Sho (Sho) Kosugi - an epochal man, he gave us many films with his participation in the 80s and returned in the 2000s for the central role in "Ninja Assassin". But, honestly, ask yourself a question - how many of these films were NORMAL, which of them will you definitely watch from his entire filmography? I decided to answer this question for myself by reviewing the bulk of his films - have they stood the test of time? Let's go in order.
9 Ninja Deaths (dir. Emmett Alston, 1985)
The era of hand-to-hand fighters is in full swing: Hong Kong is being burned Jackie Chan и Donnie Yen, the stars lit up JCVD и Jet Li, will soon appear in supporting roles Gary Daniels и Don "Dragon" Wilson, to feed us trash stories with his participation, and Kosugi took the ninja niche. "Ninja Trilogy", which I reviewed earlier, gave impetus to his career and his team did not reinvent wheels, continuing to work on this topic - and in 85 the above-mentioned film was released.
A team of flamboyant and violent terrorists kidnaps a tourist group, including American politicians and their families. A team led by Spike Shinobi (Kosugi) is sent to help them, which includes the military Steve with a gouging machine gun (or what is it?) and the unhelpful (for the film) liaison Jennifer. Throughout the film, this team will fight enemies with varying degrees of success.
Complete, complete trash - that's all that needs to be said about this film. Yes, Kosugi is trying to pull off a lot of fights and ninja jokes, yes, the scenes of some murders and throwing shurikens at different parts of the body are still in place, even the bosses are there, but how pathetic and shit-comedy it all looks, how annoying these bug-eyed morons were among the enemies , and how few of the hero’s partners there were, who could have been used more (or removed altogether, since they were so centralized on Kosugi). Even an attempt to make the plot more serious with the hero’s past and how the main villain was killed at the end does not help. The film is so stupid that it’s even hard to remember, I even had to rewatch certain scenes again so as not to forget it for the review. Yes, there are also Sho’s sons there - Kane and Shane Kosugi, but they don’t pull it out either.
Pray for Death (dir. Gordon Hessler, 1985)
The film opens with a cool scene about the Black Ninja, who saves his wife and fights a crowd of enemies from another clan, as well as the boss.... And then it turns out that this is just a film that the children of the main character watched.
According to the plot, the protagonist, along with his wife and two children, moves to America and there he encounters the cranberry Italians, who, being the mafia, nightmare everything and everyone they see, engaging in lawlessness. They give the hero constant problems, raids and kidnappings of his relatives, but the hero is restrained in the action, trying not to cross the line and not create unnecessary corpses - he is a former ninja who killed his brother in a duel, and after that he vowed not to use his knowledge again. However, as usual, enemies will cross this very line and the hero takes out a ninja costume from a secret closet, after which shurikens will fly into the foreheads and eyes, and deadly traps and tricks will be used, and a terrible and inevitable F****T will come to the enemies!
Yes, here we decided to follow the beaten path and repeat "Revenge of the Ninja" with minor deviations from the original, removing the “same” from the enemies and instead of him the hero will fight with a particularly arrogant and tenacious Italian. But it didn’t work out again. Why?
1) There is noticeably less action in the film, and everything that is there is poorly copied "Ninja Trilogy", almost completely repeating in places.
2) There is catastrophically little ninja combat: yes, the trailer promises us cool showdowns with the hero dressed in cool ninja armor, but in fact he puts on this suit at the very, very end and rushes headlong at enemies, like Commando or Rambo ( although they used more stealth in the final showdown). Until this moment, of course, Sho will show both stealth and hand-to-hand combat, but all this will be secondary and there will be nothing new at all.
3) There was no point in the hero's backstory. The brother's death contributes nothing to the plot other than to be remembered in the final battle for frantic overcoming.
4) I didn’t like the final showdown - the hero, a cool super warrior who scatters dozens of enemies even in a frontal attack, is opposed by a SIMPLE MAN. The same as all the previous ones, just a little more arrogant and strong Italian mafioso and hero, instead of throwing shurikens at him, intimidating him with traps, or even simply overcoming him in hand-to-hand combat or fencing to death, he is incredibly stupid, allowing him to constantly get away. This simple guy, whose toughness is almost completely unsubstantiated, will practically even win - and would have won if the screenwriter had not remembered in time who our main character is.
