Best movie of this year hands down!

A Disappointing Continuation

A different way of telling a story

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Renamed as Broken Fist in the £1 shop where I found this, I can state with absolute honesty that I wasted my money.Starting out as a serious film, night falls and preparing for bed, a couple is suddenly attacked by a masked man with a knife diving at them from across the room. Another masked man who apparently had no lines throughout the film (I couldn't make it to anywhere close to the end so can't say), then pops up to grope the wife and constantly - very annoyingly - heckle.Anyway, the former Power Rangers dude seems like he's been killed when he spits copious amounts of blood after having his chest stamped on, but instead of more stomps ensuring his end, they imbue him with super-human endurance and the film turns into a cuss-version of the aforementioned kids' programme, as men are kicked and somersault through the air on impact.I said that the former Black Ranger got super-human endurance and it's true, because for the next 10 minutes I managed to watch, he fights tirelessly against a growing number of assailants with a vigour unmatched by professional sporting athletes! Hmm, obviously, it's because he's a ninja.There is a wafer-thin plot (which fails to explain why the night suddenly turned into the middle of the day when they go outside), but the sheer ridiculous fights - and I'm a HUGE kung-fu film fan - woeful acting and tone that said the director had absolutely no idea what feel he wanted for the film, were too huge an obstacle to over-come.This film will doubtless change it's name to Broken... something else in an effort to hide from the fact that it's an appalling bag of shite, but it shall forever be Broken and you'd be better off saving your pound for a McCheeseburger... which I'm sure you could at least get through.

i've stumbled upon this movie in a martial-arts themed forum and i couldn't find much about this movie online, so i decided to give it a try.Storywise there's not much to talk about. It's really bare-boned and that's being incredibly lenient. The writing's pretty much as cliché as it gets: Guy with dark past starts a new life, founds a family, but eventually his past comes back to haunt him. This is where the movie starts off. Aside from a silly twist at the end that's it. If you're looking for a solid storyline you've come to the wrong place. To be fair, 90% of the movie is fighting.Some of the acting is terrible, at times even downright goofy, especially when the mask-wearing goons are involved. The worst performance is delivered by the "daughter". I don't want to give anything away, but she does not convey much emotion. She's cute though, I have to admit. The protagonist and his wife fare much better when it comes to acting. Nothing special, but fairly decent.The best aspect of the movie is by far the fast paced action. The fight scene are nicely choreographed and occasionally made me wince. The physical prowess of the actors is surprisingly well showcased. In this department I don't have much to complain about. It really is better than I expected. What bothered me are the scenes where he's down and about to bite the dust, when suddenly he hears his wife screaming. All of a sudden his rage enables him to withstand anything, grants him more strength and skill than he displayed before (although he is heavily wounded). This is fine as long as it happens once, maybe twice. In this movie you stop counting... Maybe that's a personal preference.There is some gore in this movie! It comes rather unexpected, because it's really graphic, but I enjoyed it's silliness.To conclude: The story is horrible and cliché. Some of the acting is decent, some is really goofy and some is just terrible. The fighting is good, but not perfect. If you're a fan of fast paced action packed martial-arts flicks, give it a watch. There's not much besides fighting anyways.

That may seem like an odd comparison to make, but just like My Dinner with Andre about 30 minutes into Broken Path you realise that we're not changing location. Yes, this is essentially one long 90 minute fight and as a result feels much more like an experimental art film than an action film. Some people at the Phantasmagoria film festival where I saw the film this weekend found the superhuman resilience of the characters a bit unrealistic but I just saw it as live-action anime. The only problem I had was the character of the wife is pretty useless throughout the film, but otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed this and found it both a challenging and interesting take on a usually formulaic genre.

I saw Broken Path at the Phantasmagoria film festival this weekend and was very excited indeed. Johnny Yong Bosch gives a terrific account of himself here, as does Dan Southworth (a favourite performer of mine since the awesome US Seals 2), Motoko Nagino, and the other tremendous action performers in the film. The film is virtually one long non-stop fight from about 20 minutes in, after establishing Johnny's family life with his wife and young daughter. The action is outstanding, especially the final showdown between Johnny and Dan which really has to be seen to be believed, and the action scenes with Motoko Nagino kick ass, she is a tremendous performer, exhibiting some terrific fighting and stunt skills, and being a great actress as well. There a re a few criticisms such as the fact that every person in the film receives numerous injuries that would kill anyone instantly and then carry on fighting which just feels a bit silly. If the film was an animated Japanese film then you'd probably not bat an eyelid but some of it really was ridiculous. However the action scenes themselves were just terrific viewing and I think I could watch any of the set-pieces again and again. You can see what the cast had to go through making the film, and I'd love to see an outtake reel. In short if you love films like Drive, Wicked Game and so forth you will get a serious kick out of Broken Path, just don't expect any kind of realism per se.