User Reviews

Fist of the North Star starts with a lengthy, & boring, narration by a guy named Ryuken (Malcolm McDowell). The opening shot is of a desolate post-apocalyptic world with what were once our cities but are now crumbling ruins, a lawless world where acid rain falls from the sky & the strong prey on the weak. Ryuken talks of a school of martial arts named the Southern Cross, the flag of the Southern Cross is now the fearful symbol of a new order. The North Star is the last opposing school, basically the Southern Cross is evil & the North Star is good. The Southern Cross Master, Lord Shin (Costas Mandylor) executes the Master of the North Star, Ryuken. Lord Shin also tires to kill Ryuken's son, Kenshiro (Gary Daniels). Lord Shin leaves Kenshiro for dead in the wastelands & takes his lover Julia (Isako Washio) as his own to Southern Cross City which he rules. However, Kenshiro is not dead & sets about finding Lord Shin & putting a end to his evil plans to 'liberate the wastelands' by any means necessary. About 200 miles North of Southern Cross City is a small town called Paradise Valley where they protect their most precious commodity, water. Lord Shin wants this water & sends his deformed henchmen & their gangs out to destroy Paradise Valley & take the water lead by head bad guy known as the Jackal (Chris Penn). Kenshiro runs into a teenager named Bat (Dante Basco) & a young blind girl named Lynn (Nalona Herron) who he magically cures. Since they both have a common problem in the shape of Lord Shin & his men they sort of join forces to defeat him, after some silly plot devices keep throwing them together. I guess that's just about it, Kenshiro eventually meets up with Lord Shin & after some personal angst over Shin kidnapping Julia & murdering his Father they have a fight & that's about that.

Co-written & directed by by Tony Randel based on the Japanese comic & anime Hokuto No Ken by Buronson & Tetsuo Hara I thought this live-action version of Fist of the North Star had a lot potential which it ultimately didn't deliver. The script by Randel & Peter Atkins ditches the over-the-top violence & comic book feel. The film seems to take itself a little too seriously & as a result ends up being a bit dull. There are a couple of scenes which try to recreate the comic book feel like when Kenshiro kicks someones face & dislocates his jaw to an amazing extent or in the same sequence where he punches someone in the back & a big bulge appears on their chest from the force. Unfortunately these are about the only scenes worth mentioning in this regard as the rest of the fights are short, dull, unimaginative & few & far between. Towards the end Kenshiro has to fight lots of Lord Shin's guards, he literally punches or kicks them once & they're defeated, Kenshiro's climactic fight with Lord Shin was also a let down. Fist of the North Star really needed lots more blood, gore, violence & energy in it's disappointing fight scenes. Having said that the fights are reasonably well choreographed & aren't any worse than any other low budget martial arts film. The story is simple to say the least, large chunks of it are annoyingly told in monologues & flashbacks by various characters. The characters were annoying thinly sketched bland stereotypes. It also could have done with losing a few minutes worth of running time as it drags a little in places. The cast features some familiar faces, Malcolm McDowell is in it for about three minutes maximum even though he gets near top-billing in the credits, Chris Penn makes for a sleazy bad guy & is criminally wasted throughout, Costas Mandylor didn't convince me as the most evil man on Earth, Clint Howard makes an appearance as Stalin one of Lord Shin's henchmen, Melvin Van Peebles was here somewhere but I don't know who he played & as for leading man Gary Daniels he is about as wooden & unconvincing as I expected. The music by Christopher L. Stone is totally inappropriate as it's very quiet & orchestral, this film needed an upbeat fast score to compliment the action scenes & at least try to get the blood pumping a little. The one thing where Fist of the North Star gains a few points is it's production values & design, it's actually rather impressive. The wastelands, Paradise Valley & Southern Cross City all look very convincing considering the budget as do the costumes & the overall look of Fist of the North Star. There isn't much blood or gore & disappointingly not a single on screen exploding head even though Chris Penn's head almost explodes but unfortunately the scene cuts away just at the vital moment, there is a cool looking zombie though who's in it for a couple of minutes & a few blood spraying wounds. Overall Fist of the Nortrh Star is a reasonable film, there's nothing greatly wrong with it as it's generally well made & tells it's story competently enough but I can't help but feel disappointed at what it could have been had it been made by a stronger director who had the guts to go with what made the original Japanese comic so good. Average at best, worth watching if you've got nothing better to do.

