How can you go wrong with Sonny Chiba and Hiroyuki Sanada in one movie?
Both are great martial artists with quite good acting abilities. In
"Shogun's ninja" however, they forgot to act. They are just there. It
could be that there are different versions available. The version I saw
was dubbed in English and had a very seventies musical score. I know
that for a seventies' production, some of the stunts are incredible. Now
it just looks horrible. Most of the martial arts scenes are poorly
executed or badly edited. This wouldn't be much of a problem if the
martial arts were good! To be honest, the fights were below average and
not that interesting. The ninja's in this film do have some special
abilities. But in comparison with other ninja movies made in the
seventies, these ninja's don't cut it. These ninja's don't seem to be
very powerful and mysterious. For me, that is an important factor. I
considered that this film could be meant as a parody. But for that to
work, the action scenes had to be more exciting.
I wanted to like this
film, but just couldn't. And this is coming from someone who loves the cheesiest of Ninja movies.
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