Director John Frankenheimer tries to combine the action of a chop-socky film with the scale and spirit of a Kurosawa epic and falls heavily between the two stools. Scott Glenn is well in character as the cynical backstreets battler who foolishly accepts an obviously murky assignment to take two ancient swords back to Japan and in no time at all has been beaten up, knifed and left for dead. With dialogue that sounds as if it comes from a sword-and-sandal movie of 30 years earlier, action is clearly called for to save the day, and it's sharply done, too, though the spurts of it are rather too sparsely spaced. But you'll enjoy the devastating final battle, which appears to do no good at all to the Kyoto Conference Centre let alone the actors who get bits of them sliced all over it. I liked the touch in this sequence when Glenn staples together the villain's eyebrow. Woe betide all secretaries in future who make a hash of the typing.

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