Shinobi: Heart Under Blade (2005)

I really liked this movie. Although , I'm not a fan of this genre and i don't know what is the full quality of this movie, but I like it a lot. Curious, for me something new, beautifully shot film scenes, nice music,extraordinary camera.

Wow what a great movie...Yesterday only I saw this movie and I could not resist writing this review... A beautiful love story of two ninjas. The story is about two ninja group who lived in 1614. After more than four hundred years of war between two warriors Manjidani Koga and Tsubagakure Iga who called Shinobi's. Both are very well trained warriors. Iga warriors are live hidden in forest and Koga warriors in hills and mountains. They are under the Kingdom of Lord of Lords. The Lord (Hattori Hanzou) wants to keep the peace in his kingdom. So as his adviser told to destroy their best warriors. If they best warriors are dead means there will be a peace forever. The Lord ordered to Both Iga and Koga leaders to bring their best warriors for war. But between all these incidents, Oboro (Iga) and Gennosuke (Koga) are made their love. Before the day of leaving both Iga and Koga leaders were fought and met their destiny. So, Oboro and Gennosuke have to lead them to Lords place. But Gennosuke did not want to fight with Iga. So he wants to go to the Lord's place and tell him what is the purpose of this fighting? We don't want to fight. He sent message to IGA also. But their warriors want to fight with Iga. From both Iga and Koga having five warriors, they are also well trained Shinobi's. But Gennosuke ordered to go with him to Lord's place, on their way they fight each other. At last what happened? Whether they reach Lord's place? Please see the movie. Yukie Nakama as Oboro and Jô Odagiri as Gennosuke they did their job wonderful. I love the look of Yukie's in climax also love scenes. Other than that Tomoka Kurotani as Kagerou she is also very beautiful and having killer looks :-)... Action sequences are terrific. Especially the forest fights. Finally 9/10.

I don't know if the people reviewing this film are suckers for really corny movies with poor action combined with a sort of uh, seriously? plot, but i certainly am not.That description, i admit, makes my 5 rating seem high. But let me qualify - i expected this to be a martial arts movie with a romance plot, and my expectations in such a genre are not high in the sense that i was in the mood for a movie of the sort. If i had wanted to see a movie and popped this in, i might have thought worse of it, but that was not the case.The plot itself is rather corny but that's acceptable, of course, and i don't really think that corny alone hampers a movie's merit. What gets me about this flick is that the corniness is not topped off in typical fashion, but rather this sort of strange, disturbingly illogical finale (in the sense that it is really just a bad, dissatisfying ending if you think about it, but is presented as a good ending). Also, it reeks of Hero but in a crappy way.The other part of the movie that lacks is the very poor special effects. I believe this is a problem with Japanese cinema in general - they seem to be, often, behind American, European, Chinese, and Korean cinematography - but this is not a problem so long as the movie does not overstretch itself. If the visual effects team for the movie is not the best, than the movie should not attempt to have effects it cannot show - but Shinobi does. The intro sequence is a prime example of this, with the ninja's swinging and moving in absolutely unrealistic fashion that is uncomfortable. It's not like the gravity-defying wushu films - that type of movement is smooth and it works - it's more of the "this looks so fake it's embarrassing" kind.Some of the action is pretty cool, and indeed in concept i believe it was quite interesting - however, the presentation is bad, bad, bad, and does not fit the movie; it's as if 1970's wushu, costume design (i forgot to mention, the outfits of the characters are also out of place for the most part) and special effects meets modern cameras and cinematography - an uncomfortable mix.Ultimately i think that the movie is simply over-hyped. I suppose it is a relatively rare movie and many of the viewers had a different expectation than i did, but it's not the movie you'll want to pop in if you have anything else to watch.

As soon as I saw these ninjas jumping from cliff faces faster than you can actually fall and then swinging along the cliff face like spiderman I knew this was going to be a bad movie. The fight scenes were filled with CG effects which took all the realism out of the movie. The love story was not believable. I suppose the acting could have been worse, and the scenery was quite beautiful, but I couldn't bring myself to give this movie a 2/10. It is really bad. Honestly I didn't watch the last 20 mins so maybe the movie suddenly got a lot better, but i doubt it. Anyway don't expect something like "crouching tiger hidden dragon". I can't really think of a movie to compare it to...whatever, i hope i manage to stop a few people from watching it.