Yes, they can tell me that this is "Harried" Christopher Lambert was also a “simple guy.” I agree, his hero mastered sword fighting too quickly, but there the main commander was tired and seriously wounded after a difficult fight with a samurai, and the motivation was better, and the director correctly placed the emphasis in the fight. And then - well, throw a shuriken in his ass and break his neck, why are you bothering with him? No, this is a weak movie. Only for one-time viewing for nostalgic purposes for fans of sticking shurikens in the eye.
Fury of Honor (dir. Gordon Hessler, 1986)
Shiro Tanaka, an anti-drug agent with ninjutsu abilities, and his partners stop another deal at the very beginning. The bandits strike back and kill their partner. The hero, placing the token on the table, flies to South America himself with the goal of spotting the enemy and dealing with him. Another partner comes to his aid, but in the end Shiro has to act alone.
This film is already much better than the previous two combined and you can watch it calmly. Here the degree of cruelty is a little lower than in "To sweep", but this is compensated by the variety of opponents: there are ninja brothers, bandits, and even local aboriginal tribes, but the ninja commandos pleased us the most. At the end there will be several battles with a fairly tenacious and cruel Glavgad. Ninja weapons will be used, shurikens will fly and even explode, stealth and ninja suits (though Kosugi will be without a mask) are in place.
However, despite this, the film is still secondary and inferior to Kosugi’s best works. Glavgad is good, but apart from vitality and the ability to wield a weapon, he has nothing, and the hero is cruelly stupid several times (the main problem is - why did he take his bride with him? Why?!!), the level of bloodiness is lower, the level of clichedness (this is exactly what the reason why most action films do not stand the test of time) is much higher - the hero is magically bypassed by bullets, enemies miss at point-blank range, and so on, while most of the action is in the same "To sweep" there was stealth, which reduced the “stamping”.
Nevertheless, as an action film, the film is pleasant, does not sag, it’s still good and I can easily recommend it.
Black Eagle (dir. Eric Carson, 1988)
Famous but unpopular movie, and this despite the fact that Kosugi himself is confronted here Jean-Claude Van Damme, moreover, at that time he was young, full of energy and gaining popularity. On posters and trailers for the film, Vanya is often portrayed as the main hero and central character, but this is not so, Syo is the main one here, and Van Damme’s hero, who here again plays a Russian villain, is not even the main villain (although there will be a final duel between the heroes). I decided to give the once unsuccessful film another chance, but it didn’t work for me again and here’s why:
1) It's boring - there's not much action.
2) Kosugi is not a ninja, and without these signature tricks he is nothing more than an Asian hand-to-hand fighter (albeit a good one), of which there were many then and the competition was very great. The image of his hero is frankly simple to resist Van Damme. This was the reason for the negativity towards the film; fans of the latter say even now that “cool Vanya loses to some left-wing Asian,” even sometimes without watching films with Kosugi or without knowing about them at all.
3) Van Damme is good, of course he waves his legs, does the splits and generally looks beautiful in the frame, but alas, he is not in charge here, which means he will have to rake.
4) There will be several fights between the heroes, but these fights will always be missing something. It seems to me that there was not enough directing - film this somewhere Isaac Florentine or at least Sam Firstenberg, it would be many times better. Yes, Eric Karsson then it will partially rehabilitate me in "City of Angels" (where the young man’s under-fight will also take place Olivier Gruner with a young man Mark Dacascos, but still a good film), but here it didn’t deliver - such stars should be used to their full potential. The final fight itself is more or less watchable, but at the end there is a cry of “Andrey!”, Andrey turns around like a sucker and misses a key blow and is later dumped.
No, it's a weak movie. I wouldn’t recommend it, even if it’s poor (yes, it’s a bad film, you just haven’t watched it for a long time)"Don't retreat and don't give up" Van Damme, who also played the Russian, looks much cooler and pulls out along with Kurt McKeney this whole bad clone "Karate Kid".
