Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky
In 2001, where all correctional facilities have been privatized, martial artist Ricky finds himself victim to the corrupt system, found "guilty" of the manslaughter of an infamous crime boss.
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- Cast:
- Louis Fan Siu-Wong , Gloria Yip Wan-Yee , Yukari Ôshima , Frankie Chin Chi-Leung , Kôichi Sugisaki , Wong Kwai-Hung , Tetsurō Tamba
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Reviews
Simply Perfect
A Masterpiece!
Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
This movie is very faithful to the manga and is one of the best adaptations out there. People may be put off by the cheap look of the film but the core story is great.+) Very violent fight scenes and over the top moments that you will remember for a long long time. These include Ricky gutting an overweight man with his bare fist, squeezing a man's hands so hard they crumple, slapping a man in the back of the head so hard his eyeball flies out, punching the top of a man's head off, punch a man on the side of the head so hard that the force causes the other side of his head to explode, and fighting against a man who suddenly transforms into an ugly "Hulk" like creature and killing him by grinding him into hamburger meat. Let's not forget the famous head smash scene and the "gut" choke scene as well.+)The core story is well written+)Fan is great as Ricky~The English dub is very bad and the effects are cheap
I gotta say, the best way to put this movie is that it's Evil Dead 2 as a comic book movie with martial arts, Kill Bill villains and the blood effects from Braindead. Does that sound awesome? Of course it does!I think the best way to put this is that it's the best homage of manga currently made in live action. It's a little cheesy and silly, but it adds to the movie for the same reason it adds to The Evil Dead. And I did watch this with the terrible English dub and I don't know how I would have felt watching it with subs, but the terrible dub adds to the atmosphere this movie is trying to make, The Evil Dead in manga form. This movie just leaves you with a weird feeling, there's a final fight but there's not really and ending, it just kinda stops but again, it adds to the atmosphere. After watching this movie, I felt like I had read 50 mangas in one sitting, it was incredible.There was so many memorable characters, I'm only going to mention the main 3 in my opinion. Siu-Wong Fan plays Riki-Oh Saiga or Ricky, a young adult with superhuman strength who fights to protect himself and his girlfriend from street crime. You could almost call it a superhero movie, although you never see him fight street crime, you just see him on the prison bus going to jail for manslaughter. The next character is Mei Sheng Fan plays the Assistant Warden who has a hook for a hand. But it had to hooks that he can move around and he doesn't just use it as a weapon but as a fork too! I'm not going to lie, I love this guy, he kind of holds the movie together as Ricky doesn't really talk and the Warden talks in small sentences and then stays silent until he's replying to something, the Assistant Warden is really the only one that talks and he's kind of in the background when the warden finally shows up, but he holds the movie together for a bit and he definitely works. The final character is Ka-Kui Ho as Warden Sugiyama and he is a perfect villain for this movie. He's a sick bastard with an annoying as hell son. (SPOILERS) * And he is basically the hulk. Really, he is. He turns into a near unstoppable monster whenever he gets really angry or paranoid or something. He takes pills to stop it from happening when he doesn't want it to, so I'm pretty sure he doesn't have control over it, I just don't know what causes him to become it. Is it anger? Being upset? Worried? Upset? Showing high levels of emotion? Is it timed to when he needs to take his pills? I honestly don't know, but just like the Crow's powers in The Crow, we really don't need to know. * (SPOILERS OVER)The plot is Ricky is caught of manslaughter for fighting crime. It's a future dystopia and crime has run amok so Ricky with his powers tries to fight it, kinda like a superhero! I honestly could see if someone considered this a superhero movie as it is based off comic source material. Anyways, Ricky gets sent to prison and tries to fight crime there and after a series of events ends up freeing everyone. It sounds like I'm leaving stuff out and technically I am, but that is really the best summary I can give without going into too much detail.There's no explanation for a lot of stuff, but its forgiven because thats not whats important, whats important is what you're looking at on the screen when watching it, the story it's telling you at that time, not the story before it or after it, the story then. And I really can't help but just love these characters, like I said before, they're all really good and I can still remember a lot of funny over the top moments that still shock people today. My god, is there a lot of blood, if you get squeamish over blood in something like Die Hard or Robocop, this movie is not for you.Story of Ricky is great and definitely for a specific group of people. If you liked Braindead, I can't see anyone not having a blast watching this.Score: 7.6
If you're on the mooch for gore then this film has literally bucket loads of it. I cringed at one point when a guy fell face first onto a board of nails, and my wife was almost puking when some guy tried to strangle Ricky with his own intestines. It was also at this point that she asked me why I was making her watch the film.I've got to say, however, that there wasn't much story to the story of Ricky. He punches a hole in a guy's head and gets put in jail for it. In jail, he gets caught up fighting the warden, the deputy warden, and some heavy duty prisoners (one of which squashes a guy's head between his hands). Apart from a couple of flashbacks, that's all there is.I must be getting old, however, because although the gore is impressive, I was twiddling my thumbs waiting for the film to get onto the next battle. A bit more story would have done the trick I think. Something lacking here, for me at least. Not enough humour? Or story? Or characters to care about? Who knows? You'll probably want to see it anyway.
This movie is simply super sadistic, super gore, super bloody yet super funny and even somewhat moralistic story. It's simply "a ride", brutal, sadistic, cruel, nationalistic, anti-drug, anti-capitalistic...Oh yes - and it has hero that makes Rambo look as a old man on retirement and X-Men as a bunch of elderly people feeding birds in the park. I have read some opinions that Western super heroes do suck somewhat. After seeing The Machine Girl and this movie I just have to agree that all these spider-bitten transsexuals so easily paralyzed with Kryptonite or whatever are derivative, pathetic and boring. All the super villains are weak and laughable as well, we have more nasty super villains in European Parliament.But in this movie - well, the villains are really different league and the fights and "punishments" from villains are so brutal in the beginning that you just wonder how they could possibly escalate towards the end. They COULD escalate and basically this is way rougher than Russian military movie. The most bizarre thing is that movie keeps its political contents and yet somewhat manages so be in a very bizarre way funny and laughable as well.There is somewhat seriously wrong and twisted in minds of Asian people for sure. I have never seen something so cruel, bizarre yet funny in Western cinema. Most recommended for those who can swallow such twisted fun!