Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Please don't spend money on this.

A Brilliant Conflict

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

CITY NINJA is a very poor addition to the ninja film cycle that has very little to do with ninjas at all, apart from exactly two tacked-on fight scenes featuring our black-clad friends (and a pretty cool red ninja at one point). These fights are shot in a wood somewhere and are quite amusing, featuring flying ninjas and the usual disappearing acts, but they have nothing to do with the central thrust of the story.This film is a Hong Kong/South Korean co-production that has two distinctive plots, each featuring a different hero. Chan Wai-Man is the jet-setting hero tasked with retrieving a missing necklace, while Casanova Wong battles the usual criminal thugs all the while. Wai-Man's scenes seem to have been filmed in Hong Kong and Wong's in South Korea, leading to much choppiness and poor editing between the two story lines. In other words, you feel like you're watching a typical Godfrey Ho movie.The action itself is quite plentiful, but poorly staged and uninteresting. A few familiar faces like Phillip Ko and John Ladalski are wasted in just a few seconds of appearance and the bad guys are all defeated too easily. Surprisingly, the director's real intent is to show as much sex and nudity as possible in his film. Wai-Man has a strenuous encounter with a girlfriend in a gym of all places while there are random shower, bath, bedroom, and nude scenes throughout. It all feels very gratuitous and more silly than grubby.

Now this is my kind of crap! I'm saving this one for my kids, Godfrey Ho Jnr and Ninja Master Gordon Jnr! This may or may not be a Godfrey Ho film, but when you see a guy playing pool while hanging from a ceiling, you may start to think that Godfrey isn't a person, but a state of mind.This one involves some white guy in Hong Kong in 1944 being chased by four ninjas (who can teleport etc). The white guy has a necklace which he gives to some local lad. After a confusing sequence where we see the same guy fighting the ninja on a beach, we fast forward to 1985 where fighter Wu ng Lee is hired by a local businessman to run a bar (and we see a woman strip topless and get Wung to sign her arse, but he draws a picture instead!). Wung's boss is the descendant of the guy with the necklace, and has somehow lost both halves of it, and needs it back as the Mafia are putting the squeeze on him.Meanwhile, in the other film footage used, some young guy called Jimmy (after a particularly violent fight in a boxing ring) gets hired by the Boss from the new footage but before he finds out what he needs to do his middle boss gets killed. Meanwhile, in the new footage, Wu's boss is being neglected by her husband and starts up an affair with Wung, resulting in a sex scene that goes on forever, mostly using gym equipment! Did I mention that the old footage is from the mid-seventies? It stands out a mile. Except somehow it doesn't as Jimmy also seems to appear on screen with Wung Lee, which is really confusing because up to then I was certain this was a cut and paste film. My brain hurts.The insanity then gets pushed further as Jimmy's boss, Redhead (literally a Chinese guy with red hair) thinks Jimmy has half the necklace (somehow, he does) and is intending on skipping town with Redhead's missus. Cue another sex scene and various battles. Jimmy is also up against two bad guys who have their own gangs (who also double as chairs for the bad guys – you have to see it to believe it) which results in a major ninja battle that goes on forever.Meanwhile, Wung Lee gets his lover pregnant but wants to skip town with his fiancé while his boss is trying to kill him, resulting in the accidental killing of his lover and subsequent blackmail to go to Korea (where it turns out Jimmy lives). He's blackmailed by the bosses second in command, who also gets a sex scene. Everybody also forgets that a pregnant lady was killed about five minutes after it happens. That's life I guess.Man, this is never ending! Except it does end rather abruptly after a few more fights, the worst speedboat chase ever, Redhead graphically getting his stomach blown out, and various other double crosses.City Ninja, also maybe known as Ninja Holocaust, is one highly enjoyable pile of steaming crap. I can't believe I've written so much about the plot when most of the film involves battles and sex scenes. There's so much carnage and nudity in this film it's hard to complain about it, even though, you know, it's awful.Highly recommended garbage!! Awful. Awfully good that is, in an awful way.

Although the opening prologue sequence seems incongruous with the rest of the film, City Ninja doesn't quite fit the profile of the typically abominable cut-and-paste Godfrey Ho style ninja Frankenstein product with Caucasian actors inserted later. It's actually fairly decent, with fast pacing, respectable fight choreography, and relatively coherent storytelling.The two heroes, if that's what they are, are boxers involved with Chinese and Korean gangsters all seeking a necklace with a Swiss bank account number on it. No character in City Ninja emerges as a clearly defined hero, however, and almost every man seems to be out for his own personal gain. The ending, consequently, lacks the upbeat feeling and payoff accompanying most kung fu climaxes, and is actually somewhat of a downer.While Richard Harrison is nowhere in sight, devotees of bad ninja movies shouldn't be bored, as City Ninja offers its share of treats in that department, with ninjas exploding, flying up out of the ground, swooping from trees, attacking from underneath a bridge, and lobbing colored smoke bombs. There's also a lot of melodrama, funny bits of dialog, and fun and generous sexy scenes.

You know you're in for a rough ride when the box proudly proclaims that the characters in the film are "skilled in the use of deadly wapons" [sic]. The film stars Bruce Pok and Wang Li, whose names are written one above the other on the box trompe-l'oeil style to give the at-a-glance impression that we have a lost relic of the legendary Bruce Lee on our hands. Comfortingly, we see that the film is produced by the legendary Fuk brothers.Initial disappointment that both the pictures and photographs displayed on the box bear absolutely no relation to the contents of the film is soon forgotten as incomprehension merges into glee as this little known treasure wends its way through the traffic of its stage.The action begings on a beach in Hong Kong in 1944, where we see a man running for his life from several ninja assailants who seem literally to be exploding out of nowhere all about him. The quarry finds a peasant tending his paddy-field, and entrusts a necklace to him. We suppose that it is this that the ninjas seek.Cut to modern day. Goodies and baddies alike search for the necklace. No reason is given, but there are enough spectacular scenes worked around this basic premise to keep even the keenest ninja hound at bay.The snooker scene is a classic of the genre, and the terrifying, but aptly named, Red-Head leaves a chill in his wake. The hero's brother, Ha Soi, even has a tip for the female viewer, as he concocts a health-enhancing but surprisingly delicious-looking brew consisting of raw eggs and vinegar. His brother's performance on the rowing machine shortly after partaking of this potion is laudable.The film ends as suddenly and bewilderingly as it began, with the viewer, if no further enlightened as to the whereabouts of the necklace, at least a good 90 minutes older, and wiser in the ways of Hong Kong movie-making.A word for our foreign viewer: both dialogue-dubbing and background music blend superbly with the whole to provide a uniquely satisfying frisson between Oriental drama and Occidental knock-about comedy, the idea being that non-intentional humour is always far more effective.Congratulations, those boys from Hong Kong.