Ninja: Shadow of a Tear is the sequel to the 2009 film Ninja. This fact might deter potential viewers who haven’t seen the first picture. But the truth is that this movie has little in common with the first movie, aside from a couple of return characters. This film sets out to be its own unique animal, and it delivers. Though the story is utterly disposable, Ninja: Shadow of a Tear offers up some of the best action directing in years. It successfully combines older techniques with newer sensibilities, crafting a series of majestic fights that give a lot of bang for your buck.
The story concerns Casey (Scott Adkins), an American who grew up in a Japanese dojo, learning the way of the Ninja. After the globetrotting events of the first movie, he has settled down in Japan with his wife Namiko (Mika Hijii). But he comes home one night to find her murdered. Casey sets out to find the people responsible for her death and make them pay. He travels to Thailand to meet up with an old friend, who sends him deep into the jungles of Myanmar to flush out a dangerous criminal heading up a powerful drug cartel.
The details of the plot don’t make a lick of sense, but it hardly matters. The film largely gets its very simple point across: Casey is sad, angry, and very dangerous. He isn’t thinking straight, his quest for revenge turning him into a blunt weapon aimed haphazardly at the criminal element. It leads with its fists, and doesn’t get too caught up in the machinations of plot. It instead just drops its main character into one dangerous situation after another, using well-established movie elements to provide just enough background to give the film a sense of narrative momentum.
Once you look past the plot, you are treated to some of the best fighting available today. Hollywood has more or less ruined fight scenes in the last few years. The primary directive has been to overload the senses, films relying heavily on quick cuts and other sorts of trickery to hide the fact that their actors can’t really fight. Director Isaac Florentine keeps things far simpler. He focuses on the action, employing long takes to capture the fluidity of the action. The fights play out like a deadly dance, its participants moving gracefully as one to convey pain and violence.
Lead Scott Adkins is an action hero in the classic mold. He has an imposing physical presence, and very limited acting skills. But what he offers to this film is more than enough. He commits to the film’s lack of irony, glowering through many of his scenes, and infusing his lines with action-hero gravitas. But more than anything, he’s just an amazing martial artist. The camera serves his moves well, fully capturing just how good Adkins is at kicking someone in the face. It’s a thing of beauty, and though Adkins probably has no place in the modern blockbuster, he’s perfectly at home in this context.
Ninja: Shadow of a Tear is in many ways better than your average Hollywood action blockbusters. On the action side, at least, the film offers something that’s been lost in the age of empty bombast: clarity. Action directors these days simply push for more and more spectacle on screen, rarely bothering to put together a sequence that one might actually follow. This film gives the fights focus, really letting the action take flight. The story is mainly nonsense, but you could say that about a lot of Hollywood films, too. In an age that seems increasingly nostalgic of an older era of action cinema, this film actually delivers on that potential.
My Rating:
