While out hunting for vengeance (and perhaps once in a while seeking closure) we do not pay attention to how things started. So hurt by the alleged offense or crime, we often tend to overlook the truth and become the demons we fight against. It is only when one looks back and reflects that one becomes fully aware of how it all came to be. In this case, humanity has so many similar stories and a number of them have transformed into actual and make believe tragedies. Not so in the case of this dull sequel, Shadow of a Tear, to the 2009 film Ninja.
AN EXHIBITION: Namiko (Mika Hijii) takes on Casey (Scott Adkins) in a dojo, flanked by other students.
Scott Adkins has reprised his role as ninja Casey from the Koga clan, a character he first portrayed in the 2015 Close Range and who stole the show John Wick: Chapter 4. Now married to Namiko who was featured Mika Hijii in GARO: Under the Moonbow (2019) and Alien vs. Ninja (2010), Casey is about to become a father and his life is going according to plan. But Adkin’s life gets shaken when Namiko is found murdered in their house with a barbed wire shaped wound around her neck. Her death remains a mystery to Scott and the rest of the Koga clan. While other members of the Koga clan such as Nakabara, played by Kane Kosugi from Revenge of the Ninja (1983) and Ninja Sentai Kakuranger, tried redirecting Casey’s anger in a more positive direction by offering to host him at his dojo in Thailand, Scott refuses. After attempting to wage his own war and succeeding in killing a group of thugs, Casey goes on the run to Thailand to escape what he has started. Adkins intends to accept Nakabara’s offer while also searching for clues to the murder. But while over there, he gets tangled up in another murder that also featured the same barbed wire clues.
In this section Nakabara discloses the identity of the possible user of the weapon: Goro the drug lord (Shun Sugata from “Tokyo Vice” and Tokyo Gore Police [2008], “Zatoichi vs Predator” [2017 fan film]).
Goro has close familial ties with a group of 14 surviving Imperial Japanese soldiers who were turned into ninja during the Second World War. They were part of a regiment of 2500 soldiers that were marched deep into the Burmese jungle. Goro had an older brother who was amongst the three ninja alive striving for power within the group. He was the second one that died during the internal struggle. Having vowed to take revenge, Goro became a drug warlord kingpin of the Burmese jungle using his brother’s signature weapon, a barbed-wire kusari-gama, to dominate. Casey prepares to battle through Southeast Asia to find his wife, which explains her necklace. He teems up with Casey when they assume there is no other brass-balled, barbed wire kusari-gama.
Even as I was busy watching this movie, a question kept recirculating my mind: Why does Casey fly to another country immediately after every murder he commits, instead of staying under the radar? Casey is going to run into issues moving in between the 3 nations (Japan, Thailand, Myanmar/Burma) due to airline security, and realism began to set in. While Casey is not likely to be on the top of the suspect list for slaying a few street-thugs with the Japanese security agencies, he could raise a few eyebrows after the two guys were killed while it was sandwiched between a white guy’s wife dying and his trip to Thailand. This was the one thing that broke immersion within the movie, which speaks a lot to the story itself, because the rest of it was still terrible.
The movie is magnificently staged and choreographed, with the exception of the scenes where the White male tackles locals out of emotional rage. From Japan’s neon-filled urban streets to Southeast Asia’s woody greens, you feel like you are there watching Scott Adkins best perform his craft. To my utter dismay, the fact that using Namiko in the revenge plot was straight from one of the 1980’s action films (Rambo: First Blood Part II, Missing in Action, The Octagon) means that no gender equality is to be found on screen, nor is there any origiality in the sequel about a White ninja. There’s a twist at the end that is worth paying attention to and I sincerely urge you, dear reader, don’t fall asleep watching this. The outcome is so much more than every other part of the movie!
After 70 years of humid jungle air, the fine scratches in the gravestones are evidence that they still stand definitively upright.
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