
SECRET LOVERS, KICK-BUTT EDITION. Ten Shimoyama’s 2005 kung-fu funfest
Shinobi: Heart Under Blade features the beautiful and deadly Oboro,
played by Yukie Nakama. (Photo courtesy of Safari Media)
From The Asian Reporter, V17, #4 (January 23, 2007), page 13.
Martial arts meet marital arts
Shinobi: Heart Under Blade
Directed by Ten Shimoyama
Produced by Nozomu Enoki and Hiroyuki Saito
Opens Friday, February 9 at Portland’s Hollywood Theatre
By Mike Street
Special to The Asian Reporter
After samurai, the mysterious ninja (also called shinobi)
are the most popular characters in Eastern and Western martial-arts stories.
Known for invisible stealth and the ability to infiltrate the most
impregnable stronghold or silently assassinate the best-guarded targets,
these nearly magical figures have captured imaginations on both sides of the
Pacific. Stories about ninja have only grown with time, granting them
supernatural abilities like flying, disappearing, or killing victims without
seeming to touch them at all.
Ten Shimoyama’s 2005 kung-fu funfest Shinobi: Heart Under Blade
follows in this mythic tradition, exploiting historical fact to construct a
story filled with supernatural ninjas and eye-popping special effects. While
nobody should go to a movie like this expecting the epic majesty of Akira
Kurosawa, any kung-fu fanatic will get his fill of action and adventure,
wrapped up in a slightly preachy moralistic package and a Romeo-and- Juliet
love story. This is no B-movie chop-socky fest, but a well-constructed
martial-arts movie with high production values and often striking scenery,
and a dash of comic-book framing and flair.
At the dawn of the Tokugawa Era, after Ieayasu Tokugawa has united
Japan’s feudal lords under his Shogunate, some relics of war endure. Two
rival shinobi clans, used by warring lords for nefarious purposes, still
remain, prevented from mutual destruction by a mutual peace treaty. This
much is historical fact, or near enough, and provides the movie’s setting.
But the tale departs from here into the fantastic, as the fictional Tokugawa
creates a battle between these rival shinobi hamlets.
By his decree, the peace treaty is eliminated and five of the best
warriors from each clan must meet at his castle to battle to the death, the
winner deciding which of the Emperor’s two sons will succeed him. Caught in
the middle are the beautiful and deadly Oboro (Yukie Nakama) and the
faux-hawk-sporting Gennosuke (Joe Odagiri), secret shinobi lovers from the
two rival clans.
Oboro and Gennosuke are chosen to participate in the battle and named by
their rival chieftains as the leaders of their respective warriors.
Anguishing over their conflict between love and duty, the two lovers offer
their solutions: Oboro resigns herself to their fate, while Gennosuke
suspects hidden motives behind the battle and vows to find the truth and
alter their destiny.
After a self-officiated wedding, providing a marital subplot to play
counterpoint to the martial one, the lovers don’t spend much time pondering
their classic conflict between duty and emotion. Both soon find themselves
facing one another’s deadly warriors, and the real fun of the film begins.
Each warrior features a unique skill, from Tenzen (Kippei Shiina), a gifted
swordsman with nearly immortal healing powers, to Kagero (Tomoka Kurotani),
a beautiful temptress who exhales poison gas. The variety of dazzling skills
of each warrior, along with their colorful, almost cartoonish costumes,
draws directly from the film’s manga roots and gives the action a
touch of the gleefully superheroic.
Tenzen and Kagero also act as secondary characters who encourage their
reluctant leaders to battle, pushing Oboro and Gennosuke to their inevitable
showdown. The outcome of this battle is both surprising and a bit didactic,
resolving the opposite moral positions of their characters. As shinobi,
agents of war, they must find their place in a newly peaceful Japan while
preserving their individual cultures. It is this tension that lies at the
heart of their Romeo-and-Juliet storyline as well as the Shogun’s deadly
tournament, setting the scene for the neatly packaged ending.
The strident morality of the movie, especially in the ending, strikes a
discordant note, in part because few kung-fu fans like to hear sermons about
war and peace. There is a similar dissonance between the syrupy, romantic
love of Oboro and Gennosuke and their deadly abilities, a disconnect between
the marital and martial. One of the movie’s primary flaws is that these
contrary tendencies do not feel so much interconnected as mutually framed,
the moral tone merely justifying the violence, and vice versa.
Still, the sermonizing is not so pervasive that it undermines the martial
arts mayhem, which is very entertaining if you don’t mind the lack of
classic kung-fu moves and can tolerate a healthy dose of computer-generated
special effects. The film, based upon the popular manga Basilisk and
the Futaro Yamada book Koga Ninja Scrolls, has a built-in audience
from these works, as well as from ninja fans everywhere. That crowd is sure
to be pleased by Shinobi, along with anyone else who doesn’t let the
high-mindedness get in the way of something much more visceral — and much
more fun.
Shinobi: Heart Under Blade opens February 9 at the Hollywood Theatre,
located at 4122 N.E. Sandy Blvd. in Portland. For more information,
including show times, call (503) 281-4215 or visit <www.hollywoodtheatre.org>.
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