Ever wanted to know who Gary Daniels, costar of The Expendables, is? Watch The Fist of the North Star!
Ever wanted to know what happened to Rufio after Hook? Watch The Fist of the North Star!
Ever wanted to see another Chris Penn movie during the Summer of Action? Watch The Fist of the North Star!
Ever wanted to see how 90s filmmakers would do at making adaptations of graphic novels? Watch The Fist of the North Star!
Ever need a Downtown Julie Brown fix and can't get your hands on Club MTV tapes? Watch The Fist of the North Star!
Ever feel like seeing Linderman from Heroes as a mummy-goblin or hovering prepubescent girl? Watch The Fist of the North Star!
Ever want to see Clint Howard, the ugliest man in show business, kill innocent people in a futuristic wasteland? Watch The Fist of the North Star!
The Fist of the North Star is a 1995 live-action interpretation of a Japanese Manga classic by the same name; presumably it adapts the first Fist of the North Star saga as there appear to be several. Starring people you by and large don't know probably explains why it was pretty much unheard of and especially why it wasn't rereleased when the Sin City/Watchmen/Marvel comics movies launched the graphic novels-as-movies craze.
So here's the rub: somewhere in the future there are two opposing factions of the world, conveniently North and South. While the two sides are at odds, legend says that the North Star is to never fight with the Southern Cross. Shin makes a mess of this situation when he walks right up and kills Malcolm McDowell, who is at that time the Fist of the North Star.
Some years later we see that Southern Cross is flourishing, as evidenced by a tremendous tower building with search lights where Shin lives in opulent style with a beautiful woman and several obviously powerful thugs. The North, however, has gone down hill: they have resource problems extending even to water. The Northerners have plenty of will to survive, but are being squeezed out of the resources to do so. So basically the North has become India.
Not happy to let them dwell in filth, a band of Southerners then storm the village where Downtown Julie Brown and Rufio live. However, Rufio's little sister has a psychic connection with the old Star's son, who turns out to be a badass fighter in his own right. This is shown by a flash backwards to him killing a massive dude by tapping him on the chest a few dozen times, which at first does nothing and then makes his head melt thanks to film editing tricks, and then pop like a pimple. Well this guy new Star- he goes by 'Kenshiro' or, since we went all the way and really anglo'd this up as much as possible, 'Ken'- saves the day and runs the Southerners off for the moment.
We learn over the next course of time that Ken and Shin have quite a history. Shin's beautiful woman was one of his spoils in a big fight that he and Ken had, where Ken unleased the multitap on Chris Penn, which explains why his head now has to be held together by a leather strap device which makes him look particularly badass. Just before this big fight, Ken had given Julie, the beautiful woman, a bag of seeds which 'hold the future'. In the end of this parable of 10 or 20 years prior, Shin thinks he's killed Ken. Of course, he didn't and Ken is on his way to get his revenge as well as his lovely Julie back.
In preparation for Ken's arrival at the tower, Shin sends Julie away with Chris, who thinks it would be a great idea to rape the boss' chick. Well Julie spares him the light-in-the-chest smiting from Shin by sticking one of Chris' leather straps in some conveniently spinning gears, which tears his headgear off causing his head to finally explode. He was really living on borrowed time anyway, but must we really keep killing off Chris Penn? Is it not bad enough that his brother is a really talented award-winning actor (with a little bit of activist shitheel thrown in)?
Well, Ken somehow manages to survive Shin's big ball-of-heat-in-the-chest-which-makes-your-veins-explode, and then kicks the crap out of him. That out of the way, however, things only seem to be getting worse when he's confronted with an angry mob of Southerners. Luckily for him, Julie emerges from her ordeal with Chris and his exploding head, and mob bows to her honor. We're all happy, the end.
All in all, a pretty typical dystopic future story. Oppression, violence, dirt, ruling class keeping down an underpriviledged class, etc. It was a little strange that this very clearly Japanese story took some liberties in the action and storytelling mechanism, but as far as I'm concerned better that than using a bunch of discombobulating manga language or conventions which wouldn't mean much to your slightly above average american like me. I was concerned about how the graphic novel would be adapted, and while I've not read the book there were plenty of scens that felt very comic-y. The best, or worst, of them, were the moments where the actors mugged a little longer than necessary when delivering a big line like "THE FUTURE IS NOW" or "Might is right. Dissent is intolerable." And yes, Chris Penn got to utter both of those lines. There were more than a couple scenes where the choreographed kicks cleared the contact point with plenty of blue sky in between, so those were fun.
Had this movie been available five years earlier, when I was in my formative "watching the same movie once or twice a month while mom works and dad does treasury stuff for the union" phase, I'm certain I would have loved it almost as much as Masters of the Universe and Star Wars. So for a Summer of Action movie, I think that's a pretty solid endorsement.
No comments:
Post a Comment