Beginning as a 1940s-era newsreel for some strange reason, Ninja: Shadow of a Tear picks up after the events of 2009’s flatly titled Ninja, with Caucasian gaijin Casey (Scott Adkins, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning) living a happy life in Japan with his wife, Namiko (Mika Hijii, Alien vs. Ninja). Their marital bliss is short-lived, however, when Namiko is murdered while Casey’s out procuring Chocolate Thunder ice cream to soothe her pregnancy cravings.

Seeking respite at a Thai dojo run by Nakabara (Kane Kosugi, Pray for Death), Casey is much too grief-stricken to stay put, so with a slew of homemade ninja weapons and ninja potions, he flees to the Burmese jungle to take revenge on the persons responsible for Namiko’s death. All paths lead to Goro (Shun Sagata, Ichi the Killer), an aging drug lord who dispatches his victims with an infernal contraption of lassoed barbed wire. A lot of people die.

Very ’80s in its execution (no pun intended), Ninja: Shadow of a Tear — aka Ninja II — is a serviceable but unremarkable sequel from returning director Isaac Florentine (Undisputed III: Redemption). Its story is the least fulfilling factor; its martial arts sequences, superb. Looking more than a tad Affleckian, the charismatic Adkins is the real deal. He deserves to have a shot at a big-screen career that Jean-Claude Van Damme did, and if he had been born 20 years earlier, he likely would have. His ass-kicking skills make the action scenes easy for Florentine to shoot — all he has to do is keep his star within frame. Easy enough! —Rod Lott

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If you took X-Men and crossed it with The Island of Dr. Moreau, and then removed the good ideas of both and replaced them with pro wrestlers, you would — and do — have Black Mask II, the highly disappointing sequel to 1999’s terrific superhero kung-fu fest.

Although Jet Li wisely declined to return in the role, his Once Upon a Time in China trilogy director Tsui Hark — who merely served as producer on the original — agreed to helm the whole thing, a curious move akin to something like Steven Spielberg agreeing to do Poltergeist III.

In his film debut, Andy On (Mad Detective) stars as Black Mask, the genetically engineered super-soldier dedicated to protecting his public. This time around, the bad guys are the aforementioned pro wrestlers, five of them (including Tyler Mane, Rob Van Dam and, um, former porn star Traci Lords) infused with animal DNA that turns them into actual reptiles. Thus, Black Mask spends his time kicking guys in rubber suits. It’s as if the Syfy channel had been granted full creative input, with acting on the level of any given Slim Jim commercial. Once Black Mask was shown riding down a street on an elephant, I gave up any hope that the movie might get good.

The major problem is the weak script (with five credited writers), but also detracting from one’s enjoyment are a heavy reliance on CGI, the terrible kid actor and downright confusing editing. Martial-arts choreographer extraordinaire Yuen Woo Ping serves as just that, but I sure couldn’t tell, as there’s nothing here that will excite any of your senses, except your desire to go to the bathroom without bothering to hit the pause button. —Rod Lott

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To paraphrase one of Keanu Reeves’ more famous lines from The Matrix, he knows kung fu … so why not make his own martial-arts movie? In that directorial debut, Man of Tai Chi, he proves competent behind the camera, which automatically places him above his skills in front of it. In the department of delivering lines, Reeves does a poorer job here than ever.

His Beijing businessman Donaka Mark is as wealthy as he is secretive, bankrolling an underground fight club broadcast overseas via pay-for-view, for which he constantly seeks contestants … partly because he keeps killing the losers. Fresh talent arrives in lowly courier Tiger Chen (played by stuntman Tiger Chen, House of Fury), who practices the same style of tai chi as 21 generations before him. To get paid to fight using tai chi would be dishonorable, Tiger tells Donaka, but when the young cub’s temple is served with a 30-day eviction notice, he quickly changes his stripes.

No matter what ‘roided foe or fightin’ style Donaka throws his way, Tiger emerges victorious — ironic since tai chi is something your grandma does at the Y for exercise. Tiger wins the bucks needed to save the temple, but at a price: running afoul of a Hong Kong police inspector (Karen Mok, Shaolin Soccer) who’s been investigating Donaka’s biz plan for quite some time and is looking to take down the arrogant Yank.

