toddly6666

SHINOBI sucks - don't buy it! SHINOBI is another typical Japanese period action movie that takes place in the forest (Versus, Azumi) with a combination of Romeo and Juliet. People are running around the forest fighting each other and getting killed. In between action scenes, the main characters are standing around like zombies, whinning, crying, and have blank emotionless expressions all through out the movie. They are doing that only because of the trend of awful Japanese screenwriters who can't write a screenplay if their life depended on it. Yes, they are very good at creating 2-dimensional anime-type characters, such as a Venom (from Spiderman comics) and ninjas that fly around the forest like Spiderman, but that's about it. When it comes to character development, romance, and story, the screenwriters are at a loss. First, there is zero character development. Second, the romance was exactly what I expected from an Asian movie - written from the perspective of a 12-year old boy that never had relations with a woman or written from the perspective of a 40-year old virgin that never had any relations with a woman. It's not poetic - it's called amateurish adolescent romance screenwriting.

There are about three positive things in the movie:
1. a few action scenes - there is an amazing action scene with this Venom-type character that can shoot out endless wires out of his arm versus a Dagger man. If anything, I would get this director to choreograph the fight scene between Spiderman and Venom in Spiderman 3 (if in fact, Venom is going to be in the movie).
2. The director can shoot a movie - he has a good eye and the film looked pretty good visually. I wouldn't call the movie amazing eye candy, but it looked okay.
3. The main actress is really good looking (but as the movie goes on, all she does is make poses showing off her eyes, which gets very annoying and obnoxious as the movie goes on.

The DVD quality is excellent. The anamorphic video is very crisp, clean, and 3-dimensional. There were many night scenes and the blacks looked very good, not grainy at all. The audio rocked too - I listed to the DD 5.1 and it sounded pretty sweet and atmospheric. The english subtitles were flawless - no grammar mistakes in this god-awful screenplay.
Depending on what DVD version you get, the extras are:
Kogaban bonus disc
Visual effects development documentary (60 minutes)
Effects explanation
Art explanation
Weapons introduction
Deleted scenes
TV spots and trailers
plus five Kogaban character cards

Igaban bonus disc
Making-of documentary (60 minutes)
Interviews with Yukie Nakama and Joe Odagiri
Footage from the Japan premieres and press conference
plus five Igaban character cards


If you like poorly written movies of serious cartoon characters running around Japanese forests and killing each other, then check out SHINOBI. If not, don't waste your money on this flick.

FILM: 5
DVD VIDEO: 9
DVD AUDIO: 8.5
EXTRAS: 7

yeek

Yep, I was disappointed in this movie as well. Great cinematography, poor character development. Once again it's another movie with great potential but doesn't deliver.

flixtime

toddly6666, yeah, I'll agree with your final take on it, but despite all that I did find it reasonably enjoyable (I probably would have scored it around a 5 as well but my reaction would have been less acidic).

Was it worth laying out the cash to pick up the R2 Japan version.......for most people probably not. I'm a fan of the genre so it didn't bother me as far as the price.

My enjoyment was probably helped by the fact that my expectations for it were rather modest. I was expecting a B-grade genre flick and that's what it was, sort of like "Ashura-jo No Hitomi" which I also happened to enjoy. I know you don't like the way Asian films sometimes handle romance but that stuff doesn't really bother me personally (for escapism, I appreciate the innocence and simplicity of how the romance was handled). Interesting how expectations come in to play. My enjoyment of "The Promise" was likely assisted in a small way by the lowered expectations I had for it (after reading the negative buzz).

I watched "Shinobi" some time back so I don't recall what I liked and didn't. I do remember that I felt a little detached from the whole thing....reasonably entertained & somewhat interested in what was going, but emotionally detached except for maybe a scene towards the end.

Ralph Jenkins

I enjoyed the scene where Oboro (Yukie Nakama) used her power. The movie also provides some nice eye candy (Nakama, who played Sadako in Ring 0, certainly isn't hard on the eyes). However, I agree that the movie is sorely lacking character development. I was reminded a bit of an anime movie called X, in which characters appeared, fought, and died before the viewer got to know anything about them. Also, some of the CG work is just too obvious. This movie is very reminiscent of Azumi, but without a big action set piece to cap things off.