Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

driffma As samurai epics go this one certainly plums all the typical Japanese stereotypes. There is the obsession with honor, there are still samurai running about in Japan, they just wear business suits now instead of hakama and kimonos. Oh and corporate take overs are more reminiscent of a battle between feudal lords than the modern corporate buy out. Hostile takeover indeed.This isn't really a great movie. It may be good. I was in the right mental state to enjoy it I think. What makes this movie a really interesting study to watch is Scott Glenn, and Toshiro Mifune. They are the core that holds this movie together. Glenn is excellent as a down on his luck boxer, and Mifune is equally good playing an anachronistic samurai warrior. This movie would have crumbled under the weight of its pretensions had these two fine actors not been involved. They made even the absurd bits in this film believable.If you watch the credits you will see that Steven Seagal was one of the martial arts consultants for the movie. And I must say his touch is welcome here. Everyone looks very proficient. It is lamentable that Seagal would later go on to boast that he knew 10 times more about Japanese sword fighting than Mifune, but whatever, the films action holds up well.

el-fast This film is a Martial-Arts classic!It has all the ingredients of a good martial arts movie in it... yet they turn them into something else. I cannot fathom the reason why it only received 5.5/10. It's outrageous!--==## SPOILERS ##==-- Let's have a look at the film. A low life boxing sparring partner of a champion is frustrated. His technique is a lot better than the skill of the champ, yet he needs to be the mere sparring partner, reasons enough to cut the crap at one time and to beat the champ up and resign.Het gets sucked into the quarrel of two Japanese brothers, one modern, the other traditional Japanese. Here he learns traditional aiki-style martial arts.Yeah... you think you see it coming! The American learns Japanese MA in a three weeks intensive course and beats every Japanese up without effort! And... NOPE he doesn't! He gets beaten up until the very end of the movie! He needs to get himself a gun in order to survive and win... and even then he gets beaten up.Furthermore the movie is especially about the culture shock between Americans and Japanese. You can see clearly how the Japanese know the American ways a LOT better than vice versa. --==## SPOILER END##==--In short: this is one of my all time favorite MA movies and it will always be, no matter what flashy MA movies are released nowadays. I prefer The Challenge above Crouching Pussycat, Hidden Lizard ANYTIME!

drwinton Though the title tends to sound like a hoaky chop sockie movie, and the movie itself has nothing to do with ninjas (only samurai and the samurai code); this is a top notch story and character study. Not to mention some pretty decent action. One only has to overlook the fact that Scott Glen seems to acquire a level of skill with the sword in a matter of weeks that take the Japanese who devote their lives to the sword years to attain. None the less, it was a great character study, as I said, and touts the qualities of honor and self-respect in contrast with a mercenary attitude and a lack of respect for anything or anyone (including ones self), and no sense of a loyalty to something higher than ones self and ones own shortsighted desires.

iowahawk127 No one should except to see an Oscar worthy film here, but this movie simply ran with the standard "white man learns to love Asian culture" script, and it doesn't even pull that off well. Everything Scott Glen/"Rick" learns to love about Japan is just a cliché. Instead of showing the American audience what there is to love about Japanese culture (which could fill 16 hours, easy), we're reduced to stereotyped figures and situations.I love Toshiro Mifune, and it pained me to see him have to dull his acting and swordplay in this film to suit the rest of the cast. Scott Glen is about as good of an action hero here as Ben Aflect is in "Dare Devil"... and that's bad. I normally like Mifune and Glen, even in his bad movies, but this time it was just painful."The Last Samurai" was successful where this turkey flopped- it explored the differences between two cultures that were clashing. It did this by refusing to boil everything down to simple stereotypes, as "Sword of the Ninja"/"The Challenge" did.By the way, where was the ninja? I counted a few Bushido warriors (samurai), but no ninja. Hmmmmm... "Crap Storm" is a nice title...