Hokuto no Ken is one of the most important manga in the history, selling 100 million copies, consistently being picked as one of the best manga - and anime - of all time and making more than $20 billion in total revenue.

And in the U. S., hardly anyone knows what it is.

In fact, when Sega released the video game adaptions, they called them Black Belt and Last Battle. They also edited them to remove the torrents of gore, because when hero Kenshiro calls upon his studies of the ancient art of assassination called Hokuto Shinken, he uses the body's hidden meridian points to blow people up real good.

He's the hero so bad ass that he tells his enemies before the battle, "You are already dead."

The American straight-to-video live action version of the story may not be the best place for people to first be told the story, but here we are, with Kenshiro (KBA California State Light Heavyweight Champion and PKA World Light Heavyweight Champion Gary Daniels) seeking revenge in a post-World War 3 world, torn apart when the two martial arts schools dedicated to keeping the peace go to war with one another. Southern Cross fighter Shin (Costas Mandylor) has turned against his own fighting style and murdered North Star master Ryuken (Malcolm McDowell), with his son - Kenshiro - left to gain revenge. The big boss then attacked Kenshiro, leaving him with a scar in the shape of seven stars and topping that by kidnapping his lover Julia (Isako Washio).

Joining with the orphaned Bat (Dante Basco, Ruffio from Hook) and Lynn (Nalona Herron), he wanders the wasteland and battles Shin's Crossmen, murdering each of them in spectacular fashion. Shin sends Jackal (Chris Penn) and more soldiers to take over Paradise Valley and - spoiler warning - Kenshiro kills just about every single one of them. As for Jackal, he just makes his head all mushy.

I really think this movie was cast just for me, what with Tracy "Bob the Goon" Walter, "Downtown" Julie Brown, Melvin Van Peebles (yes, the man who made Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song), Clint Howard, Tony Halme (Ludvig Borga of WWE fame, also an absolute real life villain who had an SS tattoo on his calf and was elected to the Finland House of Parliament as part of a party with very fascist views), Big Van Vader and Susan French, Aunt Elizabeth from House.

This was directed and co-written (with Peter Atkins, who wrote Wishmaster) by Tony Randel, who also made movies that I gush about like Hellbound: Hellraiser II and Amityville 1992: It's About Time, plus writing the English version of Godzilla 1985, Hellraiser III and Grunt! The Wrestling Movie.

There's a much better animated movie of this story, but this is still worth a watch for curiosity.

This was a pretty lame effort to stay faithful to the original if you ask me (if that is even what they were going for); whoever said it was loyal to it's source doesn't know what they are talking about. Mind you, the cartoon movie was quite a hash up itself compared to the series (or comic!) and can be hard to follow if you don't already know the story, so if that's all they decided to go on then you can't really blame them too much. Compared to the original story, though, I have to say that the characters were all weak; the bad thug guys don't look mean enough (but they sure were ugly enough!); the main characters are not tough (ahem,super- human?) enough; the kung fu is not ridiculous (or, oxymoronically, believable) enough; Julia is not beautiful enough and to top it off, I'd have to say that Kenshirou's master Ryuuken is not really "zen" (or bald) enough either (and what's with that weird zombie scene?!). All that said and adaptation-shmadaptation aside......the fight scenes still sucked, the directing was bad, and the acting worse... I'm reeaaally sorry, but you should probably just watch something else!!

Harshly slammed by unforgiving critics on its release, FIST OF THE NORTH STAR is actually a reasonably entertaining adaptation of the popular Japanese graphic novels and anime from the 1980s, which gets by on a low budget and has plenty to offer in look, sound and feel. The comic-book level of the film works through some nicely-portrayed settings which depict a post-apocalyptic society. Despite such ruined, burnt-out settings being widely familiar through such films as the MAD MAX series and dozens of others, they make for an effective backdrop for the violent action which this film offers, complementing a fast-moving action-based story which never lets up from the very beginning.

Our heroic lead is portrayed by British-born martial artist Gary Daniels, here performing well in a role which may be his best ever – although judging by the rest of his filmography, that's not really saying much. Daniels is excellent as the exiled Kenshiro, with years of hard training having paid off to give him a sculpted, imposing physique. Not too sure why a Brit was chosen to play a Japanese man, but the gamble pays off and Daniels is one of the best things the film has to offer. Unfortunately his pretty-boy adversary, Costas Mandylor, isn't much of an opponent and his evilness tends to be lacking at crucial points. Better attention is given to lower-list scumbags like the ubiquitous Clint Howard as gun-toting bike rider Stalin (who disappears halfway through the film) and Chris Penn, who has a ball as the extremely weird and aggressive henchman, Jackal.

