The Barbeardian

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

Riki-Oh is not your garden variety low-budget action film. This movie targets the demographic of immature men that have been desensitized to TV violence from an early age. Less money on acting, story, and editing = more money for fake blood and limbs.

Disembowelings followed up by attempted strangulation with intestines might be briefly interrupted by flashbacks of the peace-loving Ricky. This back story might seem a gratuitous nuisance at first, but let’s not forget that it’s important in foreshadowing. Ricky follows in the tradition of heroes that show a direct correlation between docility and the brutality of their ass-kickings (when provoked). Thus, it is only because we know that Ricky likes wearing sweater vests, flying remote control airplanes with his girlfriend, and teaching a mute prisoner to play the flute that we are able to see our protagonist send his nemesis through a meat grinder.

While Riki-Oh is solely focused on being a massive, cheap buffet of wholesale retarded gore, it only serves to showcase the imagination employed. There will be no clever banter to amplify the drama of combat. Seriously, the guy is forced to eat razor blades while he gets punched in the face. Damn. Once one decides to enter this realm of violence, there’s no choice but to abandon all believable contexts and simply go for the gusto. You won’t even care how fake the head looks as it explodes. Embrace the retarded. Don’t give me this Steven Seagal bullshit where I have to sit through 45 minutes of setup and reverence for Native Alaskan tribal rituals just so I can see a guy get kicked in the face. A real man doesn’t need redeeming features to his movies. He has no delusions about what he wants. If he wanted to gain a greater appreciation for Inuit culture, he would’ve gone to a book. At the core of our steely sharp, highly evolved minds is just a big, dumb animal that still has a primal desire for a good, demented ass-kicking.