Wow...I mean...wow
I've just got started watching this on Netflix. I'm only fifteen minutes in, but already wanted to come here and point out some things.
Ray gets a call from someone about Tetra imports. We don't hear what he is told, but it seems pretty routine. He leaves a message for Sho and goes to check it out--parking his shiny new convertible right out front. A henchman walks out and, even though it's an industrial area with few cars around, he does not notice the strange car with a guy doing a poor job of ducking down inside of it.
When Sho gets the message from Ray (after dinner with his girl), the partner only says he's checking in at Tetra and that he thinks it may be a local connection for a drug ring. He says he may need his help. Sho responds with tires squealing and parks right out front. You'd think they'd want to do it low key since they're just basically following up on a hunch at this point.
Sho gets out of his car and works the slide on his 1911 style .45. This is a single action gun, so the hammer should stay cocked, but it does not. More on this in a moment.
Sho goes into the building and ducks down when the guy in the red jacket walks by. Sho attacks the man and throws him into the vat of boiling water. Remember that they are just following up on a tip at this point--why has Sho just assassinated this man? He may or may not have been holding a gun (hard to tell for sure), but still.
Sho then proceeds to engage several henchmen with the aforementioned uncocked single action gun. He shoots until the gun is empty. We know the gun is empty since he pulls the trigger twice and it clicks both times. First, on a semi-automatic handgun, the slide would lock back once it was empty. Second, a single action gun works by taking the force of the bullet firing and using that energy to work the slide (every action has equal and opposite reaction). If you pulled the trigger on an empty single action gun and the hammer fell, it would click once, but there would be no action to cock the hammer again. Pulling the trigger again would do nothing at all.
Once Sho realizes his gun is empty, he dispatches that henchman with a throwing star. He then proceeds to clear the rest of the warehouse with this empty gun--continuing to point it at things as though it is loaded. Granted, he could be hoping to make the henchmen think the gun is still loaded, but none of them so far seemed concerned when they KNEW it was loaded.
Ok. Back to the movie.
I did not realize I'd be back this soon, so I'll edit this post.
Sho makes it to Ray, who dies in his arms. The drug lord takes advantage of this tender moment and locks them both into the room. He then proceeds to have his henchmen pour gasoline throughout the warehouse, and he throws in a match. We see the warehouse explode. It seems a bit extreme to kill one guy by blowing up your entire warehouse and all it's contents (a bit like trying to kill a fly by crashing your car into a tree), but each to his own.
After the warehouse blows up, we cut to a scene of firefighters putting out the fire. A couple of firemen go into the room were we last saw Sho. As they are leaving, saying there is no one in the room, the camera pans to the ashes in a fire pit. As we hear the firefighters walking away, we see Sho emerge from the ashes where he had been hiding. The only reason I could come up with for why he was hiding was so the drug lord would think he was dead, but that later turns out not to be the case. Even if he was, why in the fire pit? The drug lord was just heating a fire poker in this very pit to torture Ray. How is it now cool enough that Sho can hide under the ashes?
Sho quits the force and goes to Argentina to find Ray's killer. Someone promptly tries to kill Sho's girlfriend, but Sho manages to save her. I know they do things a little different in other countries, but it still seems like if you threw someone off a balcony onto a crowded street in front of a fancy hotel, some authority figure would come along and ask some questions.
Sho realizes it's too dangerous to have his girlfriend along while chasing murderous drug lords, so he loads her on a plane and sends her away. We see her get on the plane and taxi away, then later see footage of the plane flying by. They are clearly two different planes.
Sho goes to the Rova Exports warehouse and, after taking out a bunch random henchmen, confirms it is a front for drug sales. He fights the mustached guy who seems to be in charge. The mustached guy tries to flee and, along the way, assigns henchmen to try to stop Sho. One of them, the black guy in the mustard colored jacket, attacks Sho by standing there with his arms down. Maybe he thought he could take out Sho by letting him kick him and hope Sho's foot breaks.
