Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

There are very, VERY many excellent samurai films. It's a shame then, that there are so few good movies focusing on the ninja. At least as far as what's been released in the U.S. anyway. Still, considering just how highly regarded ninja are in American pop culture, it's a mystery why the Shinobi No Mono series isn't more widely known.The series is based loosely on true events and features far more grounded action than Ninja Gaiden fans might expect. After all, the real life ninja were all about infiltration, espionage, sabotage, assassination, and subterfuge with their enemies not knowing what hit them until far too late. Straight combat was strictly a samurai thing.The first three films are part of a single story arc and takes place during Japan's Sengoku (Warring States) Period which lead to Tokugawa Ieyasu becoming the first supreme Shogun. The fourth movie is a stand alone story taking place a number of years later when Ieyasu was consolidating his power and features a different main character (though played by the same lead actor).All in all, the Shinobi No Mono series is definitely worth a watch for ninja fans. Also, anyone interested in Japanese history, or even anyone with a taste for period political thrillers should check it out. We can only hope that the rest of this series will some day be released here.

I suppose many of us would have loved the romanticism associated with ninjas, with their famed skills of invisibility, swordsmanship, cunning and a whole host of weaponry and gadgets that add to their element of surprise. If you'd think you know a lot of their modus operandi, then perhaps The Ninjas, aka Shinobi No Mono, would contribute to that wealth of knowledge, and at the same time dispel some of the myths and stories that add to the stature of these masked assassins.If you'd wonder what a ninja does when out of his mask, then the film would have painted a rather mundane picture of the practicing ninjas, who hone their skills in enclaves, and frankly look no more like your usual Samurais, except sans status, and honing their skills ala rebels in hiding at their fortified base, and being skilled assassins for hire to Samurais who need someone to do their dirty work for them (yes, even back then you can outsource your dirty laundry), as they themselves are bounded by the honor code of bushido.The movie doesn't waste time in building up a proper background, but throws you thick into the action. With characters loosely adapted from history, you have Oda Nobunaga, a ruthless warlord on rampaging victories across Japan in an effort to unify the country. Needless to say such aggression doesn't sit well with the able bodied, and 2 clans of ninjas are pitted against each other to see who can carry out a successful mission to stop the warlord. The story centers upon Goemon (Raizo Ichikawa), an up and coming, though ambitious and impatient ninja, who is recognized and granted a promotion (to the back office, away from the battlefield, as an accountant!) but in a moment of lustful folly, becomes the pawn of his master Sandayu (Yunosuke Ito), pledging his life to his master's bidding.So begins Goemon's mission, which includes a ruining of his reputation, and committing acts which defy even the ninja's code of conduct (yes there is one!). In fact, we learn and observe many rules and regulations of ninja-dom, what with the need to disfigure oneself prior to death, and how torture must be endured and death always an option. All these get interpreted through Goemon's ultimate shame in living with his guilt, up until he meets a prostitute called Maki (Shiho Fujimura), who gives him new cause to live, setting the stage for the truth of his double-headed master to be revealed.Shinobi No Mono was credited as the first film to popularize the ninja series of films, and had relatively low key special effects, decided to root itself in more realistic elements, rather than have things like tunnelling through sand dunes, and blink and you miss puffing of smoke. Secret passages, booby traps, poison and darts still remain staple, but don't expect any fancy swordplay as targets get dispatched rather quickly. If you're looking for a climatic ending, then you'll likely be sorely disappointed, as everything goes into a big shebang, lacking in any mano-a-mano opportunities.That said, this film is still rather enjoyable for its shedding of light on these mysterious group who operate in the shadows, and it's not always they have to dress up in black for their operations. It'll look rather dated, but somewhat a refreshing change from current films in its presentation sans the easy way out using tons of computer aided imagery.

