The first of Canons *unofficial* ‘Ninja’ Trilogy, ‘Enter the Ninja’ is a BIZZARE watch if nothing else. The plot, revolving around a recently trained ‘White’ Ninja returning to a poor village to catch up with friends, only to discover that said friends are in the middle of awful intimidation tactics by a group of landgrabbers who want to run them and their charity services out of the country or worse, make sure the only land they’re GOING to be occupying is six feet under.

Our lead ninja sends several friendly messages to the baddies (I.E beating the crap out of them) that the land isnt for sale. But when the group find out our charity workers have a Ninja on their side, they decide to get a Ninja themselves…One whos all too familiar to the White Ninja.

Honestly, there isnt a whole lot to say about this one. The script feels like a Kids interpretation of an adult Ninja movie. and as such in places it can get very disorienting. Everything is SUPER blunt, all the characters are extreme charicatures of the usual architypes, the plot is super basic, bluntly cut with hard transitions between acts and an emphasis on fighting over plot. What emotional elements are present in the film are really rough, lack nuance and feel like they were dropped in to help break up the fighting and nothing else.

Honestly? I really enjoyed the tone and vibe this thing gave off in being SO rudamentary that it ends up downright silly in places. Its not a bad movie in that sense. But I did feel it was about 10 minutes too long and at times, a little TOO basic in storytelling. Like…I feel confident if it wasnt for the gore, that I could show this to VERY young kids and theyd have NO trouble figuring out what was going on.

Directions pretty basic too; Everything is working pretty much as it should…which is fine. But they never really go above and beyond just keeping the ship afloat. The films really lacking in a clear and stylish vision for how this story is to play out, as such it at times plays almost as a parody of Asian Ninja movies from the time (If your film feels like it was edited by Godfrey Ho at multiple points, I dont know if that means you failed or passed the brief…)

Direction of the cast is, if intentional, decent. As mentioned, most of the cast give seriously over the top hammy performances across the board which is arguably one of the biggest reasons to check this film out. they use set space and props pretty decently and while I dont know if all this was intentional, it did create and entertaining sense of energy that probably wouldnt have been there had the director matched his direction of the crews energy.

I also have to mention that the fight choreography is kind of dull as well, we have a mixture of soft contact play and weaponry work which is handled alright, but the total lack of any kind of creative flare from a cine perspective basically makes all the fights look kind of slow and uninteresting. they dont nearly do enough with the cine and direction to really sell these fights as being over the top and cool. Which I found rather dissapointing.

The cine is fine too, theres a couple of nice shots and some decent location work, the lighting in places is a bit extra which was nice to see. but so much of the film is just slightly washed out undersaturated ‘on location’ sequences that it quickly starts to look and feel a lot drabber than the poster would have you believe. Composition of shots is a little touch and go across the runtime, but i’d say there is more good than bad here…even if it is a little uninspired.

Oh…and the soundtracks passably okay, very 80s and not much else. Not an essential work…but it does the job. Almost the entire film is ADR’d though which…im not sure if that was intentional as an homage to the ADR work on a lot of the redubbed martial arts movies coming out of Hong Kong at the time, or if it was a budget thing…But it did help make the film feel more authentic.

All in all? While the production on the whole is VERY middle of the road, I have to admit that I quite enjoyed this one as a big slab of 80s cheese. the performances were the biggest draw for me with some great lines delivered with scene chewing vigor. Is this an essential watch for the martial arts genre? No. definitely not. not in my opinion at least…But I can recommend checking this one out if you’re getting into the genre, have seen a few and want to see something thats ‘from’ the genre, but clearly not ‘of’ the genre. Its the ‘Big Mac’ of Martial arts movies, and I appreciate it for that.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/enter-the-ninja/