Sonatine

Sonatine is a 1993 Japanese crime thriller written and directed by and starring Takeshi Kitano. I believe it's the first movie that garnered him international attention as a director.

Kitano stars as Murakawa, a Yakuza guy who has kind of had it with being a Yakuza, and is looking for a way out. When he and his men are sent to Okinawa for what is essentially some busywork, Murakawa smells a rat and suspects that his bosses are planning to get rid of him. When it turns out he was right, Murakawa and some of his men go into hiding at a beach house in the hopes that this will all blow over.

This second act of Sonatine is what really sets the movie apart from other crime films. While at the beach house, the characters essentially goof off Yakuza style for a good long while. They play games and tease each other, Murakawa plays pranks such as digging sand traps for them to fall into. But it isn't all about laughs. There's a melancholy feel to all the scenes, and the fun and games have a violent underpinning to them, as this is the only life these Yakuza guys really know. There's a scene where Murakawa spies two of his underlings shooting a can off of each others' heads. He approaches them and it quickly becomes a tense game of Russian Roulette. It plays as a reminder of just what these guys are capable of, and also gives us a glimpse of the inner turmoil Murakawa is experiencing.

The strange turbulent peace of act two eventual comes to an abrupt end, and the third act features Murakawa turning the tables on the people who are out to get him, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you things get pretty bloody.

Sonatine is a very well made movie, and pretty enjoyable, although it can be kind of depressing at times too. Don't hold out for a happy ending, folks. You pretty much know from the get go that there's no way that's going to happen. The whole middle section is where Sonatine shined for me, and I believe it is what ultimately makes the movie richer and more thoughtful than other crime movies of this type.

Revenge (Adauchi)

Here's the thing: this is the last samurai movie that I can find on Netflix Instant that I haven't already seen. I don't know what I'm going to do. I need samurai movies to survive!

Tadashi Imai's Adauchi (Revenge, in English) is an effective movie that covers ground well traveled in the samurai genre: You guessed it. Revenge. You know, how revenge only leads to madness and destruction, and the undoing of not only you, but your loved ones, etc. To seek revenge is a hollow endeavor.

Revenge is the story of Shinpachi Ezaki, a young samurai at the very bottom of the military ranks of his clan. When approached and dressed down by a man from another family, higher in the social strata, he stands up for himself, and is challenged to an illegal duel to the death. His brother tries to stop it from going down, but arrives too late. Shinpachi has won the duel.

Shinpachi's family, fearing the consequences his victory will bring, argue with the clan leader that both men broke into a temporary fit of insanity when the duel broke out, and rather than have him executed, Shinpachi is exiled to a monastery.

At the monastery, Shinpachi grows paranoid and unstable, without purpose or direction. His situation only worsens when the younger brother of the man he killed seeks him out for his own revenge, and he kills him too. The only way to peacefully solve this whole ordeal and maintain his own honor and that of both families is for Shinpachi to face the third brother of his rival in a duel and allow him to win.

Wow, hey, revenge is exhausting.

Revenge is a really well done samurai movie, made in a period where, as far as I can tell, every samurai movie was really well done. I have not been let down by a samurai movie from the 50's or 60's yet. I always kind of wondered what the other studios besides Toho were up to at this time. I don't think I've seen many. Most samurai movies that get released in America begin with that Toho Studios logo. I know there were other studios in Japan, and it was nice to see that they were making quality films too during Japan's most creatively fertile cinematic period.

My review probably didn't do it much justice, but the characters in Revenge had a lot of depth and subtlety, and the story was filled with tension. I really liked the lead guy's performance and also the old man who played the monk he befriends. I don't think I ruined too much of the story, even though I went kind of deep into it. I promise you I didn't spoil the ending. Check it out.

I hope Netflix Instant puts out some more samurai stuff before I go into withdrawal and start watching Yojimbo on a permanent loop.

High and Low (Tengoku to Jigoku)

Every once in a great while, one has that feeling while watching a movie that they are watching one of the best movies they have ever seen. It's a thrill, and naturally, the older I get and the more movies I see, the less frequently I experience this rush. But as luck would have it, there are still a whole bunch of Akira Kurosawa movies out there that I have yet to watch.

