It's a wacky 1980 movie starring Sho Kosuki:
An 80’s Ninja movie I was happy to revisit. The only previous viewing was in early 2013, shortly before joining Letterboxd and thus I never reviewed it here. It’s a cheesy 80’s genre effort that was still B-movie fun. Note that then and now it was the R-rated version. An unrated cut is out there and while the one I skimmed through on YouTube is in rough SD quality, I did notice that there’s a sexual assault which I’m not too sad wasn’t in the R-rated cut.
Sho Kosuki-a martial artist who flashed his skills a handful of times in 1980’s cinema-his wife-who had an American dad-and two young sons move from Tokyo to Houston, Texas for the opportunity at a better life. They run afoul of a villain named LIMEHOUSE WILLIE (that is his name, I swear. Didn’t a Limehouse Willie perform at the juke joint in Sinners?) but at least Kosuki’s Akira Saito is a Ninja master so Ol’ Limehouse is in plenty of trouble. It’s this decade so drugs are a key plot point, along with a fancy necklace and crooked cops.
It's a negative view of The American Dream. They buy a building to turn into a restaurant but it is in a bad part of Houston “full of seedy characters,” to steal a line from the movie. There’s also some sleaze that’s emblematic of the decade—an adult bloodies one of the sons, something worse happens to two family members, racial slurs are heard… trashy entertainment, this was. Yet, while of course the martial arts and the action don’t compare to what was seen at the time in the Pacific Rim Asian region, those beats still were thrilling and should be at least liked by a slew of action fans.
Other details amused me-the 80’s-riffic score, a few cheesy period ballads, the sons being portrayed by Sho’s sons Kane & Shane, the former becoming an actor himself, the bloody moments, the Shaw Brothers-esque opening credits sequence. While not an essential, Pray for Death still satisfied me.
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