I love this movie so much

So much average

Simply A Masterpiece

Good concept, poorly executed.

Surely nobody watches a film like The Challenge expecting a work of art or a deeper cultural understanding, but if you're looking for even a half decent film you'll be equally disappointed. Scott Glenn plays an American looser who travels to Kyoto and becomes embroiled in a family feud regarding a long lost sword. He meets the legendary Toshiro Mifune........ but if you're expecting the Toshiro Mifune of 'Seven Samurai' and 'Yojimbo' fame you will be extremely disappointed. This is Mifune at his lowest ebb towards the end of his career where he had begun to appear in a number of low grade American B-movies just for the money. You see, the main problems that The Challenge faces is that it has a story that is thoroughly un-engaging whilst also being riddled with just about ever cliché you can think of. Every Japanese person is a mindless, sadistic, humourless, sour-faced robot, obsessed with honour and budo. That is all except the one Japanese woman who of course has a soft spot for our round-eyed hero and promptly jumps in the sack with him. The sequence is so painfully obvious it made me laugh (it even fades from their naked bodies in the bedroom to a shot of the clouds over Japan. Sweet Jesus!!)For my part the one redeeming thing was to see some shots of Japan from 30 years ago......oh and there's a very funny sequence where a man in a wheel-chair flies out the back of a van and over the side of a bridge which made me laugh until orange juice came down my nose. And there's a really funny bit with a beheading which is pure Monty Python. Oh wait ..... and the bit with Scott Glenn fighting off a man with a sword using a stapler (no I'm not joking). Hmmm now I think about it there are some unintentionally funny bits that could make an amusing 2 minute montage on YouTube......but other than that avoid this film.

Scott Glenn, Toshiro Mifune, Atsuo Nakamura, the list goes on, it's like a whos who of eighties martial arts movies. This movie starts of fast and is a pretty decent ride right up until the end. The first time I saw it it was called "The Sword of the Ninja" and I was about 13 years old but the fact that there were no black clad "ninja" in it didn't disappoint me at all. To top it all off the choreography was done by none other than Steven Seagal before he made it big as an actor and it shows. The end fight in the office building is quite brutal and bloody for an eighties film. Actually, there is quite a bit of gore throughout this movie. I think the final showdown/sword fight between Scott Glen and Atsuo Nakamura is one of the most realistic and well choreographed Japanese sword fights I have ever seen. Nakamura is clearly an expert who "underestimates" the gaijin opponent and Glenn is the American who will do anything including using a stapler to stay alive. I wish this would come out on DVD

Though the title tends to sound like a hoaky chop sockie movie, and the movie itself has nothing to do with ninjas (only samurai and the samurai code); this is a top notch story and character study. Not to mention some pretty decent action. One only has to overlook the fact that Scott Glen seems to acquire a level of skill with the sword in a matter of weeks that take the Japanese who devote their lives to the sword years to attain. None the less, it was a great character study, as I said, and touts the qualities of honor and self-respect in contrast with a mercenary attitude and a lack of respect for anything or anyone (including ones self), and no sense of a loyalty to something higher than ones self and ones own shortsighted desires.

The Challenge is one of John Frankenheimer's more tolerable action movies from the 1980s. It was the decade that the formerly great director made a number of duds, such as the embarrassing The Holcroft Covenant, but this one is OK in its simple minded way.The story concerns American boxer Scott Glenn, who is hired to smuggle a priceless Samurai sword into Japan. He does it easily enough, but then discovers that the sword is responsible for a family feud, with two sides of the same family claiming that it is rightfully theirs.The film is quite action packed and definitely bloodthirsty. It has a good sense of pace for the opening three quarters of an hour, and builds up an interesting plot. There's a slow bit for the next hour or so, but it comes back to life with a vengeance in the closing minutes with a truly outstanding sequence in which Glenn and his ninja buddy infiltrate a heavily guarded building. The Challenge is definitely no masterpiece (the afore-mentioned dull patch in the middle ruins it chances of that) but it's an enjoyable enough way to pass a couple of hours.