Filmic Friday 3

Movie: Fist of the North Star

Format: ? I didn’t notice.

Happy Belated Birthday to a friend of mine. It was his night to pick our pain and he chose Fist of the North Star.

Not the anime.

Not the manga.

The live action movie with Malcom McDowell.

What a ride! I can’t tell you what happened in the movie because it somehow made less sense than Crackerjack 2: Hostage Train, but I will say that the special effects get an A- from me because they were awesome. The acting, however, gets about a B because it’s ridiculous and so is the writing.

Fist of the North Star was a manga for a long time. I heard something about ten years? I don’t actually know. All I can say is this: whoever wrote the script for this movie must have been ordered to cram the whole thing into one movie that zipped by at the speed of two pizzas and a cake. That’s not very long in a room full of hungry people.

That being said, it was a great time to be had by all – watching heads explode, great prosthetic work on a broken jaw, and a spine being forced nearly all the way through a chest. I still don’t really know what was happening because it’s a fustercluck of a film, but it was really fun. At one point, the main character (a white guy they’re trying to pass off as Kenshiro…) pokes a kid in the head and cures her blindness. Also, that kid’s brother is Rufio from Hook, so that’s awesome.

There’s music that seems to be grabbed from other movies (I think it sounded more like music pulled from other movies’ trailers…), some pretty ok camera work as long as no one’s fighting, good lighting, interesting ideas (post-apocalypse complete with acid rain!), and it’s not long enough to be boring no matter what happens.

The most tension we get is when the love interest (who none of us first-timers realized was a love interest until 2/3 the way through, is the only Asian actress in a movie based on a manga, and is named Juliet, if my ears can be believed) was dragged into the obligatory room full of gears and fire by the annoying guy with belts on his face. Even then, we knew so little about the woman that it was hard to have any real attachment.

I should probably mention why our birthday friend chose this movie.

Leon “Vader” White is in it.

For those of you not in the know, last week (the week we watched this movie), we also learned that Vader, a popular wrestler from the 1980s & 1990s, passed away. He was an amazing big man, capable not only of amazing power moves and feats of strength, but also shockingly graceful for a man who was 6’5” and nearly 400lbs. We were heartbroken, since the man was amazing. If you didn’t watch his wrestling, he was in an episode of Saved by the Bell [Boy Meets World] as the bully’s dad, an episode of Bay Watch (I think), and in this movie, Fist of the North Star.

I don’t quite know what to say about Vader, to be honest. He was amazing. He was one of the toughest guys to lace up boots. And shockingly forgiving – if someone broke my orbital bone with a cowbell, forcing me to shove my own eyeball back in its socket the way that Stan Hanson did to him in 1990 at the Tokyo Dome, I probably would have killed him. Instead, Vader popped his eye back in and finished the match. And apparently he forgave Stan, even though he lost most of the vision in that eye and had to have his nose entirely reconstructed. He made jokes about the whole thing at the Hall of Fame ceremony in 2016, when he inducted Stan himself.

I hope Stan inducts him this year.

RIP, Leon “Vader” White.

No pain, brother. No pain.

RIP Leon "Vader" White 5/14/1955 - 6/18/2018