The rest of the supporting cast isn't given much of a look in (aside from an annoying Japanese teenage character who is thankfully bumped off before too long) but there are a surprising amount of familiar faces here – Melvin Van Peebles as an old-timer, MTV presenter Downtown Julie Brown as a fierce fighter, and genre pro Malcolm McDowell making one of his cameo appearances, a presence that always lifts the level of a film. The dialogue is pretty monosyllabic and hardly enlightening, but thankfully the film does work on the action-orientated level at which it attempts – and with gusto.

For the few who don't know, the original characters of Kenshiro and Shin were blessed with super-normal abilities which allowed them to easily break apart mere mortal opponents. Such powers here take the form of bone-breaking punches and kicks, and a special move that Daniels performs which makes the heads of his opponents bubble and swell before exploding in a grisly fashion. His opponent, Shin, instead prefers to perforate the chests of his enemies by literally sticking his fingers into them, leading to much blood spray and carnage.

Yes, you guessed it, FIST OF THE NORTH STAR is an exceptionally violent movie, but like the (superior) STORY OF RICKY, the violence is portrayed in a rubbery, comic-book style so it never seems shocking or disturbing. The martial arts work is great, especially from Daniels, although the cameraman does use bad angles sometimes which make it clear that the kicks and punches aren't connecting. This flaw is eased by some splendidly meaty sound effects work to enhance the battles, and as a whole the kung fu doesn't disappoint. Not a great movie, but not a bad one either. Pretty good fun in all respects, actually.

As a fan of the original, i spent this full movie pointing out mistakes, like with Shin, where he should have straight blonde hair, it is curly and black, and Ken should have been clean shaved, and Lynn should have pink hair.

Also Ken is wearing a black leather jacket, which should have been a lighter blue with an orange shirt underneath, and I don't understand how such mistakes could be made my accident, so someone had to sit down and decide to do this?

Also his fight with the fat Crossman, Ken is thrown around and stuff, would never happen.

Also there is electricity and radio etc. throughout, where there are none in the anime, and guns are used a lot, which are rare to be seen in the anime, when Jagi in the anime produces his shotgun, people are shocked that he has shells.

Jackals character makes no sense, is in the wrong place, doing the wrong things, and what the hell is up with the face thing he wears?

AND FINALLY Kens scars keep getting called wounds, and look like someone has just stuck some pink gum on his chest. I love the original so had to give this a chance, but will never watch it again.

This has long been one of my least favorite movies of all time. I was lured in by Netflix's promise of a philosophical kung fu film, and found neither philosophy nor kung fu. Thirteen years later, I decided to give it a second chance. Was it really as bad as I remember? Definitely.

What makes this worse than any other direct-to-video martial arts claptrap? You can see Gary Daniels' aggressively wooden acting in scores of direct-to-video flicks. In most of them, he does more fighting than talking. In this movie, he does precious little fighting. When he talks, he does it in an accent strange enough to render "I know" into a four-syllable phrase.

For about sixty percent of the run time we wallow in the suffering of Paradise Valley, a town of no importance whatsoever. We get to see scene after scene after scene of Lord Shin's doughy professional wrestlers brutalizing innocent villagers. The villagers expect the hero to come and save them, but he is too busy doing nothing. He wanders around aimlessly, trying to escape his destiny, with the exact same expression on his face.

The fight scenes are generally confined to the last third of the movie. Kenshiro finally gets off his ass when he sees thugs carrying a picture of his girlfriend. He's too noble to fight for the lives of villagers. But, if you try to bang his girl, he's out for blood! The most exciting scene in the film features an army of thugs lining up to get kicked by Kenshiro. However, the director's not content to let you just enjoy the action. Instead, he keeps cutting away to meanie bad guys mumbling about rape or progress or some other nonsense.

Parts of this movie are schlock enough to laugh at. However, the drawn out sequences with Bat and Lynn and Paradise Valley are a bear to sit through. If you're going to watch it, skip everything but the fight scenes.