And what I was seeing was this:  An actual dramatic story-line with developed characters.

Let me set the scene for a moment.  Our main character, a White Ninja (both in the fact that he's wight, and his ninja outfit is white), has been sent on a mission to go after a bad-ass drug smuggler played by Jonathan Isgar (who played the old man in Thunder Ninja Kids in the Golden Adventure).  He was chosen for the mission as he and Jonathan Isgar fought together in Vietnam.

For the first 2/3rds of the movie, it was pretty standard Godfrey Ho fair.  However, I knew things were taking a shift into new territory when, after the White Ninja breaks into Isgar's camp, one of Isgar's henchmen suggest he shoot the White Ninja.  Isgar shrugs, grabs a gun, and shoots the goddamn ninja.  The White Ninja is wounded but not killed.  He's tied up by Isgar's henchmen and questioned.

However, when they take off his ninja mask, Isgar recognizes him as his old war buddy.  He unties him and they share a meal and drinks together, and reminisce on the old days.  We see flashbacks of how Isgar acted as a distraction so that the White Ninja (before he was a ninja) could escape.  This lead to Isgar getting captured, but Proto-White-Ninja lead a daring rescue operation to get him back.

We then get Isgar's motivation.  He feels like they were left behind by a country they served with no longer cares about them.  The villain goes on a monologue that covers everything from what he was forced to become in the Vietnam war to how many of his fellow soldiers couldn't cope when they got back to the states.

It is then we see the genius GENIUS of Mr. Ho.  Isgar, clearly distressed, asks the White Ninja if he heard about the death of one of their former squad-members.  It is here we see the difference between the hero and villain of this movie.  While the villain has let this effect him on an emotional level, the hero seems almost unphased by the death of his friend.  The hero has continued to work for the government, and has lost his humanity, whereas Isgar has gone renegade and retained it.

Thus, at the end of the movie, when the two friends finally had to become enemies again, we are left with their backstory to give their fight significance.  When the White Ninja shouts, with tears in his eyes, at his former comrade in arms to stop running, that he'd have to shoot him if he ran, all while aiming a slingshot at his old friend, whose arms were restrained by a hoop...I knew I had seen something important.

You would never hear the likes of Godfrey Ho mentioned in the same sentence as people like Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, and Francis Ford Coppola, but I am about to.

Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, Francis Ford Coppola and Godfrey Ho have all directed films.

-Alec Stamos

Alec Reviews Cyber Ninja

You'll probably notice that, for a website that claims to review everything, there will end up being a seemingly disproportionate number of reviews of movies involving ninjas.  Why is this?  Is it because the title of the blog is not to be taken literally, and is just a pithy way of saying "I review whatever I want, irregardless of medium"?  Is it because I watch an unhealthy amount of horrible ninja-based movies?  Is it because I have some strange fetish, and terrible ninja movies are the only way I can achieve an erection?  Or is it, in fact, because, when you come down to it, there are so many ninja movies out there that they out-number most other things.  Hell, Godfrey Ho alone has made over 50 movies with ninja in the title.

To top it all off, ninja movies, like their subject matter, seem to follow the inverse ninja law.  The more of them there are, the more terrible they become. 

And thus I find myself watching something called Cyber Ninja.  It came on a set of 10 ninja movies, that itself came bundled in a two-pack with a Tony Jaa movie.  I'm starting to get a feeling of dread that the thing I said about an inverse ninja-movie law is going to prove itself very true, what with ten ninja movies in one box.

Well, let's see how this thing starts...

Fuck...

Well, this is off to a great start.  "A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away" this is not.  The captions begin to tell us about the Suwabeh Clan, that came under attack from some Dark Overlord with an army of robot ninjas.

We then see the most awesome fucking thing about this movie:  Weaponized Japanese architecture.  Samurai and robot ninja battle with lasers and swords as giant building-tanks and AT-AT walkers' Japanese cousins bombard the battle field.  The samurai lose to the robot ninjas, and the Subeweh clan has to become an underground rebellion.

