robertbhart

For people who have become sick of trying to find anything new to watch on cable TV recently or gotten board waiting 3 weeks in between episodes, it may be time to broaden your horizons with some of the amazing shows made by other countries.

I watched The kingdom of the Winds (I am sure the title sounded better in its original language) on Drama Fever recently. Drama Fever brings top TV shows from around the world but mainly ones that are translated from Korean or Spanish. There are tons of gems on there and this is one of them. Korean TV has a huge and growing fan base around the world and with good reason, it's awesome!

The Kingdom of the Winds follows the story of one of the great kings from one of the countries in what eventually became Korea. It starts from when he was abandoned as a baby (because of a dire prophecy about what he would do when he grew up), to when he had finally overcome the considerable odds to become a great king and takes over a bunch of other countries.

Many of the shows that focus on early Korean history, are about the desire of the king to unify all of Korea. Like many countries, Korea used to be made up of a bunch of smaller kingdoms, which meant they all lived with the threat of being taken over by one of the other countries. The king who eventually unifies the country, would be remembered for a thousand years and let his people live in safety. A nice idea, except they all had that idea, so they seemed to live in perpetual war.

This show is set in the early part of Korean history, fairly close to the time when the Romans were nailing a bloke called Jesus to wooden cross elsewhere in the world. This is a time when wars were waged with swords and arrows, which makes for great action sequences and fun TV.

For the first half of the series, the shows star doesn't even know he is a prince, which gives him the opportunity to join the army as a regular soldier, learn to be a ninja and pick up loads of loyal lowly friends, who go on to become his loyal subjects when the truth about his identity is discovered.

Slight rewind, yes, I said ninja. That term we use for men wearing cool suits, with martial arts skills we envy, doing secret nighttime missions in black masks. It seems that Koreans have their own version, as it is not the first Korean show I have seen which features them. In this show, they don't specifically refer to them as ninjas, but they look and act like them. Their secret group is called "the black shadows", which sounds like the name of a ninja clan too. They are trained to posses super human fighting skills and they conduct missions at night wearing all black, with face masks. This ninja-like group features heavily all the way through the series. They belong to an enemy country and the star of the show is captured by them. After they have tortured him for a while, he ends up joining them for a bit. In fact, just long enough to learn their fighting skills, before seeing the error of his ways and taking his new skills back home.

His ninja skills makes him a compelling option to become crown prince in his home country. The perfect hero of the people - a royal prince, but one who is in touch with the common man, has experienced battle from the front line and has led a hard life, which gives him a level of resolve that eludes his girlie little brother.

At first, his dad (the current king), doesn't know who he is. When his identity is discovered, he won't accept him (due to the prophecy about his future). Eventually, he wins him and everyone else over with his valiant acts and is proclaimed crown prince.

Once the star has become king, the enemy continues to send its ninja-like black shadows to try an assassinate him or kidnap his girlfriend (who happens to be an enemy princess). Having a history of being a black shadow himself, who better than our king to come up with a strategy to stop them?

Like most of the Korean dramas I have watched, this show is great because of the variety of interesting characters, their complicated love interests, friendships and betrayals etc. They really take the time to develop each roll to the point where you feel like you know them.

I have tried to be a little vague on the story as I don't want to ruin it for anyone and I don't like reviews where people try to write the book of the movie. All we really want to know from a review, is, should I watch it or not? The answer here is yes, for fans of actions movies, anything to do with martial arts or ninjas and fans of drama or history.

It is also a good one to watch with the Mrs, as it satisfies our craving for action, and gives them the drama and love story that they need to stay interested. The action sequences are cool but not too gruesome,

Now, for those of you who are afraid of subtitles and say things like "I can't be bothered to read now, I just want to relax", stop being lazy! You are missing out on loads of amazing shows. You get used to subtitles after a while and it is really no problem. Haven't you ever read a book and found it relaxing?

This movie has most of the ingredients that a person would want from a ninja movie. It has decent action, cool weapons and characters with appropriately super-human skills.

Like many ninja movies, it falls short and is ultimately good but not great. It feels rushed and there is only limited depth to the story and characters. Not a lot happens between the main character's grueling training as a child and the end of the story.

Also, the main guy is an ex-ninja, not a ninja. This seems to be a movie trend in the last 5- 7 years. Batman has gotten old, so he has to retire. Latest James Bond movie - he is old and at the end of his career. Superman got tired of us and left the planet. Now, Ninjas have become disillusioned with their career choice and instead of spending time doing ninja stuff in the movie, they focus on ending their clans activities.

I may be alone, but when I go and see a Batman movie, I want to see Batman, in his prime, doing Batman stuff. I don't want to see old injured Batman who needs to get rescued by his girlfriend before he retires. I would also like to see a ninja movie where the ninja is still a ninja, not a retired ninja who is full of remorse about being a ninja.

Ninja Assassin will keep fans of action movies entertained for a while, but the spot for a truly great ninja movie benchmark, remains open.

People who feel nostalgic about older ninja movies from the 80's, should watch them again before comparing. Most of them are terrible, with poor acting and guys running around in pajamas. Ninja Assassin is considerably better than anything from that decade, but that is not hard.

If you are looking for a slightly better Ninja movie, try Goemon. It has the best action sequences of any ninja movie. It has many of the same problems as Ninja Assassin, but it is a much better movie overall. It is also set in the correct time period for ninjas. Perhaps showing ninjas in a modern setting, as Ninja Assassin does, is part of the problem. In an age of guns, assassins with swords and throwing stars can seem a little silly.

For me, a great ninja movie would have to be set in Japan, in the correct time and focus on telling the story of a real ninja. I would like him to be an active Ninja who is not considering a career change and, for gods sake, one who is not wrestling with feelings of remorse about his past ninja activities. That story has been done to death and was never particularly interesting in the first place. Ninjas were the special ops of their day. They followed orders and had no reason to feel remorse about burning down the enemies castle.

Ninja Assassin gets a 6/10 for me because it had cool action sequences. Fans of the genre should check it out, in the absence of many great alternatives. It is disappointing that they couldn't achieve more with such cool subject matter.

I loved this movie but I couldn't even begin to explain why. On paper it is terrible. The movie is made with bits of footage from other movies. It's dubbed. The story line is basic and irrelevant to why I like the movie. Not a great start and yet, once I started watching it, I couldn't stop.

I used to listen to Wu Tang CDs when I was a kid and the Genius GZA album Liquid swords borrows a bunch of lines from this movie. I always thought they were cool but I didn't know they came from this movie.

The part that is hard to explain, is that my wife, who doesn't like martial arts flicks or gore, also liked this movie.

This isn't the kind of movie that you see by accident on TV. You'll probably have to buy it on DVD to see it. I waited for it to be on Netflix but eventually gave up and ordered a copy for $10.

I'm glad I did. This movie inspired other movie makers and despite its age, it is very cool from start to finish. I promise you won't get bored. People talk about how the footage from taken from other movies but it is the new sound track that is added that makes it special and deserving of being judged as a movie in its own right.

It ends very suddenly and I wasn't 100% satisfied with where they left it but in general, its and entertaining experience that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to movie fans. In a world where it is hard to find something different, sometimes you have to look to the past to find something new.