High and Low, my eighth Kurosawa film, and the first I've seen set in the present day (1963, that is), is many different films at once. A kidnap thriller, a police procedural, a morality tale, and an examination of class disparity, and it's all filled with the same compassion and humanity that Akira Kurosawa brought to everything he made.

The story opens with Gondo (the legendary Toshiro Mifune), an executive for a shoe company, who is poised to take over the company and oust the other men on the board, who want to make cheaper shoes and charge more money for them. After a meeting with these men goes sour, he gets a telephone call, where an unknown voice tells him that his son has been kidnapped and demands a ransom of 30 million Yen. It quickly becomes apparent that it was not his son that was kidnapped, but rather the son of his chauffeur. The kidnapper tells Gondo that he must pay the ransom anyway, and Gondo must now come to the decision: must he give up his entire fortune for another man's son?

The first hour of the movie is almost like a play, the drama rarely leaving Gondo's home. What is truly amazing about this first hour is the way it's shot. Kurosawa uses long takes, sometimes 5 minutes or more, each shot carefully composed to maximize the emotional impact of what the characters are going through. He shows a mastery of spacial dynamics between the characters, often making social statements just with where they are positioned compared to each other in the frame.

Then, an hour into the movie, it makes an abrupt and complete change. The action leaves Gondo's home, and the focus shifts almost completely away from Gondo, over to Detective Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai, the star of Kagemusha), the man tasked with hunting down and arresting the kidnapper. He and his team are good detectives, and what follows is a fascinating police procedural, as we watch them solve the mystery.

Amidst all this is a very large social statement. We learn that Gondo's large, air conditioned (a luxury at the time) home is located high atop a hill over the city of Yokohama, seemingly arrogantly looking down on the poor people below, sweating and suffering during a summer heatwave. There is a sense of local resentment toward Gondo and his place in society. Eventually, we follow the detectives and the kidnapper (played brilliantly and almost silently by Tsutomu Yamazaki) into the lowest place in the city, where heroin addicts lay in the gutter and writhe in agony.

I could go on and on how incredible High and Low is, but then you wouldn't really have any reason to watch it yourself. Kurosawa is, in my estimation, the greatest filmmaker who ever lived, and this is right up there with Seven Samurai and Rashomon as one of his greatest achievements. And those are just among the ones I've seen!

Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance (Shuriyuki Hime: Urami Renga)

The original Lady Snowblood is, for my money, one of the greatest revenge movies ever made, and also one of my favorite movies. If you are unfamiliar, it was one of Quentin Tarantino's primary inspirations for his Kill Bill movies. Major narrative elements, such as The Bride's "kill list" and the division of the story into novelistic chapters were lifted directly from Lady Snowblood. He even copied specific shots from it and included the end credits song on the soundtrack. I was aware that there was a sequel, but for some reason, it took me about 8 years before I finally got around to watching it.

The first film follows Lady Snowblood (in Japanese, Shuriyuki Hime), born in prison and spirited away to be raised as an instrument of vengeance, to be unleashed upon the criminals who murdered her mother's family. It's a complicated story, and I won't go into the details, but it ends with a whole lot of blood, a large amount of it Lady Snowblood's own. In fact, were there not a sequel, one would assume that she was dead.

At the start of the second film, Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance, Shuriyuki Hime is alive and kicking, and it's never really explained how. I guess we can just assume she's a fighter. With her vengeance served and no purpose remaining in her life, Lady Snowblood spends her time running from the authorities, indiscriminately killing any who attempts to take her in. This is demonstrated in a single shot scene where she mows down one after another without displaying any emotion on her face.

Finally overwhelmed, she gives up and turns herself in, and is promptly sentenced to death. She gets a stay of execution when she gets kidnapped by a government official and recruited to go undercover as a servant in order to steal a document and assassinate a known anarchist. Things go further awry when she becomes sympathetic to the anarchist's cause and turns the tables on the corrupt government official and his cronies. And of course, there's lots and lots of blood. Bright red, thick blood, unrealistically and gloriously spraying from bodies like fountains. Limbs go flying, eyes get stabbed out, there's a black plague outbreak, what more could you ask for?

The first movie was a revenge story set upon a political backdrop. This time around, the politics of the period in Japan (early 1900's) are in the forefront. It's an interesting story, and well executed (pun intended HAHA), but nowhere near as visceral and personal as the simple "I need to kill the people on this list" premise of the first one. Both films were directed by Toshiya Fujita, and both are dark, stylized, and smartly plotted.

