One rainy night in the Edo period, Kotono (a geisha) confronts samurais who killed her father. The samurais attack her one after another, but she fights hard against samurais with her sword. Kotono tries to chase the samurais who scramble to escape. Yet now three ninjas stand up against her. Kotono drops her sword by their wave of assaults. Can she beat them?
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Sorry, this movie sucks
One of my all time favorites.
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Geisha vs Ninjas, or Geisha Assassin as it's known outside of Japan and the USA, is a fresh, exciting example of how to make an exciting martial arts B Movie. It's fast paced, exciting, and it has a constant flow of action and quick progression from one sequence to another.It takes the martial arts B movie back to basics, assumes rightly that 90% of it's audience will be far less interested in authenticity than they are in seeing some exciting throwdowns, and provides a constant stream of exciting, energetic and refreshingly brutal fight scenes, with a simple but effective story briskly clipping along with them.There've been two main points made against the flick whenever I read it reviewed, both of which I think are accurate points but also kind of pedantic and moot.First is about martial arts authenticity. Martial arts geeks have been hasty to point out that the movie is preposterous and historically inaccurate. I'm going to tackle this head on. Geisha vs Ninjas is quite obviously coming from a comic book fantasy angle, and as someone who knows of and understands the principles of various martial arts but also knows that while the professional martial arts performed in a lot of recent movies is excellent and top notch, it makes for incredibly dull, grounded fight scenes. This movie is aimed at people who want to see a full on kicking of many butts like in the comics they read as a kid, not an expert display of dry martial skill like they see in a dojo. If you're going to get sniffy about whether a 5'2 girl can outfight a 6'1 monk with her bare hands or the fact that a ninja pulls down her mask to talk during a fight, you need to go buy Redbelt or Throwdown or something, this is not the movie for you. If you bought or rented a movie called Geisha vs Ninjas and expected authenticity, you are an idiot.Second is about the technical quality of the film. This is a very fair point. The film is shot on HD video, not film stock. It's directed by Go Ohara, who was responsible for action direction in Versus and the entirety of the direction of Death Trance. The visual of the movie is much like Versus, with it shot on cheap video, but with excellent direction and shot choice. Also pace is maintained throughout, with precious little time wasted or spent philosophising. If you dislike watching movies with very low production values, you'd be better off to watch Death Trance as that is a high budget film, funded by the Japanese/American Fever Dreams production company. The video stock and recording of the film is, in the slower sections, a little distracting. Most of the blacks are in fact low greys, and on my copy seemed to flicker somewhat. Also the frame rate of the movie doesn't seem quite right, with the non-fight sequences seemingly shot at a slower than natural frame rate. However, the counter-argument to this obvious but inobtrusive lack of funds and equipment is that where a lot of movies have tons of equipment and money but squander it, Geisha vs Ninjas is pushing the limits of what you can do with crappy gear and a few locations by making sure direction, action and concepts are in as high gear as humanly possible.So to summarise the film, yes, it is doubtlessly inaccurate to it's period, yes it is shot on very little money on cheap gear and it shows, but at the end of the day, if you stop looking for problems and concentrate on the actual movie, it's a rip-roaring, brutal, fight-centric revenge thriller with a great female lead, fantastic action direction and some great locations.
The Fight choreography is really the top of the bill! Like the very best Hong Kong style choreography (Jet Li For Example), Anyway a lot better then Hollywood (more holly than wood). The film was very entertaining, For example the freeze-frame with 4 fighting: geisha against ninja's: re-action after a few seconds: really fantastic! (I gave the whole film 9 out of 10!) The story is OK. Original stories are difficult to find, everything has been done by now... First film that looks and feels like Geisha vs Ninja comes to mind is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Of course because of the female fighting and the shaolin-style (I know, it's the wrong country): i mean the semi sorcerer fight-style. Jumps from 20 yards, from treetop to treetop... It was really entertaining!!!! DarkMax From Singapore has a point: Some of the mistakes like the Geisha-walking, the katana (See Zatoichi (Shintaro Katsu!) about concealed sword in bamboo!), and others were very obvious mistakes, but if you are looking for mistakes in a movie, you'll always find some/a lot!!
The film has been decried by some viewers because the feats of strength attributed to a mere girl are impossible, particularly after she has been injured. That would put down thousands of action films in which the main character is a man, too. The film is declared a fake, because the script has the heroine fighting a number of opponents in succession - count them: 2 Ronin, 4 Ninjas, 1 Monk, 1 Assassin, 1 Priest, 4 Demons, 1 Samurai, 1 Young Ronin = 15. The same happens in most action films, and if it does not, then it's because they do not have enough money to pay as many expendable characters; in the best action movies the hero or heroine is supposed to kill hundreds or even thousands of opponents, and survive with less physical damage than our Geisha here, and they are usually acclaimed just for that. The ninja style bout is a bore, with fake action like jumping to the sky, sliding ten meters over an uneven ground, and so on. True, but that would be inescapable due to the fact the film is an Eastern, and with Ninja in the title. According to the film genre, such scenes are mandatory, though lacking credibility in a rational analysis. The same happens with American or European Westerns in which the colts fire dozens of deadly bullets without being re-charged... and most get good reviews. The Geisha fights a Monk who is larger and stronger, and she defeated him by her strength, which is another fake. This blame is not true. The Geisha shows stamina equal to the taller, stronger enemy, and defeats him with a clever and unexpected wrestling hold, a figure-four headlock applied with her thighs – the most powerful limbs in an athletic woman wrestler – and takes his breath, and almost breaks his neck with it. Then, as he his still unable to defend himself, she finishes him with a karate punch to the Adam's apple. (I find this quite believable. Kids of all ages: please do not try this blow at home!) The film is a chanbara, and one should appreciate the music of the tinkling blades together, and the contrast they establish with the opening soft music in a temple where the grown-up Geisha is dancing - a choreography that she had perfecting as a child, even against the will of her beloved father...Are Western reviewers so much into computers that they became incapable of understanding a story told as a fairytale about a girl's quest for her father's killer, and her family's sword? I'm not so much in love with this film to the point of rating it 10, but I understand the people who did that. Very nice cinematography and eventually a better film than what we're seeing editing down to 78m32s and without a good translation. I saw it in a language I do not speak, and even so I liked it, and got the main points of the story. That speaks high of Go Ohara, the director and screenplay writer.
I need to preface this by saying i love cheesy kung fu movies especially from back in the day (Shaolin vs. Manchu is a classic). I also wasn't expecting a good plot, acting, script, filming or effects, but this is just ridiculous. I have never seen a worse movie in my life (check my movies I've seen a lot)Everything is awful and the fight scenes just don't make sense. You can have someone in an arm bar for example and then there's a quick cut scene and the other person is 30 meters away from them. Its just unenjoyable. Most great cheesy kung fu movies were great because of the era they were created in. The movie fan has changed a lot and this just doesn't work. The fight scenes just don't make sense. Watch until about 25 min in and see if im wrong. You want to watch a movie for fighting where the story is secondary? Watch any Tony Jaa film or go to best buy and pick up a 10 pack of old kung fu flicks for 30 bucks. All copies of this should be burned. oh yeah and this is the only movie I've given a 1 to