The above fight scene ends with the mustached guy running out of the warehouse as at least two police cars pull up with sirens blaring. The take him into custody at gunpoint. Who called the police? Certainly not the drug henchmen. Why did they arrest the mustache guy? Why only him? We see them just load him up and drive away--no search of the building or anything else. We see Sho hiding a short distance away, but he does not speak to the cops, so it doesn't seem like he called them.
The drug lord and another person have a conversation about how the mustached guy has been arrested. They agree they can't risk him talking, so they send some ninja to kill him. We then cut to Sho standing watching a jail from a distance. It them cuts to the inside of the jail and we see Sho is being escorted to a cell--just a few cells down from the mustached guy. What? Why is Sho in jail? As soon as he in placed in his cell, he pulls out a large metal pick and starts picking the lock. Just then the ninja rappel in, kill a guard, kill the mustache guy, and a fight ensues with Sho. He kills one and tries to question the other, but he apparently takes a suicide pill. Sho hears the someone coming. The guards come to the cell block to find everything normal and Sho in his cell. What happened to the ninja? What happened to the guard? What happened to the mustache guy? The following morning, they get Sho out of his cell and some military looking guys take him to the US Embassy. No explanation is ever given for how or why he got into jail other than that he was "hiding himself" there. Hiding from what?
At the embassy, he meets with his former boss who appeals to his sense of Japanese honor to get him to recover a disc in the possession of his other partner, Coleman, who has been captured. Why not just appeal to his sense of wanting to rescue his girlfriend, who was captured with Coleman?
Of course, Sho takes the mission. He's dropped into the jungle with crossbow and an assortment of ninja weapons. A crossbow is nice, but I think I would have liked a rifle of some sort. At times, we see Coleman and Sho's girlfriend--who have escaped from their captors into the jungle. The girlfriend's beige skirt suit looks very clean for someone who has essentially escaped from a jungle prison. As Sho makes his way through the jungle, he throws a light rope with a grappling hook on a ledge to help him climb a cliff. Halfway up the cliff, the light rope turns into doubled-up half-inch climbing rope.
Unfortunately for Coleman, he and Sho's girlfriend are captured by the drug lord. They tie him to a tree torture him to death while Sho is busy stickfighting with some of the lesser henchmen--the ones they apparently don't give guns to. While the drug lord is admiring Coleman's shirtless body, he sees the disc tucked into his waistband. Odd that he did not see this during the torture process. Sho arrives just as the drug lord is turning his attention towards Sho's girlfriend--whose skirt suit is still looking crisp. We are treated to a slow motion fight scene with Sho and the drug lord throwing punches that are obviously designed not to make contact with anyone. The fight ends with the drug lord defeated and his body floating down the river.
Sho contacts the embassy and they send someone to get him. Shockingly, it was a double-cross and a helicopter full of camouflaged ninja are sent to finish the job. Just after the ninja get out of the helicopter, and pose in the standard diamond formation that they teach in ninja school, we see a shot of Sho running through the camp. A movie crewman wearing blue jeans and a blue shirt can be seen in the background.
Sho defeats all the ninja and takes the helicopter. He is radioed instructions to fly to an abandoned warehouse to deliver the disc. although I'm not sure how he heard this as he is not wearing headphones. As he lands the helicopter, another crewman or extra can be seen peeking around a corner. He tells his girlfriend to stay at the helicopter as he senses it is another trap. If he knew it was a trap, why did he agree to go there? Why not fly somewhere else where he felt safe? It's not like they have something he wants.
Sho was right, it was a trap. He ends up fighting a bunch of guys with rifles and grenades. Twice during this scene, we get to see Sho shoot rifles until they are empty. How do we know they're empty? Sho pulls the trigger two times and they click both times (see paragraph six). He kills all of them before, in a shocking twist, we see the drug lord did not die after all. He is bloody and his clothes are torn, but he survived and somehow made it to this warehouse. How did he get here? It's not in the jungle. Sho flew in a helicopter, so it seems like it was too far to walk. If someone picked him up and brought him here, why not give him a change of clothes at least?
My rating? I give it five out of five stars. I loved this movie!
I'm aware that it's just a movie. There's no need to remind me.