Lady Snowblood is played by Meiko Kaji, star of the Stray Cat Rock series. She's tough, complicated, a total badass, and way sexy. If the first film was about her vengeance, and how a lifetime's pursuit of it leaves her empty and without identity, the sequel is about her finding something outside of herself to fight for and be willing to die for.

While not as great as the first film, Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance is still worth looking into if you're a fan. I would recommend watching the first Lady Snowblood and deciding from there if you want more.

Secret of the Urn (Tange Sazen: Hien Iai-giri)

Secret of the Urn is the tale of Tange Sazen, a one-armed, one-eyed Samurai character famous in Japanese literature. There have been many adaptations of this story and others featuring him, in manga, in movies, etc. But look at me, speaking like I'm knowledgeable of the subject, when actually, this was the first time I've ever heard of Tange Sazen. This particular version of Secret of the Urn was made in 1966, by famed director Hideo Gosha.

Hideo Gosha is a Japanese director who never really got a lot of attention here in America. A few of his movies are available here, most famously Sword of the Beast from the Criterion Collection (which I have yet to see), but for the most part, you have to find them by other means. Secret of the Urn is one of his early works, more fun and less dark than his films were eventually to become. I was elated to find it on Netflix Instant Watch.

The story begins with a samurai named Samanosuke, who is told to execute a man who is married to a girl he grew up beside. Loyally doing his duty, he is tricked and betrayed, first by the man he is executing, then by his own people. He loses his right eye and his right arm. In the scene, his arm actually flies through the air and lands in a flock of birds, scattering them into the sky.

The story picks up one year later, with Yokichi, an over-the-hill bandit overhears the lord of the Yagyu clan talking about how they need 300,000 Ryo to pay for a shrine renovation for the Shogun. Obviously, the clan would go broke with that much Ryo (I mean, obviously, right?), so the lord asks his man to retrieve the Earless Monkey Urn, which is said to contain a million Ryo.

Hearing this, Yokichi goes to his cohort, a music teacher/prostitute named Ofuji, who is really calling the shots, and they hatch a plan to snatch that can. They go to the river where the Urn is being picked up, and surprise! The samurai transporting it are attacked by ninjas! There's this really great sequence where the urn is passed back and forth between ninja and samurai as they all get cut down one after the other. Finally, a dying samurai manages to get the urn to a little orphan boy. Ofuji and Yokichi try to get it from the boy and he runs off, only to meet... Samanosuke.

Only Samanosuke no longer goes by that name, he goes by Tange Sazen. No longer the loyal and noble samurai he was only a year before, he is now bitter, grouchy, and foul mouthed. He is homeless, and supports himself as a hired sword. Sazen helps the boy, Ofuji and Yokichi get away with the urn, and joins up with them. He's pretty much doing all this to stick it to the system that threw him away like yesterday's trash.

Over the course of the movie, Tange Sazen forms sort of a family unit out of these people, and becomes the leader of the Thieve's Temple Gang, a comical group of thieves. He also gets justice for himself, gets the urn into the right hands, and uncovers corruption in the very top level of the government.

Secret of the Urn was a really enjoyable movie. The characters are all likeable. Tange Sazen is clearly a hero of the post-Yojimbo era, the flea-bitten, gruff samurai with a hidden heart of gold. The little boy doesn't care about the urn, he just wants Sazen to teach him the sword. Ofuji is sort of a scheming love interest, where you can't immediately tell if she's loyal to Sazen, or to the urn. Yokichi and the thieves are comic relief. It was interesting to me, because I've never seen a Hideo Gosha film with such light-hearted elements before.

Hideo Gosha's action sequences are always impressive. Unlike many other samurai movie battles, which were slow builds of tension as the fighters size each other up, and then suddenly over as fast as one stroke of the sword, Gosha's were more modern, fast paced, choreographed sword fights. The great twist, of course, is that Tange Sazen is only able to use his left hand. There's a scene where he's holding the urn and tossing it up in the air and mowing a couple guys down before catching it.

I have to admit, there were a couple of dangling plot threads, like when the Urn turns out to be empty with writing inside it, they never really explain what the writing means, and where the million Ryo is. It's surely addressed in some of the many other versions of the story, right? Maybe they didn't explain it all because the story is so well known in Japan that everybody there just knows the answer. I don't know, I'm no Japan expert, just a real big fan of their stuff.

