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Before the West entered World War II, a Japanese death cult called the Temple of Hades is ordered to aid in the spiritual destruction of China. Their method – abduct their enemies’ children and train them as killers for the Emperor.
“The Wrath of Vajra” is very evocative of Bruce Lee’s final movie, “Enter the Dragon”, where Lee’s character is recruited by a government agency to investigate an illegal fight tournament in which participants fight to the death. Here, we are told that near the end of World War II, a cult who calls themselves ‘The Temple of Hades’, raids nearby villages and takes all the young males and then trains them to fight each other, eventually having to fight to the death. Young Vajra is especially gifted, but swears a secret oath of revenge when his brother dies. Now the greatest assassin in the temple, Vajra escapes to China and begins his quest to protect the innocent, and destroy the ones responsible for making him a living weapon.
Years later, Vajra’s younger brother is kidnapped by the cult so he makes his way to the temple where he is being held and finds out that his arch nemesis is his old brother. Once they were inseparable but now he runs the Hades temple with plans for global domination and Vajra, who has led a life as a Shaolin Monk, will do everything he can to try and save the children peacefully but if that fails, he’ll be forced to utilize his martial arts. Most of the Japanese films I’ve seen recently have been period pieces or epics but this movie has more in common with movies of the West, in as much as it’s a straightforward revenge movie, plain and simple, and like the aforementioned “Enter the Dragon”, now that Vajra is constrained within the temple, he has no choice but to battle in predetermined fights in order to save his brother and the rest of the children.
Once inside the temple, he is told that in order to save the children, he must fight several highly skilled warriors before being allowed to fight the temple’s leader, his old brother and sworn enemy and only then will he achieve his objective if he succeeds at killing his brother too. In many regards, the film was also eerily reminiscent of another Bruce Lee movie, “Game of Death”, where Lee’s character, a famous movie star, fakes his own death so that he can fight the Korean underworld who have kidnapped his girlfriend. In order to save her, he must fight his way up a five-level pagoda, encountering a different challenge on each floor.
“The Wrath of Vajra” is about one thing: vengeance. It is not a love story about concubines or a grand epic about the birth of a nation, it is all about the fighting and for the first time in a long time, my jaw literally hit the floor at some of the absolutely amazing fight choreography and considering that I grew up watching martial arts movies, that is quite an achievement. I will actually be adding this film to my movie collection and if you’re all about the fighting, I would highly recommend it too.
In stores March 18th