Shogun Maeda (dir. Gordon Hessler, 1991)
Feudal Japan. Lord Tokugawa (legendary Toshiro Mifune) is trying to unite Japan from scattered principalities, but despite the strength and courage of his warriors, the enemy is ahead in the arms race, having received firearms. With great difficulty, his best warrior Maeda (Sho Kosugi), with the help of favorable weather conditions, defeats the armed enemy, but Tokugawa understands that the enemy is very strong and cannot be taken out by luck and courage alone. He sends his son Yorimune (Kane Kosugi) and Maeda to buy these weapons from Spain, but his enemies are not asleep...
The medieval adventure genre was popular in all countries in those years, although it gave way to hand-to-hand action films. We all watched "Midshipmen", action films about raincoats and swords with Jean Marais и Jean-Paul Belmondo, as well as film adaptations "Musketeers" Dumas, and this film is a tribute to a genre that had already stagnated. But most of all, this film is a tribute to the now half-forgotten series "Shogun", which I recommend for everyone to watch in order to understand the history and customs of Medieval Japan - there Mifune again plays Tokugawa (yes, in "Shogun" he is called Toronaga, but the historical character is the same, if I was wrong, please correct me), is present again John Rhys-Davies, and similar to everyone else; there's even Christopher Lee as the Spanish king. "Shogun Maeda" I didn’t make a mistake - a good, high-quality adventure movie about a samurai who doesn’t give up in any situation until the last moment, who knows how to use his head and understand the situation, and who taught this to a young prince, who by the end of the film from an arrogant major will become a resourceful warrior who saved his teacher a couple of times. The era was very well observed, the colorful costumes and decorations pleased me.
Alas, there were some downsides. The main thing is the action: despite the presence of the Kosugi family, experienced in Japanese martial arts, the fights here are mounted and filmed worse than in other samurai, and indeed fencing films in general (just watch the same "Captain Fracassa" with Mare to understand this). However, here this is compensated by variety: duels with swords, knives, hand-to-hand combat with samurai, both in mass combat and in close combat, and not only with samurai, but also with Spaniards, pirates, Arabs and even monks, and at the end Maeda will fight 1 on 1 with a knight in a very difficult and long fight with a cool and bloody finisher.
This is a good movie, I give it a solid B, adding a plus to the rating for the knight at the end and the overall positive ending.
Ninja Assassin (dir. James McTeigue, 2009)
The era of hand-to-hand action films, when they were churned out in batches, is generally behind us; let the hand-to-hand action movie exist and even slowly develop, now it is, alas, a niche movie, along with arthouse and black stuff. Therefore, in order to shoot in this genre in a way that will be remembered, directors have two ways: the first is to do it the old school way (repeat the best of the old, slightly combing it with modernity or without doing it), the second is to jump over their head, saturate it with special effects and graphics and apply innovations in batches.
"Ninja Assassin" - an example of the second. But is this film as cool as they say? Maybe he's overpraised? On the one hand, what the brothers did back then wachowski ("this is a matrix!"), and already elderly Sho Kosugi declared here and even fights! On the other hand, there was almost a failure at the box office, low ratings from critics, and many negative reviews on movie sites. I'll try to figure it out, starting with the plot.
It is divided into two lines: the first - secret service officers like Interpol are investigating murders related to ninjas and the second - the confrontation between the fugitive ninja Raizo and his own clan. These two lines intersect as two service agents begin to be pursued by ninjas from whom there is no escape, and Raizo unexpectedly comes to their aid. Honestly, wedging into the plot about ancient Japanese clans, training them and their dismantling of all sorts of left-wing types such as police officers, putting them in the foreground and stretching out their plot to the detriment of the rest immediately alarmed me - this has already happened, almost 1 in 1 in the film "Street Fighter - The Legend of Chun-Li", a film that was extremely bad, was one of the main factors in why that film was a crapshoot. So at first here too - agents Mika and Maslow (played by a man strikingly similar to our stuntman Sergei Morin, I even checked to see if it was him for an hour?), looked completely out of character, especially after the initial cheerful action scene. Their investigation itself looks stupid - they are forbidden from above to pursue the clan, “because the top are involved, and everyone who knew was killed,” and until the very end of the film it seems that the agents are needed for exactly two things: so that Raizo has someone to save, and to show several showdowns “ninjas versus special forces”, but to my surprise, the plot managed to bring these lines to a common denominator by the end, albeit with wild flaws. What are the flaws? Here:
1) If ninjas are so cool, why don’t they terrorize the whole world with terror and assassinations of presidents and kings?