So check this movie out. It's on Netflix for all to watch. And if you're interested in digging deeper for other Hideo Gosha fare, might I recommend the two films he made after this, Samurai Wolf and Samurai Wolf 2? Those are also a whole lot of fun, and have a pretty awesome lead character.

Wing Chun

My knowledge of Chinese and Hong Kong cinema is pretty shameful. While I have seen and enjoyed many Chinese films over the years, I was never able to put them into any kind of historical context. I'd love to know which directors most influenced the distinct style of Kung Fu movies in their early years. Did it all start with Bruce Lee? I somehow doubt it. One of the reason's I'm so ignorant is the difficulty of finding older Chinese films in their original language. They're almost all dubbed, and I have little to no patience for dubbing.

When looking for a Kung Fu movie to watch, I pretty much picked Wing Chun at random, because I recognized some of the names in it. It stars Michelle Yeoh as Yim Wing Chun, a girl who uses her Kung Fu mastery to save her friends, family, and even her entire village from a gang of bandits. It also stars Donnie Yen as her love interest.

Wing Chun is a pretty light-hearted movie, with a lot of comedy and a twisty little romance. It's pretty PG-rated. The humor is a little more over-the-top than I usually like, but I'll admit that I did laugh out loud a couple times.

The real centerpiece of the movie, is of course, the Kung Fu battles, and surprise! This movie is directed by the master choreographer, Yuen Wo Ping, the guy behind The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kill Bill, and countless other martial arts spectacles. It goes without saying that the fights are a real treat. His trademark wire-fu is still in it, but it's a little older than those other movies, so the wires themselves are still very visible.

My favorite fight was probably the one where another master challenges Wing Chun to prove males are superior fighters. She sets up a tray of tofu and challenges him to smash it if he can. Then she effortlessly (ok, a little effort) keeps the tofu tray away from his blows by blocking him and tossing the tray itself around. It's a lot of fun, and there's a good deal of Jackie Chan-ish physical comedy involved. There's another great fight on top of a giant spear stuck in a rock wall, too.

Wing Chun was pretty enjoyable, though the story didn't really blow me away. It suited my needs, though, since, at the moment, I was looking for something light and breezy to watch, and something shorter in length than a lot of the more epic, House of Flying Daggers types of movies (I still haven't seen House of Flying Daggers, so you might see a review of that coming up in the future). Still, the fight choreography alone made the movie worth watching.

Next time, I might check out something more serious. I have it on good authority that Ip Man is a good one.

The Sword of Doom

It's been a while since I've done an old samurai movie, hasn't it? To be perfectly honest, that last one I watched, Samurai Rebellion, was such a downer that I was a little reluctant to watch another. Well, enough time has passed for me, so here comes The Sword of Doom, a 1966 classic directed by Kihachi Okamoto.

The Sword of Doom is dark, intense, and brutal, but it's much less of a downer than Samurai Rebellion for one reason: you are not supposed to like the main character. I'm not sure I've seen a samurai movie told from the perspective of such a bad guy before.

The Sword of Doom stars Tatsuya Nakadai, best known to westerners, perhaps, as the gun-wielding villain in Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Nakadai plays Ryunosuke Tatsue, a stone cold bastard of a man who is introduced to us by killing a harmless old grandfather for no real reason (OK, the old man was praying for death at a shrine, but it wasn't Ryunosuke's place to carry it out), and not registering a bit of emotion for doing so.

He goes back to the village, where he is participating in a Kendo tournament. A woman visits him, begging him not to defeat her husband in the battle. He scoffs, claiming swordsmanship is to a man what chastity is to a woman. He tells her he'll lose the battle if she has sex with him. She complies, her husband finds out and divorces her on the spot. The friendly, no-strings-attached tournament battle has now become a grudge match. Ryunosuke kills the guy and is exiled from his clan (killing many more guys on the way). The lady he nailed catches up to him, and says she has nothing and asks to go with him.

Two years later, he's living with her in exile, under assumed names. They have a baby from their initial encounter. He runs into an old servant of his family's who tells him that his own father, on his deathbed, regretting having unleashed such an evil man onto the world, has sent the brother of the man he killed to find and kill him.

