Fist of the North Star (1996)

Excellent adaptation.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This film is not like the 1986 Anime version at all, even though it clams it is a remake. It's quite bad really and nobody's head explodes in this thing. It's not worth watching and the acting is quite bad, If you want a real film, watch the 1986 version instead not this trash.I give Fist of the North Star a 3/10

So you probably already figured out by the score that I thought this was terrible. Where should I start hmm ? Well how about first off the complete lack of staying true to the Manga or even the severely condensed animated OVA. There were so many things that didn't and couldn't have possibly made sense, like for example the scene when me shirk is fighting zombies hmmm let me think for a second..... Zombies .... No definitely don't remember that happening. Then there's shin killing Ryuken hmmmm.... Wow wasn't there someone really important to the overall storyline that actually killed him lol yeh that's right RAOH !!!!!!! He was only the most insane bad ass in the entire frigging manga and anime series, but instead he's shot by a gun ....... By shin ...... WTF. Well next Rin was it actually blind she was mute you freaking moronic director and beyond popular belief swinging your arms around like your prancing to a Christmas jingle while making your own fast punching sound effects does not actually make it look like your fists are moving faster then they actually are, you just look like someone freaking out on an acid trip. Last but not least I think in the very least the only reason for me anyways that this movie was watchable was because i personally saw Ben stiller from specifically zoo lander in the facial expressions that Gary Daniels had occupying his face the entire movie, don't believe me ? Watch the scene about 20 minutes in when "Kenshiro" heals Rins blindness c'mon that is so Ben stiller. Only difference well Ben is trying to be funny and succeeds, Gary well I'm going to go out on a limb and say he was totally serious and trying too hard. Well this was fun, you know writing the review not watching the movie, well accept for zoo lander oops I mean Kenshiro faces lol.

This was a pretty lame effort to stay faithful to the original if you ask me (if that is even what they were going for); whoever said it was loyal to it's source doesn't know what they are talking about. Mind you, the cartoon movie was quite a hash up itself compared to the series (or comic!) and can be hard to follow if you don't already know the story, so if that's all they decided to go on then you can't really blame them too much. Compared to the original story, though, I have to say that the characters were all weak; the bad thug guys don't look mean enough (but they sure were ugly enough!); the main characters are not tough (ahem,super- human?) enough; the kung fu is not ridiculous (or, oxymoronically, believable) enough; Julia is not beautiful enough and to top it off, I'd have to say that Kenshirou's master Ryuuken is not really "zen" (or bald) enough either (and what's with that weird zombie scene?!). All that said and adaptation-shmadaptation aside......the fight scenes still sucked, the directing was bad, and the acting worse... I'm reeaaally sorry, but you should probably just watch something else!!

I was really disappointed with this film. I saw it back in 1996 on the Sci-Fi channel and remembered it being not half-bad. Upon watching it again, I found it to lack many things. I never watched the Anime or read the comics because I am just not into that stuff, but, from what I have read about it, the Anime sounds like it wipes the floor with this poor production.Kenshiro is the hero of the story played by Gary Daniels for some reason. It's funny, I thought Kenshiro was suppose to be Asian, but whatever. Lord Shin, the lead bad guy also played by an American, kidnaps Kenshiro's girl Juliet and leaves Kenshiro for dead after brutally injuring him. What you think would be a classic good vs. evil story gets very boring as nothing happens until the end, and at that point you have already lost interest.I had thought this movie was going to be extremely violent due to the fact that the Anime is suppose to be viciously violent, but, this movie lacks any real action or violence, minus about 3 or 4 scenes. Instead, what we have is a movie that feels like the end of a really bad Trilogy that doesn't exist. Perhaps, if the movie were cast better and had a decent script it would have worked better. And Tony Randel as director was very disappointing considering this is the same guy that directed Hellraiser 2 (one of my all time favorite films).The only plus side of this movie was a pretty decent soundtrack and Chris Penn. The soundtrack was very good considering the movie was very boring. Chris Penn did a cool job with his character and was probably the only real highlight of the film.I guess I need to watch the Anime, even if I don't really like Anime. I would suggest staying away from this movie only if you really like Gary Daniels. 4/10