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| Ninja 2009 |
Good news, friends. The Direct-to-Video Action renaissance continues with another joint venture by DTV auteur Isaac Florentine and rising martial arts badass, and Soda on the Roof favorite, Scott Adkins. I’ve previously mentioned these guys in my reviews for Michal Jai White’s Blood and Bone and The Tournament. White co-starred with Adkins in Florentine’s Undisputed II: Last Man Standing, where Adkins played the Russian villain, Uri Boyka. In Ninja, however, he gets promoted to hero duty with the character of Casey, a white orphan who is raised in a Japanese dojo where the sensei teaches his students the honorable ways of the ninja. When his rival at the dojo, Masazuka, is banished and eventually comes back for revenge, Casey is tasked with transporting “The Yoroi Bitsu”, a chest containing antique weapons and tools of the original ninjas, to America where it can be properly hidden, because Americans are good at hiding things, I guess.
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| Screenshot 1 |
You see, this box of weapons is apparently the most prized possession a ninja of this dojo can ever hope to attain, and can only do so by being named Sensei, of which both Casey and Masazuka were in the running for until Masazuka loses his shit during a wooden sword fight and goes after Casey with a real one. I really liked the end of this scene because when the Sensei banishes Masazuka from the dojo for his actions, the guy doesn’t just storm off in anger. Instead, he is truly heartbroken by his banishment. He breaks down and begs for forgiveness, but his pleas go unheard. This actually sets up Masazuka as a really solid villain. The character is given a surprising amount of emotional weight considering the depth usually given to Action movie villains; which is to say, not much.
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| Screenshot 2 |
The character of Casey is unfortunately not as fleshed out. We do get a little back story about his mother leaving him at the dojo and his father committing suicide, though. I mentioned in my review of The Tournament, how the British Adkins rarely seems to be cast as an Englishman. He’s played Russians in the aforementioned The Tournament and Undisputed II, while playing an American in Florentine’s The Shepherd: Border Patrol. Well the streak of non-British characters remains unbroken here. Adkins does a commendable job of hiding his native accent, but like a lot of European actors playing Americans, he comes off a little stiff at times. That isn’t to say he gives a bad performance though
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| Screenshot 3 |
Starring: Scott Adkins, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Mika Hijii, Todd Jensen, Togo Igawa, Garrick Hagon, Miles Anderson, Valentin Ganev, Kenji Motomiya, Nikolai Sotirov
Directed by: Isaac Florentine
Release Date: 2009
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