It's cut and paste ninja film time again! This time, the white ninjas are up against the black ninjas for reasons explained in the first five minutes in a conversation so badly written, it didn't just damage my brain, but actually went back in time and damaged the genetic code for the last hundred years of my family's existence. Basically, Silver Dragon, head of the White Ninjas, is in Hong Kong to track down Roger Komsky, head of the Black Ninjas. That's the 'ninja' part of the film, except that one of the white ninjas was a black guy, making him literally a black ninja, so I can understand how everyone looked really confused when Silver Dragon started talking about killing all black ninjas. By this point (five minutes into the film) everything but the basic animal instinct of holding my sphincter shut was all that remained of me as a sentient being.
The non-ninja part of the film (basically an old film intercut with the ninja stuff) involves Alex Ho, a cop out to get a gun runner, who's too handy with his fists and gun and ends up quitting the force and going solo (with a baseball bat), causing all sorts of trouble for Mo, the gun runner. Jane, another cop, goes undercover and ends up as Mo's squeeze, while yet another cop tries to get Mo using the proper procedures. Jane's part is doubly confusing as she tries to put the moves on Mo once, then gets the brush off, then tries again but luckily he couldn't remember the first time so that worked out for her! Still didn't get why she was all smoochy one minute then looking terrified in the bedroom the next minute.
Ho's a good character as he gets more increasingly mental as the film goes on, basically smashing everyone's head in with a baseball bat, shooting people up and near the end, getting loaded up with enough dynamite to destroy half of Hong Kong.
Silver Ninja Dragon triumphs as the non-ninja story is well action packed, and only a few minutes pass before people start shooting or beating each other. There's a slight lack of insanity to most of the proceedings (maybe due to Godfrey Ho not being involved) but plenty of action, and things to get more bizarre towards the end. There's a trial held in an underground car park, a woman murdered and hung upside down, painted various colours, and a post-death speech by one of the baddies.
Also, people have always speculated about the break up of Pink Floyd and subsequent lack of quality after Roger Waters left. Now, most folks reckon that it was due to animosity between Waters and Gilmour, and Gilmour's slightly lame attempts to emulate the classic Floyd sound, but here I am to clear things up. The answer is this: Pink Floyd were making far too much by way of royalties from these Hong Kong ninja films to even care what their records sounded like any more. In Silver Dragon Ninja you can hear 'Sheep' and 'A Saucerful of Secrets' played out. Why bother trying when they must have been raking in millions from these ninja flicks?
