Ninja Girl (Kunoichi) Review

2/5

Seiji Chiba is a well-known name within the world of budget action flicks. Focusing predominately on martial arts, he combines impressive choreography with farfetched plots, often adding elements of comedy for good measure. Following the success of his last film Alien Vs. Ninja, a science-fiction comedy that entertained due to its relatively ridiculous premise, it is a shame that his latest effort doesn’t manage to hit the mark.

It is easy to dismiss low-budget b-list films as a result of poor cameras and often uninspiring sets, yet this doesn’t do justice to what can often be highly enjoyable pieces of cinema. However, in the case of Ninja Girl, there are a number of deviations which the director has taken from his standard style that has resulted in the film losing elements of its integrity.

Centred around a feud between two warring clans, Iga and Kouga, the period piece is set up when a number of girls are revealed to have been kidnapped by two lower class ninjas. It is slowly unravelled that the two men are merely doing the dirty work for their superiors. Coming from a village with virtually no women, they have been forced to steal members of the opposite sex from neighbouring towns to allow for the continuation of their own people. Whilst the heads of the village are the only ones who get to enjoy the fruits of these crimes, the lower men are castrated at birth to prevent any sexual urges.

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Taken from Subtitled Online, published Fri Oct 7th 2011.