Review for Ninja Battle

Introduction

Seiji Chiba has cornered the market in cheap and cheerful ninja action movies, and over the last year, they have been making their way to the UK en masse courtesy of Revolver Entertainment, who released Alien vs. Ninja, and MVM, who subsequently released Rogue Ninja, and Ninja Girl. It's MVM who now release this, Ninja Battle, a.k.a. Sengoku: Igo no Ran, if you're looking it up on IMDB. You'd think that one writer/director, low budgets, the same locations, and the same cast, and a similar emphasis on quality action, would limit the scope of what stories could be told. Surprisingly however, each film has offered something different, ranging from sci-fi parody to something a little more down to earth and grittier. Ninja Battle promises to be the cerebral ninja movie in Seiji Chiba's oeuvre.


It's 1851, and the battle between the rival Kouga and Iga ninja clans is coming to a head, as the Kouga ally with the forces of the warlord Oda Nobunaga to wipe out their traditional foes. With the Iga on the back foot, rumours are starting to fly that they have been betrayed by one of their own, and it's in this atmosphere of mistrust that three Iga ninja, searching for a fourth, instead find in a cave, the fourth ninja's corpse, and next to him, the bound, gagged, and blind-folded figure of a girl.


Her name is Sawa, and it turns out that she's a low ranking Kouga ninja, and she claims that she was forced by Yoshimori, the fourth ninja, to work as a traitor against her own clan, and that she was supposed to deliver information to him that could ensure the Iga's survival. But interrogating her, trying to divine just how Yoshimori was killed, proves to be more divisive than helpful for the captors, and just because she is bound and in custody, doesn't mean that Sawa isn't still lethal.

The Disc

Seiji Chiba's ninja movies aren't exactly brimming over with production values, shot digitally and with natural lighting, the image is usually indistinct and grainy, prone to ghosting and similar artefacts. But this particular release from MVM is the worst yet, as Ninja Battle only warrants a 1.85:1 letterbox transfer, with zoom unfriendly burnt in subtitles. Actually, I did find a 14:9 setting on my TV that gave me a little more image without losing the subtitles, but it's probably the least cinematic experience of any of the Seiji Chiba ninja films that I have yet seen. That said, at no point was the action obscured by this, and my interest in the story pretty quickly made me disregard the image quality. Audio is in DD 2.0 Japanese form and is perfectly acceptable. The only extra feature on this disc is the film's trailer.

Conclusion

Of all the Seiji Chiba ninja films that I have watched so far, I've been most glued to the screen for Ninja Battle. It's not that it's better than those other films; it's that it really is the cerebral ninja movie, the one that you have to pay attention to, the one that makes you think, presents you with a mystery and challenges you to unravel it. It's a pretty good mystery at that, and while the usual hi-octane action sequences are present and correct in Ninja Battle, this time it's the bits in between the action that are more compelling.


Once again, it's another short and sweet movie, running to just 65 minutes. The prologue text gives you just enough information to set the scene, so that when we meet the three Iga ninja we understand the tensions that strain between them, their entire clan on the back foot against the Kouga onslaught. When they find the cave and the Kouga girl, you can hear rifle shots in the background, as Nobunaga's forces hunt down the Iga. It soon becomes apparent that there is a power vacuum at the head of the Iga after some ambush or other, and the three represent various factions vying for power. Naturally they all want to deal with their Kouga prisoner in different ways, which gives her an opening to use against them.


What ensues is a battle of wits as she tries to pit the three ninja against each other, while they in turn try to uncover the truth of what happened in the cave, and how Yoshimori died. When it seems that Sawa was working with Yoshimori, it also becomes a priority to find the information that she was meant to give to him, but it also reveals the rifts and mistrust between the three Iga ninja, and the plots and schemes that are unfurling in the background. No one is as they seem in this particular story, and it makes watching the film an engrossing experience.


In terms of script, depth, and intelligence, this is the best film yet from Seiji Chiba, but that doesn't mean that it compromises on the action either. Unfortunately, the treatment that it receives on DVD doesn't do the film justice. It may be a matter of the source material, but in terms of grainy and indistinct imagery, this is the weakest of the films, a problem compounded by a letterbox transfer with subtitles that prevent zooming the film in to fill the entire screen.