Broken Path (DVD)

This is a film for action lovers. It’s described as a martial arts film and so it’s not surprising that there are some spectacular fight scenes throughout. As well as the wonderfully choreographed and performed fights, there was some brilliant acting and enough emotion to keep me interested in the story.

~~~ The Plot ~~~
Jack and Lisa, along with their young daughter Maddy, have moved around a lot. Now they’ve moved out into ...
...very touching opening where you get to know the characters and connect with them. Those who watch action movies just for the blood and the combat might find the opening a little slow but I thought it was great. It allows you to get invested in the characters so you care about them when the action starts.

And the action does start. The house is invaded by masked attackers out to kill Jack and his family. To Lisa’s astonishment, her ... more

This is a film for action lovers. It’s described as a martial arts film and so it’s not surprising that there are some spectacular fight scenes throughout. As well as the wonderfully choreographed and performed fights, there was some brilliant acting and enough emotion to keep me interested in the story.

~~~ The Plot ~~~
Jack and Lisa, along with their young daughter Maddy, have moved around a lot. Now they’ve moved out into the country and plan to settle down there. There’s a very touching opening where you get to know the characters and connect with them. Those who watch action movies just for the blood and the combat might find the opening a little slow but I thought it was great. It allows you to get invested in the characters so you care about them when the action starts.

And the action does start. The house is invaded by masked attackers out to kill Jack and his family. To Lisa’s astonishment, her computer geek husband suddenly starts displaying some incredible martial arts moves and even calls one of the attackers, Sakura, by name. As Jack struggles to fight off the attackers and keep Lisa safe, Lisa is desperate to know what’s going on and what her husband has been hiding from her.

I don’t want to say too much in case I give it away. Much of the movie is about Jack trying to protect Lisa but there’s also her discovery of his past and the interactions between Jack and those he used to know which help to build a solid storyline. Although I thought I could guess much of the plot, there were some points, even right up to the end, where I wasn’t quite sure how the movie would go. The final scene was scripted and acted perfectly so that there were several possibilities of how it might end and I was on the edge of my seat waiting to find out.

The emphasis of the film is definitely more on the action than the plot but, even as someone who generally prefers a strong plot, there was only one point where I thought that they should stop beating each other up and get on with the story. That might have something to do with the fantastic…

~~~ Fight Scenes ~~~
This film is, without a doubt, an action movie. There are some long sequences of very well put-together fights. The characters of Jack, Yoshi, Sakura and the other attackers are played by actors with great martial arts skills. Fighting, camerawork and choreography were all amazing.

There was quite a lot of fake blood used and a couple of really gruesome moments, but also a huge amount of skill.

I’m an amateur martial artist and I really enjoy watching things like this (and wishing I had even a quarter of the talent).

~~~ The Characters ~~~
I was impressed by the central characters. They were brilliantly written and acted. All too often in action movies, the characters are flat clichés. With this film, they all had depth which showed through in the brief paused between action.

Jack/Hiroki played by Johnny Yong Bosch manages to have the perfect balance between a tender family man and a vicious fighter. He has as much emotion conflict as he does physical and Bosch manages to portray it wonderfully. He’s as talented an actor as he is a fighter.

Lisa played by Pamela Joy Walworth is a quiet housewife completely out of her depth in all this. I think they did very well with her character. So much of the story is about Jack protecting her and it would have been easy to have her be a complete wimp. Instead, she manages enough moments of strength that I could still like and respect her. She isn’t able to kick ass like the others, but she’ll still kick a guy in the groin when he’s trying to kill her. She also gets some incredibly touching moments, such as hugging her daughter’s teddy bear while she’s hiding from the bad guys.

Yoshi played by Dan Southworth knew Jack as Hiroki. When Hiroki ran away to find a new life for himself, he offered to let Yoshi come with him. Yoshi stayed behind and now he’d torn between his friendship for Jack/Hiroki his loyalty to those who want Jack dead. As with Bosch, Southworth is as good at acting as he is fighting. He has some incredible fight sequences but also some wonderful emotional moments.

Sakura played by Motoko Nagino is there to fight and she does it incredibly well. Sakura has a lot less time on screen than the other three but her character still gets a bit of depth. And it’s great to see a girl kick ass.

The others are generally there to fight rather than act. But they do it well, so I’m not going to complain. The other character worth mentioning is Maddy played by Lanie Taylor. Maddy doesn’t get much screen time but Taylor does extremely well for her age. She is a sweet girl and plays her part to perfection.

~~~ The Soundtrack ~~~
The soundtrack is very unobtrusive, which I think is often the mark of good film music. There were only a couple of moments when I really noticed it and that was when it added to some of the high emotions. Those occasions when I did notice it, I thought it was very fitting.

~~~ Overall ~~~
I really liked this film. A few times while watching it, I thought the sound wasn’t perfect. The camera angle would change and then the character’s voices would be ever so slightly quieter or louder than they had been a moment before. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to jar and pull me out of the film for a moment.

Other than that, I thought it was great. So many times, you get an action film where the quality of the action means the creators have cut quality in acting or storyline, but that wasn’t the case here at all. The acting really made the action worthwhile.

If you’re a fan of action films and don’t mind the fake blood, you should definitely give this a watch.
 

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