There's way more, but I'll stop there. It's pretty complicated, right? I wasn't expecting such a complex story, most samurai movies tend to be pretty straight forward. But it was also engrossing. There are a whole bunch of characters surrounding Ryunosuke and his heinous acts, and they're all connected to each other somehow. It actually feels quite Shakespearean. There's the granddaughter of the man he slaughtered in the opening, her uncle who raised her, and Toshiro Mifune as a master swordsman of another school. Mifune doesn't have a huge role, but it's a very important one, and he owns it, and yes, he does get to mow some people down.

There's a whole lot of slaughter in The Sword of Doom. More than I've seen in most 60's samurai movies, but way, way less than the crazy ones of the 70's. In fact, the last 10 minutes or so is non-stop samurai sword action (my favorite kind of action).

The ending was a little confusing to me at first. There have been all these interwoven, complicated stories going on, and none of them pay off! I thought maybe they were trying to make a statement about something. I then did a little of research on Wikipedia and found out that The Sword of Doom was meant to be the first part in a trilogy of films, based on a classic piece of Japanese literature. The ending was a big cliffhanger that never got resolved. What a letdown it was to get so wrapped up in a story only to find out that I was never going to see it end.

Lack of resolution aside, I kind of loved The Sword of Doom. I got very involved in it, and never had any idea what was going to happen next. The cinematography, sound design, acting, and action scenes were all top notch. And the ending wasn't a total downer, because there wasn't really an ending! I hear the story was adapted a couple more times before this version was made. I'm wondering if those versions were any good, and if I can find them anywhere, so I can get a better idea of the full story.

Alakazam the Great (Boku No Son Goku)

This is one of those instances where Netflix really came through for me. It recommended this movie, of which I had no prior knowledge, but turns out contains a lot of my deepest interests.

The movie is Daisaku Shirakawa's "Boku No Son Goku", ridiculously titled Alakazam the Great in order to market to the American children of 50 years ago. One reason it is historically interesting is this is one of, if not the first, Japanese animations ever to be released in the states. It was dubbed by the same people who would later do Speed Racer, with Speed himself, Peter Fernandez, voicing the title character. This was before they actually translated what the characters were saying. The people didn't speak Japanese, they just watched the movie and adapted it based on what it looked like was happening. The studio that put it out also tacked on a couple of familiar voices, with Frankie Avalon as Alakazam's singing voice, Jonathan Winters, and the guy who did the voice of Winnie the Pooh narrating.

Another point of interest for me? It is an adaptation of Journey to the West, an ancient Chinese legend of Monkey, a clever, mischievous monkey on an action-packed pilgrimage to India. I've read the translated book of it, and it is one of the most fun books I've ever read. It has been adapted countless times in Asia, in all forms of media, and even a few times in the western world, most recently as a Chinese opera composed by Damon Albarn of The Gorillaz.



Sooo cool.

Now, this particular adaptation of Journey to the West is based on a Manga by the great Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy, and considered the founding father of Japanese comics. I've been a huge fan of his works for some time now. I would hold him up to any of the great 20th century visual storytellers; Kubrick (who was also a fan), Kurosawa, Jack Kirby, etc. From what I've read, Tezuka's actual involvement in the movie was limited, but you can still see his influence in the character designs and the story itself.

The story goes as such: Alakazam (or just Monkey in the folklore) is a brash, mischievous little monkey who becomes king of his people. He's maybe not a very good king right away. When told that humans are the smartest of the animals, he seeks out Merlin (once again, an artifact of the translation) and tricks him into teaching him his magic. Once he learns this, he goes up and challenges the heavens, and is punished for his insolence by being trapped in a mountain. He is given a second chance by being allowed to act as bodyguard to Prince Amat (Tripitaka in the version I read) on his pilgrimage to India, in order to bring Buddhist scriptures back to China (this part isn't mentioned in the movie). On their way, they have many adventures (only a couple featured in the movie), and join up with a pig named Quigley (Pigsy in the version I read) and "Max Lulipopo" (known as Sandy in the book).

