Red Shadow

The movie has a great look - the Ninja costumes are incredible with black armor and leather. The gymnastic style martial art feats are amazing. The humorous style reminded me of Ninja Turtles. Picture Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as humans in black ninja costumes and you have an idea at the kind of playful comedy banter and rivalry there is between the characters. I really enjoyed this one. I would like to see other work by this writer and director. I would even love to see a sequel to this film. If you are looking for a serious film about ninjas then this is probably not the one for you, but if you are looking for a light-hearted, fresh, humorous film on the subject then see Red Shadow now.

Yes, granted that historical accuracy is not a priority for this movie, but that's sort of missing the point: this film is a ninja movie that makes fun of many of the ninja movie conventions, to great comic effect, such as when the 3 ninjas giving each other a 1-10 rank on how stylishly they leapt over the wall of the castle they're infiltrating. Nevertheless this film is also a thrilling and quite moving story, with the elegant simplicity of a fairy-tale reinforced by its timeless setting. It also has the obligatory impressive fight scenes, which are not the best I've seen in any film but they are still very well done. This is a great film, not as violent and bloody as other critics suggest, and extremely funny at times!

I saw this for the first time in a theater in Tokyo and was amused by the update styles of fighting and the comedy relief that the movie offered (not to mention the cute ninja chick making mouse noises; Get your minds out of the gutter). Upon second viewing, after it's release to video (with a poor subtitling job) I've come to the conclusion that there a few problems with it. However, I don't like to ruin movies for people so, I'll just say that it's an enjoyable, and campy ninja flick even though there are some things that need to be explained a little better. In the subtitled version at least.

Don't watch this movie if you're looking for a serious, Kurosawa type period piece. It's meant to be silly and go into it knowing that.

My first impression of seeing Akakage (Red Shadow), was that the story was simply a satire of ninja movies. The Cinematography is quite good, and exemplifies many earlier examples of Japanese Cinema with their frequent use of nature interlude shots. The film seemed childish at first, in the manner in which the characters were portrayed.

But upon reviewing the film again, I noted that it was actually more child-like. There was a mature comedic sense of what a child loves in a film about ninjas and samurai sword fights. I could appreciate the nostalgic sense of the old samurai films that was ably caught. The villains seem comic in many ways, and yet there is more than 1 dimension to the group of them. The use of anachronism in the film was to me particularly funny. I won't provide any spoilers, because they are readily apparent when you encounter them in viewing the film.

Anyways, if you want a light movie for Saturday night viewing with the kids, or with friends gathered around a bowl of popcorn, and want a good offbeat romantic adventure film, this is certainly one to try.

After Samurai Fiction this is another attempt at pushing a classical Japanese movie genre in the new century. Even the bad guy from the before mentioned movie has a cameo with what seemed to be the same character. Without getting in the story too deep, it's quite complex and with my limited understanding of Japanese I couldn't catch every twist of it. But it was great fun all the same. It delivers fast editing, new style martial arts and a sound track of electronic and guitars that fits very well the fast paced action-sequences. I hope to see a subtitled version someday so I'd understand a little more of what's going on and why, but I strongly recommend it, if only for the looks of it.