Round 1: Fight

We then see the Cyber Ninja himself in action.  The Cyber Ninja fights regular robot ninjas in a forest.  He defeats the robot ninjas, but gets in a standoff with some humans, including a travelling mercenary.  The humans don't want him to enter their territory, but the also don't want him to kill them.  The Cyber Ninja decides to backwards-fly away.

Here we see a Cyber Ninja surrounded by robot ninjas.

It is when we see the villains of this movie when we realize we're watching a live-action anime.  There is the main underling, who looks like a composite of Final Fantasy villains.

There is also a robot who is shaped in such a way that the actor's head must be somewhere in the neck of the costume.  I only say this because it was all I could think about whenever I saw this guy.

Apparently these guys have been harvesting human blood to feed their Dark Overlord.  Also, they created the Cyber Ninja, somehow, who was apparently formerly human, but who they turned into a cyborg when they imprisoned his sword and body.  They did it as a birthday present for the Dark Overlord.  Happy Birthday, Dark Overlord, I got you a robotic ninja hellbent on your destruction.

Back at the Subaweh Clan camp, the princess gets kidnapped off-screen, and enemy air-crafts start attacking.  Unfortunately, rather than building a bunch of anti aircraft guns, they only built one building-sized gun that can only be fired four times, and they can't shoot down the ship that has the princess in it.  By the way, when I say "building-sized gun", I don't mean they built a huge cannon.  I mean they made a pistol out of a building.

Are you feeling lucky?

The mercenary arrives at the Subaweh clan base, and offers his services, partially for the money, but mostly because he believes that those robots really need to be taken down a peg.  He says he wants 5 of their men to form his squad to rescue the princess.  He decides which men he's going to bring by lining them up and seeing which one screams the best.  He only find 4 that meat his screaming standards, but a 5th presents himself:  A scrappy youth demanding to be taken on the mission so he can avenge his brother, who went missing in the first battle.  He also tells the leader of the clan to fire the moronic building-gun at the enemy castle at a set time, whether they've made it out or not, because the movie needs to end with an explosion to escape from.

On their rescue mission, of course, they run into the Cyber Ninja, who teams up with them.  The mercenary realizes what the Scrappy Youth doesn't:  The Cyber Ninja is, in fact, the long-lost brother.  That's why the Cyber Ninja is so keen on protecting Scrappy Youth.  He also wants to try to become human again.

The Cyber Ninja wants to be more human, less badass.

The movie continues with the team infiltrating the enemy castle and fighting robots and robot ninjas.  All the unimportant characters die off rather quickly, leaving Mercenary, Scrappy Youth and Cyber Ninja to fight the big-bads in the end.  Scrappy Youth is gravely wounded and dies in Cyber Ninjas arms, at which point he realizes that Cyber Ninja is, in fact, his brothrer.  Now it's Cyber Ninja's turn to avenge a dead brother.  He kills the villain, even though this destroys his only chance to regain his humanity.

Ah, but it's not over.  The Dark Overlord shows up on the screen, and laser-vomits out another enemy for them to fight, and this one is super-electro-charged.

Laser Vomited

In the end, they defeat the villain and escape on their "flying-sled" from the exploding castle, which turned out to be a transformer.

Fucking Awesome!

The village shoots it with their building-gun before it can complete it's transformation, and our heroes fly off into the sunset.  Except for the Cyber Ninja, who decides that that isn't badass enough for him, so he jumps out of the flying-sled and free-falls into a bad-ass pose.

This movie was, to be honest, a good deal more genuinely awesome than I was expecting.  The aesthetic of the buildings, robots and weapons has a really nice style, and there are some truly amazing scenes.  Had this been made as an anime rather than a live-action film, it may well have gone down as an all-time classic.  As it is, it's a rather bizarre but ultimately entertaining film.

-Alec