The Challenge (1982)

Pretty Good

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This is a fascinating & kick-ass movie for anyone interested in Japanese swordplay, & especially great for us stupid Americans (gaijin) who don't know our butts from a brick about the subject, because it's a film ABOUT a gaijin who gets caught up in the middle of a generations-old violent family dispute over a mysterious pair of very important & impressive swords. Scott Glenn (Silence of the Lambs) is an American boxer recruited to smuggle an ancient sword into Japan. Upon arrival he is taken by thugs who explain that the sword he was hired to smuggle is one of a pair of swords known as "The Equals"-- swords passed down from generation to generation in a powerful Japanese bloodline. During the last passing-down ceremony, one of two brothers bloodily ambushed the ceremony, wanting The Equals for his own. Banished, he has become a ruthless & powerful modern business warrior. The other brother has stayed true to his ancient heritage & now trains others in tradition & a myriad of ancient fighting arts, including mastery of the sword. Glenn is forced to choose between the brothers to reunite The Equals & bring an end to this long and bloody feud, one way or another. Along his journey, he(& thus vicariously the viewer)is taught a wealth of knowledge about the ways of both ancient & modern Japanese power and lifestyle. It's a fascinating education that never leaves your intelligence insulted. On top of all this, the action scenes are at once brutal, graceful, thrilling, inventive, never escaping the realm of realism, & just damn astonishing. An outstanding film, The Challenge is one of my all-time favorites.

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.

Director John Frankenheimer has made some great features; some not quite so and there are those which have fallen down the cracks. "The Challenge" happens to be one those forgotten oddities, but grippingly awesome pulpy martial arts entertainment. Establishing the violently vigorous action with the dramatically thoughtful material (a westerner coming to respect the traditional ways of eastern culture) --- as Glenn's washed-up American boxer Rick finds himself caught up in a family feud when smuggling a sacred samurai sword back to Japan. There he encounters trouble, so he wants out and gets the owed money for doing the job. However there's a change of heart as he wants to learn from Toru Yoshida at his school, but secretly his paid to steal the sword for Toru's brother, Hideo. Who's a businessman more concerned with modern methods, than anything traditional.It's an outrageously sharp, but meditatively-laced screenplay by Richard Maxwell and John Sayles, which packs plenty of punches (also humour), plot surprises and sets up some memorable set-pieces (bug-munching anyone?) within its Tokyo backdrop. Composer Jerry Goldsmith contributes a flavorers, flighty musical piece. Frankenheimer's lean and mean directorial style, goes down well with the superbly staged action (helping out as a material arts supervisor was Steven Seagal) and his leering camera covers numerous creative angles that don't shy away. What we have to sit through is well worth the wait for an outstandingly honourable climatic samurai battle (swift, blood-gushing and intense confrontations -- even a stapler can be dangerous!) within a futuristic-like building between the likes of Scott Glenn, Toshiro Mifune and Atsuo Nakamura. The characters are well-defined with tremendous performances to make that possible. Glenn's rough, dogged persona simply works, but there's also a compassionate side with the relationship he shares with a young boy. Mifune brings a respectable temperament and Nakamura perfectly pitches a callous edge.Possibly overlong, but "The Challenge" is cracking entertainment.

This is a very under rated movie. I remember when it first came out "Siskel and Ebert" TV show was THE movie review program and at that time they had a big called "the dog of the week" where they would show a couple clips from some grade Z film and trash it. Siskel said they had picked "The Challenge" based on the fact it was advertized as a cheap Bruce Lee knock off. Instead Siskel turned the segment around and instead of trashing it talked about how fun it was and what the heck was the studio thinking to just dump it like that. As for the movie, good cast, has all the elements for a "movie that men want to watch" namely humor, sex, and plenty of action. Very well made and considering Frankenheimer I would have thought people would give it more of a chance. If you like Hugh Grant movies skip it, if you prefer Tarentino then by all means check it out. Wait until you see Scott Glenn being served food that is still crawling!