Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (a.k.a. Ninja II)

Ninja: Shadow of a Tear (2013)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: Isaac Florentine

Starring: Scott Adkins, Kane Kosugi, Shun Sugata, Mika Hijii

From: Millennium Films

Finally, I was able to watch this movie last night via Netflix Instant. The previous night I used my first-ever Redbox rental to rewatch the first Ninja and what I said about it back then still largely applies now. You can read that review here. I heard a lot of buzz about this movie, so I was eager to check it out. To steal the plot description from IMDb, but edit it down somewhat:

“Fight everyone and trust no one: it's the code of survival practiced by martial-arts master Casey Bowman after his life of domestic bliss is shattered by a savage act of violence. Vowing revenge, the fearless American stealthily tracks the killer from Osaka to Bangkok to Rangoon. His only clues: a series of victims whose necks bear the distinctive mark of strangulation by barbed wire. His target: the sinister drug lord Goro, who is flooding the streets with deadly meth cooked at his remote jungle factory.”

Before I say anything else, I have to say that indeed, the action scenes are great. They are filmed perfectly (i.e. no shaky cam or that quick editing crap, a lesson that I wish Hollywood would learn), have some bitchin' fighting and they're all interesting and fun to watch.

That said, this story... I thought it was no good. I'd have to go into major spoilers to list specific reasons why I had issues with it so I'll be vague, but it was no good. It starts off with Casey and his wife Namiko (who was in the first film and they ended up getting married and she got pregnant between the first film and this one) and well, she just acted real dumb and was annoying! I'll be honest and say they did not wait long to kill her off, which was the “savage act of violence”. 

After that, the way the story progresses and how they get from plot plot to plot point... nonsensical and it seemed like there was stuff missing. There were “surprises” that were pretty obvious. The story structure is just bad; it's random scenes strung loosely together. Sure, there's humorous stuff like Casey being a mean drunk in one scene who engages in a bar fight, but that was about it for that... and that's how the film goes. And once you find out what the whole plot is about... no, just no. It's ridiculous and it brings up logical fallacies and plot holes. And no, the strange title is never explained in the film itself.

I can't say I hated it; after all I gave it 3 out of 5 stars on Letterboxd, almost entirely due to the action scenes. I had to be fair there. It's just that I still felt disappointed because the story was so bad and harebrained. I wish that 2013 wouldn't have had so many films that let me down compared to what I was hoping for. Hopefully 2014 will have less of that.

I shall return tomorrow night and I may actually review more than one film.