12 Surprisingly Awesome Straight-To-Video Movies
8. Ninja: Shadow Of A Tear (2013)
Why It Should've Sucked: It's a sequel to the intermittently fun but really quite bland 2009 STV martial arts movie Ninja that pretty much nobody saw. Why would anyone expect a sequel to be genuinely good?
Why It's Awesome: A definite improvement over the original film in almost every way, Ninja II is a loving tribute to martial arts trash, free of wink-nudge irony but instead totally reveling in the 1990s VHS feel and tone, while Adkins delivers one of his most brilliantly explosive fighting displays to date. That the man still hasn't broken through to the mainstream despite his immense combat skill and absurd handsomeness is just insane.
You'll need a certain tolerance for cornball plot and characters to make it through, but if you're a fan of the genre, this is a damn sight more entertaining than it has any right to be. Bravo.