The movie holds up pretty well, and plays like the Japanese equivalent of a Disney fairy tale classic. The animation, especially, is very influenced by Disney. There are shades of Bambi in the animals, and the Chernobog sequence from Fantasia in some of the creatures. A really cool scene is when Alakazam goes to heaven and battles Hercules. They morph into various animals and duke it out, before ultimately becoming a dragon and a dinosaur. I have a 3 year old nephew who would love it. Alakazam is a great character, tricky in the tradition of Bugs Bunny, and kids will have an easy time liking him.

The voice work is your typical early anime dub, with the really fast talking and trying to fit the lines into the mouth movements. If you're familiar with how Speed Racer talked, it's like that. The movie was given a new, more western score, with songs very befitting of cartoons from 1960. I would be curious to hear what the songs were like in Japan. A lot of early anime (heck, even more recent stuff) was edited down for U.S. consumption, for time, or often for content. I couldn't tell if this was cut down at all. It felt pretty coherent, and there was nothing too violent, so I assume the length of the movie is pretty much intact.

The video quality on Netflix was pretty crappy; I assume there's probably not much money to be had in a DVD release of something like this, and a remastering was probably deemed not worth it by whatever studio owns the rights. Personally, I'd love to see a nice version of the movie in its original Japanese, and I'm sure a high quality DVD version of it exists over there that could easily be transferred to a stateside release. Just, you know, they don't want to spend the money.

If you love folklore and animation history like I do, or if you have younger kids and want to show them a fun story from another culture, look up Alakazam the Great on Netflix.

Power Kids

Years and years ago, on our quest for the ultimate bad movie, my friends and I rented this movie called "Seven Lucky Ninja Kids". It was a badly dubbed Chinese kids movie, rushed into an American video release to cash in on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle craze of the late 1980's. It started out wacky, with the kids each named after their personalities, (you know, Leader, Fat Kid, Smart Kid, etc.), and a dumb henchman character who dresses in drag at one point to trick them or something. But what floored us was the climax, when the kids started just brutally taking out the bad guys. There was no prior indication that the movie was going to take the turn. Our jaws dropped in shock and joy.

Well, Power Kids is like Seven Lucky Ninja Kids, minus the goofy humor. It's well made, for what it is, which is pretty much Die Hard in a hospital with kids. I think it was made as a kids movie in Thailand, but over here it would probably be comfortably nestled somewhere within the R Rating.

It follows these four kids training at a Muay Thai martial arts school. They all look after the youngest, an innocent little kid who needs a heart transplant. He is on a waiting list, but his condition debilitates when he is forced to run from some bullies who ruined his radio controlled car. Now, he needs that heart immediately. One became available at another hospital but, get this....

The American Ambassador just happens to be going to that hospital to get his heart checked up. And apparently that's national news in Thailand, because a group of terrorists take that opportunity to hold the hospital hostage to let their demands be heard. Also, the terrorists are apparently led or something by a little girl?

So, now it's up to our kids to sneak into the hospital across town and get the donor heart for the little one, and kick some terrorist ass with Thai boxing while they're at it.

Yeah, I know, the plot is completely ludicrous. It's really just a flimsy excuse to watch these kids be awesome. The Muay Thai is crazy brutal, they appear to really be landing a lot of these kicks. Although they sure do kick guys in the back a lot, as if there might be some strategically placed padding under their shirts.

Early on, we get a taste of awesome as they fight a drunk American guy who swears a lot, and they kick the living crap out of him for long, long after he stops fighting back. It seemed like he was kind of out of the fight once he kicked the pile of barbell weights, but they just keep jump kicking him in the face, one after the other until he falls, and then I think a few more times after. I forget if that really happened, but it seems totally feasible to me.

That final showdown with the terrorists is totally insane. And the triple team against the adult leader with the burn scars on his cheek is kind of endless. He's more unstoppable than the drunk American guy.

I should probably add that the kids all actually seem like pretty good actors too, and their characters are quite likeable. But that's not really why we're watching Power Kids, is it?

So, Power Kids is a pretty brutal movie, but I would think a ten-or-eleven-year-old kid raised on a healthy diet of Jackie Chan and Schwarzeneggar could handle it. Lots of people get shot and kicked, but it's not gory or anything.

Asian kids action movies have come a long way since Seven Lucky Ninja Kids. I didn't get the sense that the Ninja Kids really knew martial arts all that well (or maybe at all, it's been years). Some of these Power Kids, on the other hand, might even wind up being the next generation of Thai action stars.