Samurai Cop is a movie that is bad on so many levels that it's difficult to know where to begin. First of all, the acting performances are below average and lead actor Mathew Karedas seems to only have one facial expression. The plot is everything but clever, extremely predictable and could be described as almost childish. The dialogues are thin, unconvincing and often performed in poor English because the script was written by Iranian director Amir Shervan who didn't have much experience. The female characters in this movie are all stupidly obsessed with sex and the male characters try to look cool on purpose which makes them look like complete idiots. The camera techniques are often terrible because characters who are talking are sometimes out of frame or picture. Technicians are sometimes visible in the reflections of sunglasses or as shadows in a small room. There are numerous continuity mistakes with people wearing sunglasses in one cut and not wearing them in the next cut four seconds later, hospital rooms being filled with people that have mysteriously vanished five seconds later and people being asked to come from New York City to Los Angeles who are suddenly present a few minutes later as if they had taken a rocket ride. The locations of this film are also boring and mostly consist of exchangeable alleys, random intersections and cheap restaurants. The worst part about the movie is that the director forgot to shoot some important scenes and asked the different actors to come together again to finish the film about four months after it had already been finished. The problem here is that our static lead actor Mathew Karedas cut his long hair after the movie had been completed and had to wear a wig to avoid continuity errors. The problem is that this wig looks extremely fake and is even pulled off his head in a fight Scene if you watch closely which is the cherry on the cake of this goofy b-movie.
You might wonder why this film still deserved a generous five out of ten points. The answer is quite obvious. This film is so bad that it's almost good again. It's quite amusing to catch all the obvious mistakes. The film is unpredictable in its goofy weirdness. A nice drinking game invented by two German comedians specifically for this movie consists of drinking a shot of alcohol each time the main character's wig is visible.
To be fair though, it's a quite entertaining movie with a lot of car chases and fight scenes with bare hands, pistols, swords and improvised weapons. The movie also includes several soft porn scenes and a shallow love story that gives us a break from all the action. I was never bored by this movie because of its vivid flow. Most action movies these days either bore with complicated background stories, endless dialogues and take themselves way too serious or are filled with exchangeable CGI effects and enormous plot holes in unnecessary sequels. From that point of view, Samurai Cop is almost refreshingly grounded and unpretentious.
Fans of old-school action b-movies could be very well entertained by Samurai Cop and can give this film a shot if they are open to have some fun. My advice would be to invite some friends over while watching this film. Despite its numerous obvious flaws, Samurai Cop is still overall an average movie and not among the worst films I have ever watched like so many other people claim.