2) If the ninjas are so cool, why did they, by the end, begin to clean up Miki, who was shaking with fear, and the UNTRAINED Raizo (let’s remember how hard it was for him to cope with the swing in the toilet and the raking from his clanmates immediately after that)
3) If ninjas are so cool, why did they screw up the special forces in the end? Well, yes, some will say, they were taken by surprise and in a pure battle, and not in the dark, they would have merged? And this is strange considering the fact that they had the ability to heal wounds on themselves, strafe at supersonic speed and wield weapons well. That's right, Raizo was for them!
4) Where did Raizo swing to become so cool at the beginning of the events of the film? Hole.
5) Why didn’t they show the reason why the ninjas didn’t finish off Raizo after he fell from the roof?
The last two holes could have been filled with a couple of lines in the script. Well, as I was afraid, too much time was devoted to the agents, who were quite dull as characters.
Well, okay, some of the disadvantages above can be written off as “this is an action movie, genre assumption, all that, the plot is necessary, but not important.” Let's look at the action component. The beginning of the film, as I already said, is very cheerful and cool - bright, colorful and as cruel as possible (and this is precisely the cruelty in an action film that the old viewer really misses) - a ninja deals with bandits in a bar; the creators were inspired by the game God of War, as the weapon of choice throughout the film is a long chain with a scythe.
It gets worse later:
1) In a number of fights, flashes with light were seen, you need to watch in excellent quality to figure out who hit whom, both at Mika’s apartment and in the first clash between the ninja and the special forces
2) An abundance of flickering and too fast acceleration of the camera and movements in fights. With this, further search begins, which is leveled only at the very end.
3) In battle, the ninjas, who previously seemed cool and invincible, begin to stupidly merge with the pair of main characters. This is where the stamp “The Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu” begins to work - when there are ninjas in a crowd against one - they are suckers, when there is one ninja - he is cool, that is, ninjutsu is, as it were, divided in strength between the members of the same team.
However, at the very end, a very cool showdown with two final battles will follow. Old Sho Kosugi looks good in battle (if these are not doubles, of course), gives a good performance, although the fight itself is a little stupid: either Raizo scoops up, then suddenly remembers key combinations to perform super attacks. As is expected from the Wachowskis and McTeague, special effects are used liberally in the action. It looks very cool, bright and colorful, it doesn’t hurt the eyes and helps the action, the only complaints I can have are about the drawing of the blood, but for me this was not significant; The use of that same chain looks especially cool, and it’s worth watching the film for these moments.
What about the ninjas themselves: were they just extras in black or was the ninja theme good here? Overall, it turned out quite well, but again, there are a lot of flaws and it will be hard for a pragmatic viewer to watch. Point by point again:
1) The training looked a little moronic - they showed the stick, but not the carrot. The training is overly harsh and deadly in real life, and even taking into account the lack of use of medicine (Rizo, with wounds, goes to lie down and suffer from a fever until his girlfriend saves him), a complete lack of training in teamwork and tricks, there is no specifics on magic; The students are not friendly with each other. It is not surprising that the students tried to escape, hating the teacher.
2) There will be tricks, but very little to the detriment of fights and clumsy-looking magic in the form of healing wounds and super-speed strafes.
3) Ninja costumes and weapons are top notch, swords, shurikens and so on are used.
The coloring of the Ninja base is also respected, the stages of Power in the form of finger gestures are also respected, but still, in this respect the film is inferior "Harried" и "Revenge of the Ninja", as well as other epics due to the plot's emphasis on agents.
What can I say in the end? The film is still good, I’ll give it 4 minus out of five for good, bloody action with cleverly woven special effects, severed heads and other parts of the body, for Kosugi, who shook up the old days, for Rain, who played the main character, for the “wall to wall” in end, for the all-killing chain and for the soundtrack; however, the above-described disadvantages do not make the film suitable for quick re-watching, as was the case with me "Revenge of the Ninja", "Ninja Scroll" и "Ninja" with Scott Adkins.
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Tags: Kane Kosugi, Rain, Sho Kosugi, Toshiro Mifune, Shane Kosugi
Tags: Kane Kosugi, Rain, Sho Kosugi, Toshiro Mifune, Shane Kosugi
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