I must confess that I prefer my martial arts movies sans wirework but there are exceptions, Iron Monkey and Once Upon a Time in China are two that spring to mind. Sadly Ninja in the Dragon’s Den isn’t going to be joining that list.
Things don’t get off to a good start, with the opening credits featuring some synchronised ninjitsu to a very eighties ninja song. Clearly we weren’t going to see scary killer ninjas here, what we get instead is an action comedy with a somewhat uneven tone.
The problem with Honk Kong comedies is that the humour doesn’t always translate, or when it does it’s often too broad and unsophisticated for a western audience. Most feature a goofball character who’s there as a comedy fall guy, Ninja in the Dragon’s Den has one of these and he’s as funny as such characters usually are , which is to say not very funny at all.
If most of the comedy misses the mark at least the action is well choreographed and inventively filmed. It suffers though from the uneven tone of the film, switching from slapstick comedy to one of the heroes violently garrotting a lead bad guy in the space of a couple of minutes, and it doesn’t help that the reason for this switch turns out to be a hoax.
The plot contrivance that pits the two heroes against each other at the end is the oft used “misunderstanding” that gets resolved in time for them to unite for a showdown with an evil bad guy and his band of men. That neither of the leads has much in the way of screen charisma means it’s hard to care if they win, in fact I was actively hoping one of them (Conan Lee) would get taken down a peg or two before the credits rolled.
Some good action scenes are outweighed by silly comic moments and an overly sentimental story. In the films favour is its portrayal of a Japanese character as a hero, although that probably had more to do with Ninjas being hot at the box office in the ‘80s than anything else.