If you came of age around the same time I did, you no doubt remember the spate of lousy American-made ninja flicks like ENTER THE NINJA (1981), REVENGE OF THE NINJA (1983), NINJA III: THE DOMINATION (1984), and the nearly indescribably boring and Swedish-made THE NINJA MISSION (1984). I have no idea why the boom happened, but Ninja were every bloody place for about five years, infesting television, comic books, bestselling adventure novels, and other media, (though their absence from pop music is conspicuous, but I guess that area of entertainment was already awful enough during that decade) and their general craptasticness and ubiquity earned them a place in my heart right next to uncontrollable projectile vomiting or being on the receiving end of a perfectly executed kick to the nuts. Even by the admittedly over-the-top standard of skills seen in any garden variety martial arts flick, the cinematic/pop culture exploits of the ninja were exceptionally cartoonish and juvenile, rendering the fabled masters of assassination and espionage into caricature and stripping them of much mystery and respectful fascination. Even the excellent LONE WOLF & CUB movies suffered from such crazy theatrics, but those films got away with it by having the sense to be completely gory and insanely ultra-violent, unlike any of the American entries that starred boring rent-a-ninja Sho Kosugi.With all of that in mind I approached the recent US release of SHINOBI NO MONO with some trepidation, but as it starred one of my favorite chambara actors, Raizo Ichikawa — best known as the red-headed ronin Kyoshiro Nemuri — and was described as being the first film to take the ninja seriously and treat him in a realistic manner, I was willing to give it a chance.The film is the first in a series about real life ninja/thief Goemon Ichikawa, described in some circles as a Japanese analog to Robin Hood, although to the best of my recollection Robin Hood didn't meet his end by being boiled alive in a vat of oil. Anyway, after a somewhat tedious first third of the film in which we must endure far too much exposition regarding the film's various intrigues, we get down to Goemon's adventures as a top notch soldier and ninja who is charged with killing an asshole warlord (Tomisaburo Wakayama, real-life brother to Shintaro Katsu of ZATOICHI fame, and ten years away from screen immortality as LOne Wolf) while having an affair with his commander's sexually-neglected wife. The affair turns out to be more than it seems, as does Goemon's master, and when the doody hits the fan Goemon goes on the lam and hides out in a whorehouse, there finding love with a sweet prostitute. He gives her the money to buy her freedom so they can retreat to a secluded home in the woods and start anew, but Goemon's past catches up with him and he's forced into accepting an assassination mission or else the lives of his loving wife and unborn child will be forfeit.Once you get past the turgid first act, the flick's a lot of fun in an old school way, and the ninja skills/martial arts are surprisingly realistic, featuring none of the superhuman looniness I would have expected. The fights and ninja stuff were choreographed by Masaki Hatsumi, a doctor of natural healing techniques as well as being the 34th Grandmaster of Budo Taijutsu and founder of the Bujinkan Dojo, an all-around thoughtful badass who knows his stuff, so there's an intimate intensity to the combat that allows the viewer to worry about Goemon as a human being whose skin is the only thing separting his guts from the cold and dusty ground.The cinematography is reminiscent of a lower-budgeted and perhaps rushed Kurosawa wannabe, but the film looks great and is definitely a fun way to spend 116 minutes. I enjoyed it enough to want to see the next installment, so TRUST YER GRANDPA and rent it.

The confusion level is very high for the story, but so is the entertainment quotient. This is good fun, in a fast-paced, light drama; but without any of the goofball humour that mars later 1970s Japan samurai pulp films. The elderly leaders of two Ninja clans are actually the same person in disguise. The old man frequently changes disguises and travels to the other hideout during the night to give commands and play his role as the clan leader in each place. In one clan, he enlists and inspires one young ninja aspirant to fight for him in trying to overcome a powerful warlord who is trying to kill off all the ninjas in Japan. The young man ends up being seduced by the old man's young wife. The old man catches him and blackmails the young ninja into asassinating the warlord. One of the most interesting things about this film is watching all the now well-worn cliches of ninja behaviour and methods being introduced in this story: The old man climbs up his walls and in his attic almost like a monkey; the old string and poison assasination trick is used in one place, and some mild humour is added when one adept young ninja keeps accidentally killing small birds when trying to hit various assasination targets with his little star wheels. By the end, most of the confusion is cleared up, and I even found myself wanting to watch it again to understand more of the details. Both the evil old nina leader and the young, ambitious ninja warrior are very convincing in their roles, and are just really fun to watch. On the downside, this movie is too well-made to rate as a good B-movie, but is not really good enough quality to rate it as an "A" movie, either. So the overall feeling is that of a slightly better than mediocre grade A movie. Also, the action is spread a little thin and far between longish drama scenes. Since the drama is on the light side, there is no mesmirising effect as with a good Kurosawa yarn. Overall, however, it is still an entertaining and satisfying movie to watch from an early 1960s ninja filmmaking master.