After my last debacle trying to enjoy a ninja movie, I was determined not to make the same mistake twice. I was going to go with Mr 80's Ninja himself, Sho Kosugi. I was going to go with Pray for Death.
Sadly, these are the times that try men's souls, so long as those men are ones who like watching ninja movies.
My new rule is to only watch ninja movies made by Cannon Films, with very few exceptions. Kosugi's films with Cannon were a master class in ridiculousness - see here for proof. Pray for Death, however, comes from Trans World Entertainment, and I'm afraid they don't have Cannon's high standards.
The plot is fairly standard ninja stuff. Kosugi moves his family to America to start a restaurant, gets involved with a crime boss who targets his family, and proceeds to kick ass.
To be fair, Pray for Death does contain snippets of awesomeness, like a climactic chainsaw fight, but these are backloaded onto the second half of the film. The first half is mainly useless exposition, and I don't just mean that in the sense of that it takes up time setting up character development when all we really want to see is Kosugi slashing guys with a sword. I mean that, for example, there's a flashback at the beginning where Kosugi kills a ninja who tried to steal gold from his temple, but the ninja turns out to be his brother... and it's NEVER BROUGHT UP AGAIN.
Pray for Death is on Hulu. If you have some time to kill and want to bask in 80's ninja cheese, skip to the halfway point and start from there. Otherwise, I'd advise working your way alphabetically through the Cannon ninja filmography.
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