haoumaru
I am a huge fan of anime and manga, and my second fav genre is Chinese martial arts films. Over the years, I have watched hundreds of Chinese martial arts movies, and I've seen many good ones, but Mafia vs Ninja comes out on top.One of the things you gotta love in Chinese martial arts movies is their low budget, since it is the reason behind funny special effects. This is one of the funniest movies I have seen, I really enjoy it every time I see it. The movie is about the lives of Jack Doe and Charlie Wu, two sewage workers who want a better future, and luck is on their side. They later become bodyguards to William Chung, the wise and fatherly leader of the "good" mafia of Shanghai, by a mere stroke of luck, as I said. This "good" mafia protects the people of Shanghai and does nothing wrong, and they're the only thing that stops the Japanese from taking over the city. As always in Chinese film, the Japanese are the bad guys, and in this movie, they are a clan of drug-dealing Shinobi who also run whorehouses and gambling centers. Their goal is to kill Mr. Chung to be able to seize the city. They manage to kill him by hiring 4 deadly hit men, and Jack and Charlie vow to get their revenge.Then the movie shows how Jack and Charlie kill the hit men one by one, to avenge their fallen master. There are so many fun scenes in this movie, the action and laughing is non-stop. The special effects are typical for a Kung-Fu movie, you can see lots of editing cuts, the strings that hold the actors, dummies getting punched, funny fake blood and bruises, and the punch and kick sound fx we all love.The fights choreography is excellent and the action scenes are very good. The music is good and fits the scenes' mood accordingly. The characters are enjoyable, specially when you see their powers or their KungFu. KungFu is the center of the movie, and the Japanese have even their special version, the Ninja KungFu! The movie is dubbed in English, but it's Chinese voice actors speaking English! This results in an incredibly hilarious voice acting! You will never find better quotes or voices in another KungFu movie! "I'm gonna kill ya, bastard!!"Nothing in this movie is wasted, and though it is low-budget, it is an awesome film, every Chinese film fan I know love it, and I am no exception. It's my fav KungFu movie, I first saw it back in 1993 and taped it when I got the chance...but I lost it. It is so good, that I spent years searching it on the web and I finally found the home video on Ebay and bought it!There is so much fun in this movie, lots of great action scenes, great characters, incredibly funny voice acting, and a great storyline...Obviously, this is not Citizen Kane, but it is the best KungFu movie ever, and I really doubt there will ever be a better martial arts movie than Mafia vs Ninja. Fantastic and endlessly enjoyable.The best of the genre, unsurpassably good, 1000 out of 1000!
roy_ayres4
A friend of mine from college showed me this movie. He told me it was really bad, but not in my wildest dreams would I have thought it would be the way it came off as. Imagine every single cliche in a kung fu film and every terrible effect you've seen in a movie...it's all here!!! You know it's gonna be bad when the first two lines are: "My friend, what are you doing?", "If you really wanna know, I'm gonna kill you, bastard!" A technical mess for sure, but I haven't seen a movie that has entertained me as much as this one in a long time. If you like crap cinema, CHECK THIS ONE OUT!!!
Aka1-2
Usually there are those who enjoy bad horror movies and those that enjoy bad kung-fu movies and few movies can be enjoyed by both, but Mafia vs. Ninja is immensely watchable (and laughable) even if you are amongst those that believe America has enough trash without foolish video distributors importing more. The movie is so great because it takes the usual elements of the chop-suey genre and and makes them worse. For instance, the almost required anti-Japanese racism is present (the Chinese mafia are the good guys you see, sure they extort and allow gambling and prostitution, but they draw the line at opium unlike those godless Japanese mafia guys). But not only do we get the anti-Japanese racism, we are treated to special bonus stereo-types in the form of a special all bad guy assassination team , including a black man (guess what kind of hair he has) and an Italian (guess where he has a scar?). The movie's verve extends to the action where the normally unbelievable fight scenes are made even more so via film-reversals, insane editing, and (I kid you not) wires on jumping fighters and thrown knives. Then there are the contrived plot devices, I must admit my favorite part of the movie. Sure, other chop-suey movies might give you exploding fruit baskets (this one does), but can they claim to feature a hero who beats someone with a tree? Lots of flicks feature invisible ninjas... but what about ninjas that literally turn into bushes? I thought not. Mafia vs. Ninja could never be mistaken for a good movie, but it is a kind of bad that doesn't take someone versed in ninja films to laugh at or enjoy. And for God's sake people the American video release features a man with the name of Poon Hung prominently in the credits. I personally can't think of a better reason to see a film. (-3 stars out of - 5).
