6.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
When a priceless jewel owned by rich heiress Sabine is stolen, along with her daughter, Professional thief Ryuichi Koga and his gang are hired to retrieve both. At a ransom exchange, the team saves the girl but loses the money and the jewel. When Sabine decides to deal directly with the thieves and obtains the jewel on her own by paying the ransom, Koga, having been stiffed of his fee by Sabine, steals the jewel. Little does he know, it's a fake. Now, Koga and the team must break into a high security bank to steal the real jewel.
Starring: Shin'ichi Chiba, Eiji Gô, Ryô Ikebe, Tetsurô Tanba, Makoto Satô (I)Martial arts | 100% |
Crime | 34% |
Action | 9% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Japanese: LPCM Mono
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of Arrow Video's The Executioner Collection.
In one of the supplements Arrow Video has aggregated for its Sonny Chiba double feature of Executioner films, commentators Chris
Poggiali
and Marc Walkow mention that the first time ninjas appeared in a Western feature film was in the 1967 James Bond opus You Only Live Twice, but the popularity of that film may have been at least
partially responsible for the glut of ninjas characters who would soon start populating global cinema. Some of those films may have contributed to
star Sonny
Chiba's own popularity, though that said, it would probably be hard to try to stuff either Executioner film neatly into a "ninja pigeonhole",
though Chiba's character of Ryūichi Koga does supposedly have that kind of training.
Poggiali, Walkow and some other talking heads in various
supplements also get into the mad dash to find the "next Bruce Lee" after Lee so unexpectedly and tragically died at such a young age, and that
while
there were any number of "pretenders", including another kinda sorta mini-glut, this time of performers with supposedly similar names,
according
to some of these analysts Sonny
Chiba
might arguably be considered as the true heir to the Lee legacy. Kind of interestingly in that regard, and at least in terms of mass recognition by
audiences, Chiba's first successes were in television, at least a bit like Lee for American audiences in particular vis a vis the short-lived
television
adaptation of The Green Hornet. Chiba had the same kind of clean
cut
good looks that Lee also offered, but he had a somewhat more feral, menacing presence at times that allowed him to play anti-heroes as often as
stalwart straight and narrow types. Both of the Executioner films exploit not just Chiba's remarkable athleticism in any number of martial
arts related scenes,
but they also rely on the tried and true trope of a band of quasi-mercenaries, some with questionable pasts, working together, in a plot device that
may remind those on this side of the pond of everything from The
Dirty Dozen to The
Expendables
.
The Executioner II: Karate Inferno is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Arrow's insert booklet lumps the two films together in its verbiage about the transfers:
The Executioner and The Executioner II: Karate Inferno are presented in their original 2.35:1 aspect ratio with mono sound. The high definition masters were produced and supplied by Toei from the best available archival materials, with additional grading and picture restoration by Arrow Films at R3Store Studios.If this sequel can't quite muster the same élan as the first film, for better or worse this film's transfer probably outshines the first film. The palette is more robust and more consistently natural looking here, without the skew towards brown I mention can attend some of the first film's presentation. There are still some very minor variances in color temperature, and some of the interior scenes in particular don't offer the same pop. As mentioned above, this film utilizes clips from the first film, and I'd argue even some of those look at least marginally better here than they do in the "complete" transfer of the first film, for whatever reason. Detail levels are typically very good to excellent, and grain resolution encounters no hurdles.
The English dubbed monoaural soundtrack for The Executioner, originally produced by Minotaur Productions Inc. for the film's US theatrical release in 1978, has been conformed to the uncut Japanese version for this release by Matt Jarman at Bad Princess Productions using two archive masters, courtesy of Televentures Corporation.
The Executioner II: Karate Inferno features LPCM Mono audio in the original Japanese (there is no English dub for this film on this disc, as is the case for the first Executioner film). This is a nicely energetic sounding track that benefits from the groovaliciously funky score by Hajime Kaburagi, which sounds great throughout. Dialogue and effects are also rendered without any problems. Optional English subtitles are available.
Arrow has packaged both of the Executioner films on one disc with the following supplements:
- The Executioner (Japanese Version) (HD; 2:40)
- The Executioner (English Version) (HD; 1:53)
- The Executioner II: Karate Inferno (HD; 2:25)
- The Executioner Image Gallery (HD)
- Karate Inferno Image Gallery (HD)
Toei evidently didn't subscribe to "absence makes the heart grow fonder", and probably tried to get this follow up out to audiences as quickly as possible, and the result is a pretty significant drop in consistency from the first film. This second outing does have some totally goofy comedy, and it may in fact appeal to some courtesy of that very fact. Technical merits are solid and the supplements very enjoyable, for anyone who may be considering making a purchase.
(Still not reliable for this title)
1974
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Satsujin ken 2 / 殺人拳2
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2014
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1986