THE HUNTED

The Hunted is a mid-nineties ninja/samurai flick that is one of those flicks that it's SO bad it's good! The film stars Christopher Lambert (of Highlander and Diane Lane fame) and a whole slew of Asian actors and actresses whose names are too hard to pronounce. One of the Asian actresses who stars in the movie is the ultra hot Joan Chen whom Christopher bangs at the beginning of the film and, later on, he winds up watching her get decapitated by this one ninja played by John Lone (of Rush Hour fame) who's head ninja of this mysterious ninja cult who no one outside of his cult has ever seen his face. Anyway, Chris gets attacked and winds up in the hospital. When word leaks out to the ninja cult that he's still alive, they set out to assassinate him even though he winds up getting protection from this rather weird-ass samurai and his wife whose clan has had a long-standing fued with said ninja cult. Are you keeping up with me so far? Anyway, after an initial confrontation on a train where nearly everyone on the train gets slaughtered by members of said ninja cult who are all killed by the samurai and his wife, the samurai is understandably upset when Chris informs him that none of the ninja are the head ninja he's been after for so long. So he takes Chris to his secret island where he's offered protection but then he winds up being a prisoner to draw out the head ninja of the ultra mysterious ninja cult his clan has been at "war" with for so long. Again, are you keeping up with me so far? Anyway, it's during this time that Chris learns the basics of sword fighting from the samurai's drunken sword maker who makes his master a new sword after he breaks his old one to keep the police from "touching" it. There's also this rather melodramatic moment where the samurai is majorly upset that Chris has "touched" his new sword and there's a minor sword fight between the two of them where the samurai threatens to kill him even though he's supposed to be protecting him. Again, do you got that? Anyway, as you can probably imagine, there's a climatic battle between the samurai clan and the ninja cult on the samurai's clan's mysterious island and all the members of each group is slaughtered save for the head ninja--who ends up killing the samurai during their inevitable duel (spoiler alert!)--and the samurai's wife who is wounded (again, spoiler alert!) and Christopher who ends up killing said head ninja after an amazing stroke of luck (there again, spoiler alert!) by decapitating him (of course!). Oh yeah, the sword master also survives said battle after showing up after all the killing is over and done with and delivers what is undoubtedly the best line in this whole awfully "good" movie: "I must've scared all the ninja away!" Oh yeah, one more thing about this rather crazy-ass flick: the ninja featured in this flick are perhaps the most incompetent ninja in ALL of cinematic history!