Samurai Girl

Heaven Kogo (Jamie Chung) is a sheltered Japanese girl set up for an arranged marriage to Teddy in San Francisco. She's adopted but her father Tasuke still offers her the family sword after her brother has gone. The wedding is broken up by attacking ninjas. Her brother returns to rescue her but is killed in the process while her father is shot. She doesn't trust anyone especially suspicious underling Sato. She escapes finding her way to a sorority costume party. She is befriended by Cheryl (Saige Thompson) and Otto (Kyle Labine). She finds help from her brother's friend Jake Stanton (Brendan Fehr). There is also mysterious federal agent Severin. The family is caught in a web of criminal activity by the Yakuza. Heaven starts to fall for Jake when his ex Karen (Stacy Keibler) shows up.

There is a magic in all the samurai and ninja fights that is missing. The show needs to decide how comic book to take this. It is not enough and the budget is not big enough either. The show needs to be bigger. The acting is not the best although Saige has the loud best friend character down pat. This is generally a slightly inferior product.

I have to say that I was a little disappointed by the final result of "Samurai Girl," a six-episode mini-series based on a series of young adult fiction novels that has recently aired on television channel ABC Family. But, being an avid martial arts movie fan, I didn't dislike what I saw. In fact, while essentially a family-friendly martial arts/samurai epic, it was very well executed in terms of sword-play and action sequences reminiscent of our favorite samurai blood-letters from Japan.

The series begins by introducing Japanese princess Heaven Kogo (the Korean Jamie Chung), a pampered 19-year-old who was the sole survivor of a horrific plane crash and her name comes from the fact that she apparently "descended" from the heavens. At the beginning of the series, she has been engaged in an arranged marriage in San Francisco to a man she doesn't love, and their marriage ceremony is crashed by ninjas. In the fray, her father is severely wounded and her brother - who had journeyed to America a year earlier - dies tragically trying to rescue her.

She manages to make it out in one piece, and lands at the pad of college roommates Cheryl (Saige Thompson) and the computer-savvy uber-nerd Otto (Kyle Labine). They take her in but it isn't long before the same ninjas show up again. Now on the run once more with her new friends, Heaven journeys to the dojo of hunky American Kendo master Jake Stanton (Brendan Fehr), who was her brother's best friend. A series of plot machinations evolve revolving around Heaven's mystical connection to the samurai traditions of her ancestors and training with Jake to take on the violent Yakuza (Japanese mafia) members that have infiltrated her family.

What I feel "Samurai Girl" needed best was a better script, being that was the area I felt was the most deficient and hampered me from giving it a better rating. It took a while for me to really get "into" this series and was on the verge of turning it off very early on. The acting is OK, but nothing really spectacular or stand-out. Jamie Chung is a very beautiful actress and displays some real skill with her sword fighting talents. I didn't get a very big impression that her moves were in any way, fake. There's a lot of Hong Kong-style action choreography as well, just to give the action scenes that added visual flair.

Lastly, I know that Japanese martial arts movies are noteworthy for their extreme violence, but I have to hand it to the filmmakers that they knew how to tone a lot of this stuff down to make it more kid-friendly, even though there are some colorful bits of strong language thrown in for good measure.

Overall, "Samurai Girl" was a not a bad series, though I am sure that it could have used some polishing.

6/10

It is nearly impossible to find something bad to say about this miniseries. For every one silly thing it does, it immediately makes up for it by doing something really awesome. When they manage to pull a training montage (In the vein of Karate Kid) out very early on in the show, you'll probably want to quit it all together, but then they turn it around and poke fun at how so many movies follow this path. The twists and turns of this show are especially well done. In the beginning, the plot doesn't seem all that intricate, but as the series progresses, the story becomes much stronger and takes a lot more chances. What surprised me the most is the sense of humor throughout - it's not all about the crazy stunt work, they really put a lot of clever jokes into this script. You may lament the fact that it is basically a PG movie (Based on a young adult book series), but I found that the subject matter is suitable for the tameness. Also, even though the title has "Girl" in it, anyone could watch this and enjoy it - not just young girls. The only thing it lacks because of the rating is a ton of blood, and I can respect that they clearly wanted to go a different route with Samurai Girl. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did, but the humor is top notch, the action is intense and fun, and the cast is tremendously likable - it is nice to see so many fresh faces on screen. Star Jamie Chung definitely has a bright future ahead of her in movies, and hopefully in the possible sequel to this series.