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A low budget martial arts movie that never came close to seeing the inside of a theater hardly sounds like the sort of project that would arrive bathed in the warm glow of critical acclaim, especially when it’s a sequel bearing an incredibly cheesy and on-the-nose title that doesn’t make much sense if you think about it too hard.
And yet, VOD veteran filmmaker Isaac Florentine’s Ninja: Shadow of a Tear boasts a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, despite everything about it outlining a generic ass-kicker. Almost a decade after first capturing the imagination of genre fans everywhere back in 2013, the Scott Adkins vehicle has unexpectedly become a huge success on streaming.
As per FlixPatrol, Shadow of a Tear is not that far away from entering Prime Video’s global Top 20 most-watched list, which would be an impressive achievement for such an under-the-radar actioner. As you’d expect, the plot is pure hokum, following the standard “hero’s wife has been murdered, everyone must die as a result” template we’ve seen a thousand times before.
However, the set pieces are where Ninja 2 really sings, with Florentine belying his lack of funds by staging an intensely hard-hitting string of hand-to-hand battles, ably assisted by Adkins on top form doing what he does best; namely, glowering and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.
It isn’t high art or classic cinema by any stretch of the imagination, but few titles scratch the “lazy afternoon/weekend” itch better than Ninja: Shadow of a Tear if you want to simply sit back, relax, and let the fists fly.