Perhaps this was intended to do for swords what steam-punk did for ray-guns. That Chiba was attempting to craft a cultural tapestry of sorts here with conflicting, anachronistic imagery and ideas is obvious. This collection of action movie stereotypes are as Japanese as Coca Cola. This is the equivalent of a break-up album for "Where's Waldo-san?"īuy they don’t. They must show us something for baffling stylistic choices like their clunky plastic armour (which looks like it was clipped together using parts of JanSport backpacks) to be overlooked. Obviously AVN is a very different beast – and not just because of the distinction between samurai and ninja – but there must be a shred of believability to these shinobi in order to convince us they can hold their own in battle. He doesn’t simply stand around and spout Arnie style “zingers” in Japanese before busting his best pre-Keanu Reeves “Keanu Reeves action pose.” At the most basic level, Lone Wolf exudes some semblance of what people think of when they hear the term samurai. We believe that Lone Wolf is a samurai because he practices the code of ethics he espouses. Dedication, brotherhood, duty: these are more than mere buzzwords to a man like Itto Ogami, AKA Lone Wolf, the eponymous hit-man of Robert Houston’s cult classic. Take Shogun Assassin, itself a very stylized and hyper-violent film, for example. Very often, the most interesting thing about movies set in ancient Japan is their adherence to historical accuracy and customs, things the average Western viewer might not know a great deal about. this looks like a job for Asian Gary Oldman!" Even the worst toilet-obsessed Metal Gear Solid dialog comes off like Shakespeare by comparison. For everyone over 14, this dynamic will prove infuriating as it’s handled with all the maturity of the average video game cut-scene. Cue lots of blushing from her male comrades and attempted groping. Much like the underappreciated anime Ninja Scroll, the traditional sword-swinging sausage fest is spiced up with the inclusion of Rin (Hijii), the token hot girl ninja. When the alien, who arrives on Earth in a nod to The Thing, starts demolishing anything that moves, Yamata rallies his cohorts in a fight for survival that takes place over an agonizing 81 minutes, most of which is poorly staged fight scenes which borrow heavily from The Matrix. Yamata (Mimoto), the hotshot ninja team-leader, is a vacuum of emotion and human complexity. There’s nothing fresh nor nuances to energize the stale backdrop. The fate of their village and possibly the world is at stake. An unconvincing group of fetishist neo-shinobi from “ancient Japan” – the Sengoku period, to be precise – square off against slimy, walking rubber dolphins intent on taking them out in the messiest fashion possible. "C'mon kid, pull! I don't wanna spend the rest of my days swatting flys the size of tennis balls!"įor their latest opus, “the filmmakers behind Tokyo Gore Police” have concocted a mix of Predator and Alien set in Japan… with a dollop of Body Snatchers thrown in for the wearying final act. This film thinks it’s got cult status in the bag because of its title alone, something that becomes clear within moments. While some of these intellectual bedfellows remain watchable due to the sincerity of their awfulness, AVN fails on even that level because the whole thing is as calculated as a naked girl in a mens’ deodorant advert. In doing so, Chiba’s film surpasses even the likes of Mega Rhino Vs Robot Mongoose and its ilk in the artistic redundancy stakes. The basic concept is even cheekier than a dozen Corman movies in that it treads the knock-off/plagiarism line so finely as to almost blur it completely – director Seiji Chiba ( Evil Ninja) readily admits all but copying the aliens’ design from Ridley’s Scott’s 1979 milestone. Pushing the bounds of taste with its crass modus operandi, this goofy premise goes from being potentially fun right back to terrible again in an instant. However, this film is easily the nadir of “geeky cool” as opposed to its apex. Alien vs Ninja ( AVN) will ensnare countless gullible fanboys because it masquerades as the quintessential pub discussion movie, a “wouldn’t it be awesome if…?” for the ages. No genre touchstone will be left unspoiled in the resulting pop-culture cluster-bomb. The visitors start disemboweling our clandestine chums immediately and making themselves quite at home in the surrounding forests. In ancient Japan, a group of ninja from the Iga clan have their territory encroached upon by beings not of this earth. "Huh, would you look at that thing! Well, looks like we're not making it out of this maze after all."
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