Originally created in 1983 as manga by Buronson and Tetsuo Hara and later adapted to anime a year later, “Fist of the North Star” follows Kenshiro in his journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
We, however, are not talking about the show. We’re tackling the 1995 live-action adaptation. I myself am not too aware of the source material but I’m going to guess it doesn’t compress the 40-some episodes that had been aired at the time.
Just like the original show, the movie follows Kenshiro, portrayed by Gary Daniels, traveling through a desolate land. The movie has him searching for both his father’s killer as well as the man who kidnapped his wife and master of the Southern Cross, a fighting style rivaling Kenshiro’s Fist of the North Star.
During his journey, he picks up a young Dante Bosco, who is teaching the people of his town how to fight the invading bandit gangs, and a little blind girl, whose blindness he cures through nonsensical means; she does nothing but scream, cry and get kidnapped.
This movie stars Malcolm McDowell, and it’s surprising that he’s in a direct-to-video, low-budget kung-fu movie. By this time, he’s been in the film industry for around 30 years and worked with such giants as Stanley Kubrick. The plot though, isn’t the focus. If you go to the Wikipedia article for the movie, it’s only two paragraphs when movies tend to be at least five. It’s the fighting.
“Fist of the North Star” is famous for the main character’s fighting style, which looks like he just pokes his opponent a bunch of times and then they explode. Now, for a 1995 straight-to-video kung-fu movie, it is ridiculous, and I mean that in the best possible way.
Personally, I think this is on the level of “Big Trouble in Little China” in terms of ridiculousness. As the characters wail on each other, they let out loud, Bruce Lee-like screams, and the aforementioned exploding heads. Leading up to the final fight, there’s a fight with Kenshiro destroying wave after wave of people guarding his enemy.
The final battle between Kenshiro and Shin, the man he’s been searching for, is pretty well-choreographed. Shin uses his special power to make the veins in Kenshiro’s arms explode in an attempt to kill him. But in regular, kung-fu movie fashion, he gets up and beats Shin into the ground.
One of the movie’s strong suits is definitely the practical effects. While this was a time where CGI was beginning to thrive, a budget of 6.5 million isn’t going to get you anything good.
The effects pretty much revolve around the fighting. The most crucial one, the exploding heads, is well done. While it does work, they never actually show the head exploding. It’s a little disappointing, but I’m guessing it wasn’t in the budget to add all that blood and grey matter flying out of someone’s head, or it would have done something to the rating of the movie.
When showed at the Bloomsburg Science Fiction Club meeting, it was pretty well received, not in a “so-bad-it’s-good” kind of way but rather just over-the-top, crazy fun.
If you’re looking for a faithful adaptation of the anime or manga, this isn’t for you. If that’s what you’re after, try watching the anime movie from 1986. Granted, not all anime movies do their source material justice.
In the end, I’d give it three exploding heads out of five. Look at it this way, it’s no “Fullmetal Alchemist” movie… That’s a whole other issue.
Screen giant Malcolm McDowell makes an appearanc in the live-action “Fist of the North Star.”
