From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a WATCH, REACT, and REVIEW for you.
Let’s watch Samurai Cop released in 2015.
Starring:
Mathew Karedas, Mark Frazer, Bai Ling
Directed by:
Gregory Hatanaka
Genre:
Action, Crime, Thriller
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
TV-14
Budget:
$1,500,000 (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
4.9
The Synopsis from IMDb:
In 1991 Joe Marshall and Frank Washington stop the Katana gang from leading the drug trade in Los Angeles.
It's 25 years later, the detectives team up again to investigate a series of assassinations, in a case they could never have imagined.
After a 24 year long cult following a Kickstarter to create a sequel to Samurai Cop was announced in 2014.
It was believed that the star of Samurai Cop, Matt Hannon had died, and a story was written without him. However, Matt Hannon actually changed his name to Mathew Karedas and it was a case of mistaken identity. Needless to say, he was asked to take up the mantle of his starring role and the rest as they say is history.
So let's see what Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance has in store for us.
20 minutes in
It starts out with Joe’s wife Jennifer, getting shot by a teenager and then we get a montage of clips from the original movie along with the opening credits. I love the techno dance music that plays in the background during the credits. I couldn’t help dancing to it.
The music is a big component in this I can tell, with a mix of music genres, but there is no score music that I can tell, which is the sign of a low budget movie.
The look of the film is very striking. The saturation is really tuned up. The levels aren’t quite right, but the footage depicting 1991 is perfect. It’s a very nice match to the original film.
Right away you can see that the acting is very stiff by nearly everyone except the veteran detectives, the dialogue is totally confusing, and the camera is zooming in every other second and putting key scenes totally out of frame. The film would have made a great low budget sci-fi movie as far as I can tell. It just doesn’t quite feel like the homemade mood of the original.
There's an action scene with two rival gangs, just as the original movie had and Frank Washington and his new partner is on the case.
Frank is led to Joe who is now a medallion maker. Frank convinces Joe to join him in searching for the Katana gang in hopes that he can take out his “deadly vengeance” for his wife’s murder.
We have two powerhouse players in this, Tommy Wiseau playing Lindt Kitano and Bai Ling, playing the chosen one, Dogge. These two are simply doing what they are known for and I am totally ok with that.
We get a scene in which Tommy destroys a room replicating a very famous scene from his own notorious cult classic, The Room released in 2003. The team up is a brilliant move since The Room and Samuari Cop are the top of the line when it comes to best worst movies ever made cult classics. Plan 9 From Outter Space is on that list and it is also referenced in the film.
1 hour in.
The cops get on a plane that is filled with various gang members and there's a big fight. So on the plane there is a girl in a black wig that looks like Joe’s deceased wife Jennifer by the name of Milena. Somehow, Joe ends up spending time with her and they become an item.
So far the film has an uncanny use of much of the old footage from the first film randomly spliced in. There are also a lot of moments where the characters reenact some of the very same comical facial expressions that they had in the first movie.
There are these trippy dream sequences and hallucinations that, again, randomly appear. Honestly, it’s beautiful. I love them. However, they make absolutely no sense in the story.
The police chief in the original film was recast, but he is replaced by a different character 45 minutes in the film, played by the legendary actor, Mel Novak, who I feel should have been there in the beginning.
To the end.
We have a beautiful green screen fight scene with a gatekeeper in slow motion with horrible cgi blood effects. Its delightful. I love the song that plays, “Manimal”. They played this song in the opening credits as well and it’s my favorite new song.
The last third of the film is where the film goes off the rails really.
There is a scene between Dogge and Joe. The way that the scene is played, is like these guys had a relationship or something and there were some flashbacks or dream sequences during their fight that just don’t make sense to be honest. It’s so weird because we see that Dogge is tearing up and there is some kind of emotional feeling there, but as the audience we just don’t know why or what is happening.
This is where the film diverts from being a parody of the original. There is a whole other movie in there that would have worked if the film had taken the route of being a reincarnation fantasy. That’s pretty juicy and would make sense of all of the fantasy hallucinations. But there is just not enough connective tissue to surprise us in that way.
And to put a cherry on top of the scene, the CGI sludge waterfall that is supposed to be blood coming out of Dogge’s body is the weirdest effect and this is all done on purpose I believe.
Going back to the topic of hallucinations in the film, Joe also has an imaginary relationship with someone by the name of Amber, who he is trying to get a map from. I couldn’t help but feel as if actors were promised parts in the film, but there was no place to actually put them in the story. I believe that is the reason there is so much confusion going on.
For example, actor and general funny man, Ralph Garman obtained the role as the bartender by donating to the Kickstarter tier that awarded a role in the film. He said that no script was provided or even information on what his role would be when he got to the set.
Then for the finale we have a mega showdown between Joe and Lindt Kitano and it’s not much of an action movie moment than a moment to give us more quintessential Tommy Wiseau. In fact the word “room” is inserted into the dialogue at random repeatedly. It's quite fun and it was amusing. Tommy’s performance was as interesting as his performance in The Room and it seems he suffered from similar memorization issues as all of his lines were fed to him off screen. And you can tell that the director who helms this film is getting a big kick out of showcasing Tommy-isms and holds his performance much longer than the camera would normally hold on an actor. You sense that Gregory Hatanaka is a big fan and wants to capture his essence.
The most important element of the scene is that we learn that Kitano was the boy who killed Joe’s wife in 1991. None of that made any sense for at least ten different reasons, but it was clear at this point that the film had lost its way when the Samurai Cop actually does not get to have his deadly vengeance because the person who is responsible for his wife’s death is left alive. Very interesting.
The version that I saw was not the original film, which had sensored all of the nudity and removed some of the more explicit scenes. I wonder how bad it could have been to have to do that.
The film was a decent parody sequel and homage to the first film. I have watched it a few times and it gets better the more I see it. First impressions is a little jarring though because the tone is so different from the first. Seeing it again, showed me the intentionality in some of the things that happened and I hope there will be a third one. Actually, I have some ideas for a third movie that I’ll pitch in at the end of this video. This will be my first time doing this so stay tuned for that.
Some would say that Samurai Cop could be forgiven for being an unintentional enigma because it’s director Amir Shervan made the film with little resources. However, this film was purposefully not trying to make a better film.
It was trying to celebrate the Samurai Cop’s misgivings and leaned into creating more of them to possibly create its own cult following over time. It may do just that. The film is creating infamy for being even more of a wild card than the original. In a way it’s kinda genius.
My Rating:
5.8
This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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