Nice effects though.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Scott Glenn is an American boxer, recruited into a Japanese feud over ancient swords. Initially he tries playing the feuding brothers for financial gain, similar to Clint Eastwood in "A Fistful of Dollars". Soon however the movie morphs into a martial arts training film like "Enter the Dragon". The climax is a free for all sword fight, with Glenn taking on the evil brother, and taking quite an impressive beating to boot. There are a few chuckles, especially relating to Glenn's attempt to understand Japanese culture. Head lopping and torso slicing aside, the story is pretty good, the acting by Scott Glenn and Toshiro Mifune competent, and the entertainment value delivered. Can't ask for more than that. Recommended of it's type. - MERK

Scott Glenn, Toshiro Mifune, Atsuo Nakamura, the list goes on, it's like a whos who of eighties martial arts movies. This movie starts of fast and is a pretty decent ride right up until the end. The first time I saw it it was called "The Sword of the Ninja" and I was about 13 years old but the fact that there were no black clad "ninja" in it didn't disappoint me at all. To top it all off the choreography was done by none other than Steven Seagal before he made it big as an actor and it shows. The end fight in the office building is quite brutal and bloody for an eighties film. Actually, there is quite a bit of gore throughout this movie. I think the final showdown/sword fight between Scott Glen and Atsuo Nakamura is one of the most realistic and well choreographed Japanese sword fights I have ever seen. Nakamura is clearly an expert who "underestimates" the gaijin opponent and Glenn is the American who will do anything including using a stapler to stay alive. I wish this would come out on DVD

I must confess to a particular fondness for thetwo films of John Frankenheimer's that he himself didn't seem to have much affection for: Prophecy(about mutant bears in the woods of Maine) and his one, The Challenge. I remember seeing this in theaters back in '82 and really digging it. The script by John Sayles moves along at a nice clip and Scott Glenn is well cast and well used ( for once) as the down on his luck American boxer who finds himself involved in an age old blood feud between two opposing ways of life in Japan; there is an interesting tension between the good guys and the bad guys: East/West as well as Modern/Traditional. (Clever fellow, that Mr Sayles.)The major character arc for Scott Glenn's American pug is not at all dissimilar to that later adopted by Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai. Not only does this film have one of the last major performances in a western film from that towering figure of Japanese cinema, Toshiro Mifune, but it boasts what remains one of the all-time classic modern sword fights in the climactic showdown in a giant gleaming glass and steel Japanese office building. Scott Glenn and Atsuo Nakamura slash each other to ribbons with samurai swords then resort to stapling each other's faces and shocking each other with severed computer cables during the final battle and it is choreographed, shot and edited, with a snappy sense of kineticism. Bravo to all involved.

The Challenge is one of those genre movies that is so good that it not only breaks the genre mold but gets lost in the shuffle, hidden by lots of other movies not nearly as good.Scott Glenn and Toshiro Mifune give excellent and their usual intense performances as a budding samurai cum boxer and his instructor, bonding as the instructor is caught up in a clan feud with his brother.This movie is good for three reasons. One reason is the normal steadfast performances of its stars. The second is the keen, insightful direction of John Frankenheimer, a grossly underrated director who helmed such classics as The Train, Ronin, and The Manchurian Candidate. And the third is the able kenjutsu (swordfighting)and aikido of a then unknown American martial arts instructor based in Japan who at the time was going by Steve Seagal. I guess I don't have to tell you who he grew up to be.