The other night I watched Kunoichi: Lady Ninja (http://imdb.com/title/tt0176908/) (also here (http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=60028041)), a rather confusing if active martial arts*, sorcery advenure, revenge movie.
The general plot is that there is an island somewhere in Asia (not important where, but they mention Edo and the Shogunate so I suspect it's somplace near Japan) there is a local warlord/ruler, Akinari, who is a lecherous type and has a tendancy of kidnapping the women he wants to be his wives. He sets his sights on Ochei (played by the actress who also played Iria in the two (http://imdb.com/title/tt0103327/) Zeiram (http://imdb.com/title/tt0111822/) movies) To escape him, Ohei runs away to convent to hide amongst the nuns. Akinari is not one to take rejection lightly, so he gets his band of enforcers (seven fighters with various powers of sorcery) and invades the convent, killing everyone there except for Ochei and six other ninja nuns (or something...it was a bit confusing) and a Princess who protects (not very well I guess, the seven had already killed off almost everyone else) the convent. After beiong chased of by the Princess (a little late...) the Princess and the seven ninja nuns decide to seek revenge on Akinari and his henchmen. Thus shows up a monk (don't remember the name) and his hired sword, Jubei (apparently Jubei is a well known character in Japenese movies such as this), and they are off to seek revenge.....
That's abut the first ten minutes or so. This movie moves very fast and doesn't waste time, and crams a *lot* into the time. At about 30 minutes in I noticed the time and thought "Wow, there's a lot that's happened" and later caught myself wondering "Well, this is moving along quite well, wonder how much is left?" and looked up to find that I was about an hour into it. You will not be bored.
However you *will* be confused. So of it may be owed to translation issues, but it was hard to see how some of the plot points, scenes and action all fit together. I'll admit that at one point I honestly thought that the same people had filmed two movies and just sorta spliced the scenes together that the liked; this is reinforced by the fact that for most of the movie, Jubei wears a single eye patch, however in one set of scenes in the middle, he has no eye patch but is apparently blind, which seems to reference another movie or legend about Jubei. However some things just didn't seem to make sense. For one thing, Jubei was hired to take care of Akinari after the seven ninja assassin babes have taken care of his seven seven hitmen, but...that's pretty much thrown out as soon as the action gets going. Also, for no explained reason.
All seven of the lady ninjas have mystical powers yet to be awaken, which get awaken in various ways througout the movie. Some of theme are a bit...strange... (the nipple shock wave is pretty silly and has to be seen to believed), and I'm not even getting into the echo attack that invovles on of the ninjas...hmm..how do I say it?
Anyway, the movie is pretty gory and I think you'll be amazed at how much pressure human blood is under, given how it comes spuring at high speed out of people when they are cut. A lot of people die, both good guys and bad, and at least Ochei has a bit of remorse when she realizes it could've all been avoided if she had just not denied Akinari in the first place.
I'm not describing the movie, I'm just rambling about the movie, because the movie sorta left me with that impression and it leaves it hard for me to describe it really other then to relate individual elements. All told, it was a lot of fun that kepy moving, but you've got to pretty much steel yourself for cognative dissonace and be ready to except new story elements or drop old plot points at a moments notice. Other than that, it is what it is, a period piece ninja sorcery revenge tale with a lot of movement and not much sense.
*I tend to call movies 'martial arts' movies rather than the more normal 'kung fu' name, even when they are using kung fu, simply because I practice martial arts, mostly Koeran arts of taekwondo and hapkido, so when I see martial arts in a movie, I'm not thinking about kung fu. Since this seems to be a Japenese movie anyway, I don't think they were using kung fu anyway
"Nipple shock wave"?!?! Okay, that's going on the wish list :)
Fearless Freep did you like it? Did you find it entertaining? A lot of those older dubbed Hong Kong films don't make much sense, but sometimes they still have high entertainment value. :smile: