Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): Ninja Flick from the Writer of 'Pretty Woman' (I'm Not Kidding): Poor Actions And Laughable Story . Not to be confused with `The Hunted' (2003) directed by William Friedkin.    `The Hunted' (1995) stars French actor Christopher Lambert as Paul Racine, American businessman on trip to modern-day Nagoya, third-largest city of Japan, who happens to witness the killing of a woman by black-masked ninjas. The cult ninja group is actually led by a charismatic leader, Japanese named `Kinjo' who is played by a Chinese actor John Lone, and they begin to search Paul to kill. At the end of the film Paul, an ordinary businessman, proves to be an equal match when fighting against martial arts master Kinjo with a Japanese sword. If you can believe this ridiculous story, you can believe anything.    I can happily ignore all the cultural inaccuracy in films as long as they give me something entertaining, but unfortunately it was not the case with `The Hunted,' of which story slowly follows a beaten path of the genre to the unexciting climax. Moreover, to handle a Japanese sword you need certain kind of gracefulness, which Tom Cruise in `The Last Samurai' managed to acquire after many months' hard training. Lambert et al. show no such thing. He and other ninjas just use them fast and furious, but with no grace and consequently, impact at all. Instead the film substituted the grace of Japanese sword fighting for needless bloody violence, and its pinnacle is the pointless terrorism of the ninjas in the bullet train. This is an insult to Japanese culture, for a ninja could be a spy or an assassin, but he is never a terrorist who would kill innocent passengers.    But the most damaging is the way how the film treats women, who are there to be used for sex scenes. Watching Joan Chen in a Japanese bathtub with Christopher Lambert was something I never expected to see, and it surely represents the attitudes of some (if not all) Hollywood films towards women. And it is not surprising to see the film's director is J. F. Lawton, whose biggest hit is Julia Roberts' `Pretty Woman' (as a writer).    By some distributors (who must have been shocked to know the film's awful content after buying the right) really released this Universal film theatrically in Japan. Since then it has been a cult film for avid Japanese film fans, who take this film as sort of comedy. Really. In addition to the ridiculous casting and the laughable scene where Chris and Joan make love in Japanese bathtub that looks as if made 200 years ago, it has plenty of things that make us laugh - a sweet little girl in pachinko parlor, a kind of gambling place (What is she doing there?); a flight attendant-like female assassin in the bullet train (Come on, it's a train, not an airplane!), and the banging Japanese taiko (drum) concert in the garden of a Nagoya hotel (You just cannot sleep!). Even though this is an action flick, it needs some degree of plausibility, which it totally disregards. And there are poorly done actions, which is another reason that makes me regard `The Hunted' as the Universal Pictures have temporarily stepped into the Ed Wood's Grade-Z territory
Output (English): NEG