I was really disappointed with this film. I saw it back in 1996 on the Sci-Fi channel and remembered it being not half-bad. Upon watching it again, I found it to lack many things. I never watched the Anime or read the comics because I am just not into that stuff, but, from what I have read about it, the Anime sounds like it wipes the floor with this poor production.
Kenshiro is the hero of the story played by Gary Daniels for some reason. It's funny, I thought Kenshiro was suppose to be Asian, but whatever. Lord Shin, the lead bad guy also played by an American, kidnaps Kenshiro's girl Juliet and leaves Kenshiro for dead after brutally injuring him. What you think would be a classic good vs. evil story gets very boring as nothing happens until the end, and at that point you have already lost interest.
I had thought this movie was going to be extremely violent due to the fact that the Anime is suppose to be viciously violent, but, this movie lacks any real action or violence, minus about 3 or 4 scenes. Instead, what we have is a movie that feels like the end of a really bad Trilogy that doesn't exist. Perhaps, if the movie were cast better and had a decent script it would have worked better. And Tony Randel as director was very disappointing considering this is the same guy that directed Hellraiser 2 (one of my all time favorite films).
The only plus side of this movie was a pretty decent soundtrack and Chris Penn. The soundtrack was very good considering the movie was very boring. Chris Penn did a cool job with his character and was probably the only real highlight of the film.
I guess I need to watch the Anime, even if I don't really like Anime. I would suggest staying away from this movie only if you really like Gary Daniels. 4/10