“Jade swore to never shoot another gun, for as long as she’s living. Now walking the thin line between grief and unmeasurable guilt, Jade’s got nobody to trust except her own instincts to avoid getting herself snuffed out. With everyone in the city seemingly against her, what they didn’t count on, is if you meet Jade in a dark alley, your best bet… is to run!” Cue big samurai slash and some poor animated fella getting split clean in half, so a Katana is her weapon of choice?

O.K. This film starts off brilliantly. The voiceover and animated intro tell a tale of a feared killing machine, with ties to the criminal underbelly of the city. The script may be a bit “Hey Ai, write me a film script” but it sounds amazing and the song that hits is surprisingly upbeat.

What follows shows nothing of that story, nobody particularly seems to know who Jade is to be honest.

She is a badass though.

What we get instead is Jade going to visit her recently deceased brother’s girlfriend, who’s pregnant with his child, to reconnect and keep the last remnants of her family in her life. In a “wrong place, wrong time” twist, she ends up embroiled in a gangland feud and in charge of a hard drive that contains information that could bring down Interpol. Here’s the exact minute the film lost all credibility. I mean if you’ve ever had a WD My Passport drive, you know not to put anything too important on there, and the way they shake it all about, they’ll get nothing off that!

Anyway, that’s the basic story, then it’s followed by various set piece stunt filled fights. You know when on Arrow the titular Emerald Archer runs into a warehouse full of strategically stacked barrels, tables with computers on and steam coming out of pipes to have a Mortal Kombat style left to right fisticuffs with some baddie or other? Well a lot of that.

It feels a lot like the three writers (all stunt performers in their own rights) wrote a film each then got together and argued over which bits to put into one film. Jade jumps from gritty action, 60’s exploitation cinema, computer game and buddy comedy at a dizzying pace. In a scene that needs to be seen to be believed, a man is tortured with a hammer, takes all this pretty well, his face is still face shaped and his speech remains completely intelligible. But then the evil henchmen, masters of torture, bring out THE LEMON!!

The cinematography is good throughout and at times fantastic, with some beautifully lit scenes lurching between computer game, Afro Samurai and 70’s exploitation cinema. I think they maybe wanted it to be a bit Sin City? There’s a few fight scenes that the camera work really adds to the brutality of the punches, something that the equally insane Road House recently put to good use on an $85 million budget. Jade’s budget was, I imagine, a fraction of a fraction of that so what we see on screen is actually quite remarkable.

The sound design is spot on too, with a great action score, sound effects and sound track (“Jade” is a banger!)

So as you may expect the film is fun for what it is. So grab your popcorn, disengage your brain and enjoy the head kicking, high octane madness that follows. Part film, part computer game cut scene this is a showreel for Shaina West’s brand of butt kicking and you’ll definitely remember her Samurider branding. She isn’t given much to work with here script wise and I hope we get to see her as the lead in something with a bit more narrative continuity, solid screenwriting and budget soon.

Mark Dacascos and Mickey Rourke are almost cameos in this and for me, Rourke is more unintelligible than the guy who’s face has just been greeted by a hammer. Mark Dacascos is well, Mark Dacascos.

Co-written and directed by James Bamford (ArrowSupergirlBatwomanJade gets its UK digital release on June 24th courtesy of 101 Films.

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