Christopher Lambert Movie:

Editorial Review:
Christopher Lambert, the imposing French actor with the nasal whine best known to American audiences as Scottish swordsman Highlander, plays a rank amateur in The Hunted. He's an American businessman in Japan who lucks into a one-night stand with slinky Joan Chen and winds up a witness to her murder by a mysterious band of black-clad ninjas. Escaping not one but two attempts on his life by a little quick thinking and a lot of dumb luck, he winds up on a harrowing bullet train ride. As swarms of masked assassins decimate passengers in search of the elusive eyewitness, Lambert's laconic protector, rough-edged samurai Yoshio Harada, unleashes a martial arts frenzy of flashing swords in close quarters. His savior is not as altruistic as he seems, however. He just wants to lure mysterious ninja overlord John Lone out of hiding and into a fight to the death on Harada's island fortress, and Lambert is little more than live bait. Though it made few ripples at the box office, The Hunted is a slick and surprisingly smart thriller. Lone and Harada cut striking figures as the warriors following ancient codes in the modern world, and writer-director J.F. Lawton (screenwriter of Pretty Woman and Under Siege) gives them almost as much screen time as ostensible hero Lambert. The action scenes are furious and fast paced, lacking the grace and precision of real Japanese samurai adventures but full of clever flourishes. --Sean Axmaker

The Hunted [Region 2] Reviews:
A classic Lambert film!
2009-10-03 - Though an older film, and echoing the 80's Ninja movie fad, the variety of weapons and killing make this an enjoyable film. Lambert plays a western business man who finds himself caught up in an old school Japanese blood feud. The leader of the Samuri clan uses Lambert as bait to draw out the evil ninja clan. Of course, the ninja clan completely wipes out the Samuri clan due to the hubris of the head samuri, resulting in the requisite show down. If you look japanese style samuri sword fighting, you'll like this movie!

Guilty Pleasure
2009-07-05 - Ninja on a bullet train. Thats the movie right there. Everything else can be skipped.

The Hunted
2009-06-03 - DVD and case good to excellent, service fast, return information provided. Thats all I need.

Underappreciated action movie
2009-02-19 - I saw this film when it debuted in theaters, and I quite liked it, despite its flaws. It's premise is a fascinating one: the survival of an ancient ninja cult in modern Japan. This cult is led by a ninja of legendary skill and power called Kinjo. To create balance, this ninja cult must, of course, have an enemy, and in Japan, that enemy could only be samurai. So Takeda, scion of an ancient samurai family, and seemingly the protector of Paul Racine (the hapless French-American businessman who has stumbled into the midst of this conflict) appears to be one of the good guys. But alas, appearances can be deceiving. Takeda is not as noble as he seems. At first Takeda does genuinely seem to be one of the good guys. He conveys Racine to his island home, ostensibly to protect him from the Kinjo, who will be coming after him because Racine saw his face. It is eventually revealed that somewhere along the line, in his quest for the glory he will achieve by defeating Kinjo, Takeda has broken his moral compass. All others, even his own students are nothing more than fodder for his ambition to destroy Kinjo, and are considered by Takeda to be utterly expendable. Once Racine is safely ensconced within the samurai's island fortress, Takeda can barely conceal his contempt for the man (who unwittingly offered him insult by handling his katana -- the samurai's weapon that no other man is permitted to touch), and it quickly becomes apparent to Racine that not only is he not free to leave, but Takeda would probably kill him if he didn't need him to as bait for Kinjo. Worse, it turns out that Takeda coldly and deliberately endangered a train full of innocent commuters, many of whom were killed at the hands of Kinjo's forces. Watching all this unfold is Takeda's wife, well played by Yoko Shimada (whom American audiences will remember for her part in the miniseries "Shogun"). And viewers can see her growing alarm at her husband's increasingly obsessive and frankly evil behavior, but her loyalty keeps her by his side right to the end. I like this aspect of the film, and I like it that one of the seeming good guys turns out to be anything but -- it just goes to show that the enemy of one's enemy is not always one's friend.

The movie is a well paced, reasonably smart action/thriller, with good acting, great fight scenes, and a good premise. It's biggest flaw is a plot hole big enough to sail the battleship Yamato through. I refer to the slaughter on the bullet train. If scores of people in a modern, developed, highly industrialized country were systematically butchered by a small cadre of sword-wielding ninja assassins, working their way methodically back from the front of the train, it would make BIG headlines all over the world. This kind of attention is not the sort of thing any organization dedicated to stealth and secrecy would ever want to attract to itself in a million years. Still, apart from this glaring flaw, it was a highly entertaining movie, and well worth a look.

Sent DVD with wrong region code
2009-02-02 - I recently purchased this DVD from Amazon. Obviously I am in Australia, so one would assume that Amazon would send a DVD with the correct region code for Australia, instead region code on DVD is for US and Canada. Consequently it does not work in my $500.00 LG DVD player. Tried changing region code in player under setup, but even then id did not work. Cannot return it as it has been opened and inserted and ejected a dozen or so times so it has minute scratches from insert eject process. Not impressed.
Neil Davie