Fist of the North Star

I thought this film was pretty good. Although, I do agree that the anime is better. I think the actors really did well for their parts. It's a lot different though from the anime. I recommend picking it up when you've got the chance. Watch it at night, it sets the mood better.

Anyone who's read the original manga or, er, 'witnessed' the anime may question the wisdom of a live-action remake, what with all the slightly extravagant fisticuffs involved. But don't worry: it hasn't been turned into a blood-free pacifism-fest with Kenshiro strutting around in sandals and a tweed waistcoat preaching the ways of non-violent protest to the post-holocaust plebs. Oh no. There's plenty of fights in here, mate. And some of them are even quite entertaining.

There have been concessions to your average action film punter who's probably never even heard of the original, however. The storyline has been simplified (in the sense of at least one major character being dropped and a couple of others rolled into one) and a more familiar Hollywood flavour given to the future wasteland scenario, so that the whole thing occasionally teeters on the brink of suddenly turning into Mad Max II. But it doesn't, so that's alright. It manages to stick to the basic story thread of one bloke being the Fist of the North Star, another bloke being the Master of Southern Cross and 'the teachings' apparently dictating that the two must never fight... for a while, anyway, then it happily bins this ridiculous idea and gets everyone in to have a good old-fashioned scrap. So it's all pretty straightforward at the end of the day.

Straight-to-video martial arts ponce Gary Daniels does somehow look the part as Kenshiro, and as his Aussie twang isn't called into play too frequently you don't keep expecting Home And Away's Alf Stewart to turn up with chins retracted and demand that "You get out of my store, young Ken." His nemesis, Shin, is played by some other even less famous bloke, while Reservoir Dogs' Chris Penn gets to be another nutter and the unavoidable Malcolm McDowell chips in a deeply strenuous performance as a bloke who gets killed in the first five minutes. Apart from that it's a cast of nobodies. Spot the irony.

But despite offering nothing spectacular or stunningly innovative to the world, Fist isn't as bad as it could have been. It's definitely a bit shaky all round, yes, but the exploding heads and bursting arteries are fairly well done and that's all any version of the story ever had going for it really, so at least you can't complain about the budget being spent in all the wrong places.

In the future the world has become a waste land after the apocalypse. The populated territory is now under the rule of the martial arts clan of the Southern Cross, led by Lord Shin. When the Master of the North Star is murdered the baton is passed and the new master has very personal issues with Shin. When he passes through a small terrorised village he comes to their aid and sets up a confrontation with Shin.

Even though I had read bad reviews about this film, I still had reasonable hopes for it, using the logic that I was prepared for a dumb martial arts movie. However some bothered me about the film was that it didn't seem to live up to the potential that the story had. The film should have been a more majestic story about mysterious clans doing battle in the future, but instead it felt very small and restricted. The story doesn't seem to go anywhere and lots of avenues are left unexplored.

The sets etc don't help as they were clearly pretty cheap and only the opening shot of Malcolm McDowell sitting in his oriental house really had style or imagination – the images of apocalypse were too cheap to be impressive. The fight scenes are pretty average I'm sad to say. While Honk Kong cinema was on the edge of things, this film was back in the 1970's with its standard fights. In the anime the fights are much more impressive and the film should have tried to capture much more of a sense of wonder. The effects are a little too gory for my taste and don't fit with the story, because the film lacks a sense of mysticism it feels ordinary – hence the problem when it tries to do something that is different or weird.

The cast has some well known faces in small roles but the lead actors aren't up to the task of delivering good dialogue, they have awesome bodies and can move quite well but they can't act! This takes away from the film a great deal and stopped me getting into the characters. Daniels and Mandylor are two of the guiltiest ones but it is spread through the cast of villagers, including Melvin Van Peebles. McDowell looks like he might add class but is a temporary narrator and faces like Penn and Howard are only of interest rather than stealing the show.

Overall this is a pretty poor film. It lacks the majestic, epic sweep that it should have had and feels small and cheap. The effects are OK but the fights really lack flair or imagination – witness people queuing up to come one at a time and you'll understand what I mean. The poor acting, bad dialogue and basic average delivery of every part of the film really makes this feel bad – I was in the mood for an undemanding martial arts movie to waste 90 minutes and even I was disappointed by this!

I love the anime version. I knew this one would be a train wreck, but had to check it out. The fights bored me to tears. The guy playing Kenshiro looked too much like Kevin Nealon in a bad wig for me to take seriously. The fact that Downtown Julie Brown was the best actor in the mess should be enough to warn you away. Kenshiro's head-exploding move looked like something out of hot shots part deux. A for effort, but they just weren't up the task.

I literally grew up reading Fist of the North Star as a kid and to tell the truth, I was upset that they even tried to make a real movie out of it. I would like to answer some of the quetions from previous messages. Someone mentioned there aren't many martial art moves in the movie. Well... In original manga, every fight ends in 1-2 moves since either Ken is WAY TOO strong or the opponent is stronger. And yes, characters have Japanese names, but in manga, they DO look like white people.

Overall, the movie itself is not something to watch and the ONLY reason why I even bothered to hunt down this rare movie was because I was the biggest Fist of North Star manga fan about 15 years ago.