Actor and martial artist Sho Kosugi had a major moment in the 1980s, helping to kick off a short lived, but noteworthy obsession with ninjas among action cinema and B-movie aficionados. While Kosugi never experienced the kind of instant name recognition that was bestowed upon other action icons of the decade, the dedicated, capable, uniquely charismatic, multiple time martial arts champion and instructor remains a beloved figure to those in the know.
After working behind the scenes and in bit roles in American features, Tokyo native Kosugi got his big break thanks to Cannon Films honcho (and big time ninja enthusiast) Menahem Golan, who cast him as a villain in his 1981 directorial effort Enter the Ninja. That was enough of a hit for Golan (who never met a good idea he couldn’t run into the ground) to bring Kosugi back for two sequels: Revenge of the Ninja and the absolute trash movie classic Ninja III: The Domination. That trilogy is most likely what viewers remember most of Kosugi’s cinematic legacy, but the recent reissuing of two more of his 80s efforts from Kino Lorber – 1985’s revenge thriller Pray for Death and 1987’s cop drama Rage of Honor – are arguably better films from an overall quality standpoint and still hit the classic action movie sweet spots.
In Pray for Death, Kosugi plays Akira, a former ninja who leaves Japan and hopes to start a quiet life in small town middle America with his wife (Donna K. Benz) and two young boys (played by his real life sons, Kane and Shane, who frequently appeared in dad’s movies). Akira buys a derelict cigar shop in a rough part of town with hopes of turning it into a restaurant, unaware that the building has secretly been a stash house for the local mob. When a hidden necklace goes missing thanks to some crooked cops, the family is blamed. The wife is killed, one of the kids is sent to the hospital, and Akira taps into his former training for revenge.
The plot of Pray for Death isn’t anything to write home about, and the performances are all serviceable at best, but the appeal of such a film lies in the visceral thrills of well executed fights and stunt work. With Kosugi providing a lot of the choreography for the action and fights, Pray for Death has a crisp, yet brutal sensibility that’s nicely captured by director Gordon Hessler. Such beat-‘em-up and slash-‘em-up movies require a certain degree of balletic excellence to take them to another level, and that’s precisely what Kosugi and Hessler provide here. And the final showdown – set in a warehouse, obviously for films of this era – between Kosugi and the mob’s chief heavy (played nicely by James Booth, the film’s screenwriter) – is as impressive in its blocking as it is unflinchingly brutal. Pray for Death is standard revenge movie fodder, but certainly entertaining enough to keep those interested in such a movie entertained. It’s the type of film where it’s easy to see why it would be maligned by a lot of critics, but that tends to overlook the impressive physical and logistical feats action movie filmmakers and stars pull off for the sake of popcorn entertainment.
Pray for Death was a modest hit at the box office, but a planned sequel never materialized. Instead, Hessler would team up with Kosugi again for Rage of Honor, a film that’s more interesting and bonkers than it is actually good, but it’s still entertainingly unique. In a role that fully exposes his limited abilities as an actor, Kosugi plays Shiro, an undercover American drug enforcement cop trying to exact revenge on a South American cartel (which bounces between Argentina and Brazil because the film never fully makes up its mind where it wants to take place). After his partner is killed and he learns there’s a mole in the department, Shiro goes rogue and heads down south under the cover of taking a vacation with his girlfriend.
While Pray for Death certainly wasn’t high art, it was made with a certain degree of care at the writing stage. The script for Rage of Honor relies heavily on convenience, cliche, and sometimes flat out incoherent plotting to keep things moving along. It also carries with it a certain degree of racial insensitivity when Shiro has to trek through dangerous South American jungles full of indigenous peoples who want to kill him. But that’s also when the film picks up and offers some ingenious, survival based action beats (including killing someone with a leaf), so it’s kind of a wash. The huge climax that follows Shiro’s journey – set in, you guessed it, a warehouse/factory – doesn’t disappoint in the slightest, building to one of my favourite movie endings, a snap cut to the credits out of nowhere; a movie just deciding it has nothing more to say and it just flat out ends.
While Kosugi doesn’t play a ninja in Rage of Honor, Hessler and the star certainly lean into their past glories. He still flings shuriken (including explosive ones) as if they are things an American cop would be regularly outfitted with alongside a firearm. Kosugi never convinces the viewer that he’s a grizzled, Miami Vice styled cop, but these callbacks serve to remind viewers of his capabilities as a martial arts star. And even in its goofiest moments, Hessler provides Kosugi with a much more dedicated and reliable style than the performer ever got working at Cannon Films. These steps away from the trilogy that established him as a brand name in action movie cinema might’ve been Kosugi’s last noteworthy hits (save for an attempted late career comeback in James McTeigue’s 2009 dud Ninja Assassin), but they are high points in his filmography. Pray for Death and Rage of Honor might be minor cult classics today, but in terms of talking about Kosugi’s career, they’re equally as important as the sillier movies he made at the start of the decade.
Pray for Death and Rage of Honor are now available on Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics.
