Movie Review: Riki-Oh, The Story of Ricky

It's been a few years now since I first saw this movie, but I recently bought it on DVD to show to a few of my friends. That's the thing about this movie, it's one thing to talk about it, but another thing to actually see it. The over-the top violence, the corny special effects, the absolutely hilarious English dubbing and the fact that the story makes absolutely no sense in the first place all make this movie completely unique and unbelievable.

Riki-Oh, literally meaning "King of Strength" was originally based on a corny Japanese manga that all but plagiarized the more popular Fist of the North Star in attempt to hitch a quick ride on its success. It was later franchised into two forgettable anime OVAs and the live action movie we're here to talk about today.

If you're a fan of cult classics like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series or you just love corny, campy movies, old kung-fu movies or just movies with excessive violence and nonsensical plots then stop reading right now. This movie was crafted especially for you and you should go out and buy it this instant.

The movie follows our hero, Riki Ho, who has recently been imprisoned in the future, or rather "The year 2000," where prison systems have apparently become corporate sponsored and they're corrupt and producing opium and crap. Throughout the entire movie you don't often see prisoner's being locked up, they seem to have all sorts of weapons available to them somehow, and each wing of the prison is run by four leaders called "The gang of four."

Riki goes about defending the smaller and weaker prisoners and the Assistant Warden, a fat man with a metal claw arm and a glass eye that he keeps mints in, decides Riki is a trouble maker for shaking up the status quo and sics the gang of four on him. As this goes on Riki discovers the opium plot and lots of people get their heads crushed or disemboweled as Riki displays his martial arts skills and the strength of twenty men. At the end, just like a video game, Riki fights the Warden, an older gentlemen that transforms into an Incredible Hulk like monster as his final boss before breaking a hole in the prison wall and escaping as if he couldn't do that in the first place.

I can't even begin to describe the level of violence going on or how much of it even though it's obvious that rubber dummies are being destroyed and not actual people. The English dubbing makes things even worse, for example the gang of four are named Oscar, Rogan, Tarzan, and Brandon. Really now, Brandon? At least he's the most useless one. In standard video game cliche each one of these gang members has their own special ability, Oscar being balanced, Rogan being fast (and gay considering it's a male character with a female actor), Tarzan being a massive muscle-man that crushes people's heads (A clip that used to be featured on the Daily Show) and Brandon... well Brandon throws knitting needles attached to strings.

The story itself even without the dubbing is completely illogical, giving Riki practically no motivation for most of his actions except for introducing minor characters only to kill them a minute later and make Riki flip out and act as if his best friend was murdered. Like I said earlier other than prisoners killing each other the prison is more like a summer camp than a damned prison with inept guards and super powerful prisoners who could probably escape whenever they feel like it. Instead of just killing Riki with sustained machine gun fire (normal guns won't work he already took five bullets to the chest without any ill effects) they use very James Bond style tricks and traps that he foils every time with brute strength that they're well aware he possesses.

Let me just some of some of the things in this movie: A man cuts out his intestines and strangles the hero with them, a dog gets kicked in half, the hero is forced to eat razor blades and spits them into someone else's face, someone's back is skinned so they can hang his tattoo on the wall, a man is uppercutting in the neck and the fist comes out of his mouth. A fat man is punched through the gut causing everything to spill out, a man is shot with a gun that inflates him and makes him explode, the hero ties his own tendons together in his arm that is practically cut off and it's magically fixed and you know what I think that's enough you should be getting the picture by now.

Riki-Oh is just... well there's just nothing else quite like it. It's also the first non-pornographic movie in Hong Kong to receive the equivalent of an X rating in the United States. It more than deserves to be a cult classic despite still being relatively unknown, but I guess that's one of the things I like about it. If you're still curious a complete story synopsis with some great animated gifs can be found here at I-Mockery.com but I'm hoping someone is already sold.