New Japanese film reviews appear every last Friday of the month.

The Hidden Blade ***

Veteran director Yoji Yamada had so much success with "Twilight Samurai" last year, he decided to make another film from a Shuhei Fujisawa novel. Unfortunately, he chose one that has exactly the same story as "Twilight Samurai." Noble, humble samurai Masatoshi Nagase lives a life of loyal fidelity while falling in love with serving wench Takako Matsu. For class reasons, their affair is chaste, until Nagase is ordered to kill an old friend, now gone crazy in a wild mountain prison. This is modern TV soap opera stuff transported to the Edo era: office drone pines for office lady, but company sends him to Sendai. "The Hidden Blade" is most lacking in the action sequences: the finale is a particular letdown and has none of the intensity of Hiroyuki Sanada and Min Tanaka's memorable showdown). More like "Twilight Samurai" remixed, than a worthy follow up.

Ninja Hattori-kun *

This is supposed to be mainstream entertainment, but as directed by TV hack Masayuki Suzuki, from an old manga by Fujiko Fujio, it's a snore for the whole family. Shingo Katori, one of the ubiquitous SMAPsters, plays a naive ninja sent from the mountains to Tokyo. Katori plays him as an all-grinning, nin-ninnng nincompoop, so it's no surprise when he chooses to become loyal retainer to a timid little boy, who lives in a gingerbread house overlooking Tokyo Tower. Hattori and the boy woo cute landscape artist Rena Tanaka (who's blind... don't ask), and all three get entangled in a battle between rival Iga and Koga ninjas who pass themselves off as everyday folk. Notable for the unfunny appearance by comedian Gori in the dorkiest haircut ever. And what is the point of all the repeated ads for Happy Cola, slogan "Good Job!" and its sinister cult-like devotees?

Devilman *

Following on from the video-effects cos-play movie "Cutie Honey," "Devilman" is the second of Go Nagai's legendary "unfilmable" comics to hit the screen with a splat. Director Hiroyuki Nasu goes mad with the special effects CG palette, and the result is a mess. Story has pigeon-chested bullied schoolboy Hisato Izaki and his cool, blond-haired protector Yusuke Izaki possessed by peculiarly Christian demons released from their hellish imprisonment. The result - the world's first pair of pale, pigeon-chested superheroes Devilman and Satan. Like most possessed teens, all they want to do is listen to music in their room, but the government sends SWAT teams to eradicate them all. Angular model Ai Shiminaga appears as Sirene in a feather-bikini that would make a great samba costume. Bob Sapp hams it up as an excitable newscaster broadcasting in English to mystified crowds.

[isA.] ***

Unclassifiable film from first-time director Kenichi Fujiwara examines the fallout from a teenage crime. It starts with ex-teen bomber Shun Oguri walking free under Japan's controversially lenient minor crime laws - just four years after he'd bombed a busy Shibuya restaurant. But Fujiwara tries to use this sensitive material for a sensational thriller, upping the ante from confused teen killer to proto-terrorist. With his thousand-mile stare, Oguri (website handle "Holy Knight") is on his own jihad against humanity, and on his release immediately starts building a new bomb in the middle of Shibuya - apparently free from any checks by the police or social services. Some good performances by Takashi Naito, as the penitent father of the teenage bomber, and Kanji Tsuda, as the grief-stricken father of one of the victims. Key problem remains that the script never goes beyond stereotypes for the three main characters: enigmatic bomber, mystified parent, vengeful victim's father. By the time the film reaches its baroque triple-showdown ending, my eyes had glazed over.

Kanzen Naru Shiiku: Akai Satsui ***

Cult director Koji Wakamatsu (famous abroad for titles such as "Go, Go Second Time Virgin") returns to helm the sixth in this perversely entertaining series. A Kabukicho gigolo with a gambling debt Mikio Osawa agrees to bump off a rich wife's husband for a bundle of cash, but botches the hit. On the run in the snow-covered hills of northern Japan, he holes up in a shuttered, deserted house. But the house is not empty: a timid, traumatized girl Mika Ito lives there, in the thrall of a sick, hot-tempered trucker Shiro Sano who has kept her there since she was a tiny girl. Osawa tries hard but looks out of his depth here, as veteran Sano and 23-year-old ingenue Ito build an all-too-believable, monstrous relationship as sadistic paternal pervert and terrified tremulous child. File under guilty pleasure.

Jingi no Hakaba (video) ****

In 1975, Kinji Fukasaku reinvented the Yakuza movie with "Graveyard of Honor," a gritty, dirty story with mean, vicious heroes told docu-drama style. It's just after the war, and rival gangs from Taiwan, China and Korea are threatening to muscle in on Tokyo's red-light area. Tetsuya Watari lights up the screen as Rikio Ishikawa, a brute who revels in senseless violence, endlessly provoking feuds with other gangs. Ishikawa rapes, stabs, gambles, drinks, steals, ends up a speed junkie and murders his own boss. In and out of jail, with a bounty on his head for offences against the yakuza code, he hits bottom after his wife commits suicide. In his drug-addled grief, begging for one last chance from the mob, he chews on her cremated bones in a cemetery!