Review of Fist Of The North Star

Introduction

Based on the 80s Japanese comic, Fist of the North Star is one of those comics that you can see as animation, but would never see as film and with plenty of good reason. It`s extreme violence, brash silliness and macho characters are appropriate to a cartoon, but put this onto film and it takes on a different vibe altogether. Anime isn`t completely alien to the Hollywood shuffle as we`ve had Crying Freeman and City Hunter to name but two well-known comic to film ties. Perhaps it was just a matter of time before someone had to try Fist of the North Star. Gary Daniels (no relation to Paul) is Kenshiro, the Fist of the North Star. In the comic he has a 1-inch waistline coupled with the biggest arms and shoulders you`ve ever seen. He does this fantastically over the top move on a persons pressure points to completely destroy their bodies from the inside exploding with great force and a lot of blood.

After a war to end wars, Kenshiro is left to roam, looking for his lost love, Julia. It`s not a peaceful world as his archenemy, Shin, is hell bent on conquering the land. Ken is forced to fight Shin`s minions and ultimately face Shin himself.

Video

Presented with a 1.78:1 widescreen enhanced video transfer, Fist of the North Star looks fine except for the minute amount of grain just about being kept at bay. Colours look good, as does the level of detail; the film`s cinematography and production design are hardly demanding so it`s easy enough to keep this on the transfer. Apart from the aforementioned grain, I couldn`t spot any problems with the transfer.

Audio

The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack here is okay. Dialogue remains clear and focused from the centre while the other front speakers retain the rest of the sound effects and music. The stereo image is clear with some minor ambient sound creeping in from the rear. The soundtrack works fine for the film.

Features

Presented in the usual HKL style, Fist of the North Star has fullscreen animated menus and 2-discs! For what is essentially a mediocre title, Medusa have really gone to town on the extras.

Disc One:
• Audio commentary - Actor Gary Daniels (Ken) and `cult` director Ross Boyask provide a feature length commentary. Looking up Ross Boyask on IMDB is meaningless so I have no idea what qualifies him to do this commentary. As for the commentary itself, it`s not bad at all. Gary enjoys talking, which doesn`t mean he`s selfish as he imparts many interesting anecdotes and information on the film itself. He comes across as interesting and honest, once you get past his sycophantic bigging up of the other cast members.

Disc Two:
• North Star versus Southern Cross: The Making of Fist of the North Star (55:24) - Believe it or not this is good. It was made for Japanese television so is narrated in Japanese with English subtitles, but the non-Japanese cast and crew speak English. The narrator likes to go overboard and it`s hilarious listening to him as we go behind the scenes at the various locations. All 5 weeks of the production shoot are covered and this makes for interesting viewing.

• Animated Photo Gallery - 2-minutes worth of stills from the film, most of which star lead actor Gary Daniels in some macho pose. Tacky doesn`t come close to describing it.

• Trailers (widescreen enhanced) - Original Theatrical (1:44) and UK Promotional (1:55) trailers.

• Battle Plans (widescreen enhanced) (15:12) - Off-set and on-set rehearsal footage of various fight scenes. Once you`ve seen five minutes of this you`ve seen it all. It`s boring.

• Gory, Gory, Hallelujah! (widescreen enhanced) (13:51) - The title says it all; this is how they achieved the gory parts of the film using lots of prosthetics and fake blood. It`s interesting to watch at least once.

• Roving Eye (3:46) - Gary Daniels with a camcorder on the set filming behind the scenes. It`s interesting to see everyone so relaxed working on the set. Once you`ve seen it once however, that`s it.

• Art Imitating Life: An Interview with Gary Daniels (46:54) - I wasn`t sure what to expect from this, as it`s Gary just talking for 45-minutes on anything and everything. Surprisingly I enjoyed watching/hearing what he had to say as he comes across as a thoroughly nice chap; he talks about the film with its problems with Director Tony Randel without being mean spirited. He`s the complete opposite of how I expected him to be.

• Warrior in Motion (4:24) - Gary Daniels training for the camera. Lots of punch bag punching and sparring. Okay, so he`s more than capable, but why do I want to see this?

The film has English subtitles.

Conclusion

I could draw up a list of comparisons between this live-action film and the original anime, but that would be a bit unfair. As a film, Fist of the North Star is a disappointment. Period. Taking the core elements from the original stories translates fine to anime so it`s an incredible challenge moving this universe into film. The film`s story however suffers from being far too derivative of all too many straight-to-video films with no spark of originality in its execution.

Create a love triangle by installing the protagonist and the loss of the woman he loves to his archenemy. Enemy is seeking more power and oppresses people where he gets the chance. Hero, villain, love interest and the downtrodden...did I leave anything out? Simple stories like this are fine, but simple characters with simple dialogue show up all the lack of creative thought in the project.

When you watch the character Kenshiro (Gary Daniels) performing something lethal like hitting pressure points on his opponents, it`s laughable because it looks really silly and ineffective. The fighting choreography too leaves something to be desired. Director Tony Randel is better know for directing Hellraiser II and he was said to not really know what he was doing when making Fist of the North Star. He made a lot of decisions that affected the way the fighting was put together. This however doesn`t take away from the fact that the story is poor in the first place.

The acting and characters are one-dimensional and bland. Lead actor Gary Daniels` only qualification to play this part was his martial arts expertise; he was under contract with Overseas Film Group which just happened to obtain the rights to produce a live-action version of Fist of the North Star. Acting from the rest of the cast is pretty much the same, including Chris Penn. Malcolm McDowell has a very small part too but this really is the utterance of just a few lines.

Does a film this poor deserve the 2-disc treatment? I know it`s a subjective opinion, but I`m beginning to think that there`s a fan base out there for this. The only good things about this DVD set are the extra features, but that`s hardly the reason to see the film. Good video quality, reasonable sound and a good selection of extras for a below par film. This is definitely one for the fans only.