The big plus of Man of Tai Chi is that in the fight sequences — and there are many — viewers can tell what’s happening. In today’s rat-a-tat editing world, that’s a near-novelty. How much of that is the doing of Reeves or his action director, HK legend Yuen Woo Ping, is unknown, but we’ll give Reeves the benefit of the doubt … because we shall cut no slack for his performance. At one point, he laughs at Tiger with a scoff, and does so stiltedly, the audience practically can see Reeves reading a cue card on which is written, “LAUGH MEAN.” Our Man of Tai Chi, Chen, also is a man of few words, but he does okay — as long as we leave his haircut out of it. —Rod Lott

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A computer-chip salesman walks into a bar. We’ll call him Paul. He’s a New Yorker in Tokyo for business, but now it’s time for pleasure, so he sidles up beside a pretty local girl and starts chatting her up. She drinks too much sake and he offers to take her to dinner and a drum concert. Later that night, he walks her back to her hotel room like a gentleman and starts to leave. But she tells him to stay, so he does. She strips him down to his boxers, which have pictures of “piggies” on them. But she has steamy sex with him, anyway, right there in the room’s built-in hot tub. After orgasm, she’s decapitated by a ninja. I guess that’s the punch line.

Whatever the case, it’s certainly the setup for The Hunted, arguably the American major studios’ final attempt at turning Highlander‘s Christopher Lambert into a bona fide action star. His Paul is unable to save his bedroom conquest (Joan Chen, TV’s Twin Peaks) from having her head separated from the torso, but he’s lucky to survive himself, after having his skin penetrated by a poison-tipped shuriken.

For witnessing the murder and living to tell the cops about it, Paul is targeted by Kinjo the killer ninja (John Lone, The Shadow), who belongs to a ninja cult. With the help of descendants of a samurai family (9 Souls‘ Yoshio Harada and Shogun‘s Yôko Shimada), Paul in turn sets his sights on Kinjo, thereby proving the adage true: The hunter indeed becomes The Hunted.

“You’ve seen too many samurai movies,” a detective tells Paul just prior to taking a ninja arrow through the larynx, and certainly J.F. Lawton has seen plenty of them, too. Clearly, the writer/director (Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death) enjoyed marrying the worlds of the Far East and the far-fetched Hollywood actioner; it shows most in two slick set pieces: a hospital siege and a swords-a-slingin’ scuffle aboard a moving bullet train. That doesn’t mean the whole is an exciting one, however; only in bits and pieces does The Hunted live up to Lawton’s own standards. That said, Lambert can claim it as one of his best. —Rod Lott

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In his directorial/screenwriting debut, hip-hop musician and multihyphenate RZA also portrays, natch, the man with the iron fists. Unfortunately, the man with iron fists is cursed with a tin ear, a wooden personality,and ham-handed camera skills. That last didn’t make much sense, but you get the gist: The Man with the Iron Fists is deeply disappointing.

It’s clear that RZA is a lover of Shaw Brothers martial-arts epics such as The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and The Five Deadly Venoms. The simple barebones of his story — various warriors and assassins with names such as X-Blade, Brass Body, Silver Lion and Poison Dagger descend upon a village looking for a cache of gold — seems tailor-made for the genre, and there are enough visual cues to remind us of the greats. Sadly, that’s all they are: reminders of better movies.

From a visual standpoint, RZA the director is all over the map, wanting the film to play homage while at the same time capturing the modern verve of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (another homage that does it much, much, MUCH better). Very talented martial artists are brought in for the fight scenes, but RZA always cuts away a few moments early from the money shot. You can see hints that something cool is going on, but only hints.

His skills with actors is no better; the usually dependable Lucy Liu provides a pallid reinterpretation of her Kill Bill character; Rick Yune Die Another Day) is a stiff; and RZA — casting himself as a blacksmith who supplies all sides with weaponry — is an emotional blank. There’s a lot going on plot-wise, but you’d be hard-pressed to care.

That leaves the one ace in the whole hole: Russell Crowe (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World), as the British mercenary Jack Knife. His role is hardly better written, but Crowe, realizing the overt ridiculousness of the thing, unleashes his inner Oliver Reed and commandeers every scene with a boisterously over-the-top performance. He’s the only one having any fun, whether ripping the guts out of villains or pleasuring prostitutes underwater with the liberal use of anal beads. It’s telling that, in a supposed epic of nonstop kung-fu fighting, you keep waiting for the overweight Englishman with a knife to come back. —Corey Redekop

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