Jade (2025) Review

“Jade” Theatrical Poster

Director: James Bamford
Cast: Shaina West, Mickey Rourke, Mark Dacascos, Katherine McNamara, Steven Michael Quezada, Keith Jardine, Chris Bruno, Mathew Yanagiya, Emily Eruraviel
Running Time: 88 min.

By Paul Bramhall

I get it. You want to make a martial arts movie but don’t have much of a budget, let alone any wiggle room for marketing, so what’s the best thing you can do? The answer is a simple one – you call Mickey Rourke. Tell him he’ll only need to be onscreen for less than 15 minutes, just needs to utter a few lines, and his character’s scenes consist of him walking around a little with minimal exertion. Sealed the deal? Now you can take the next logical step – you call Mark Dacascos. Tell him he’s required even less, 10 minutes will do, and he just needs to talk and take part in a 3 second action scene. Seems like he’s on the fence? Tell him its filming in the States, so he doesn’t have to worry about travelling to Thailand like he did for all those Wych Kaosayananda movies he starred in. With the talents of such 2020’s era classics like One Night in Bangkok, Take Back, Assault on VA-33, and Section 8 onboard, you’re already halfway there.

Stuntman turned director James Bamford knows the deal, and when it comes to directing, this guy goes for it. After cutting his teeth helming episodes of NCIS: Hawai’i and various DC Universe franchises (including a 17-episode run on Green Arrow), Bamford decided to get into directing feature films in 2024 with Air Force One Down (an Asylum-esque title if ever there was one!). Clearly he found his calling, as within the same year he’d go on to helm Shadow Land, Hard Home, and Utopia, making it surely one of the first times for a debut feature length director to crank out 4 of them within the space of 12 months!? In 2025 he shows no signs of slowing down, and as of the time of writing in March, he’s already on his 2^nd feature. The first was Man with No Past, and the next cab out of the ranks is the subject of this review – Jade.

A feature intended to showcase its star, Shaina West, a new on the scene action stuntwoman whose talents so far have been seen through supporting roles in the likes of The Killer’s Game and The Woman King. West’s story goes that she suffered a serious motorcycle accident at 19, and nursed herself back to health by teaching herself martial arts and hitting the gym, inspired by a love of Japanese culture and anime (she has the Will of Fire symbol from Naruto tattooed on her solar plexus). Combining her distinctly oversized afro with a samurai sword, West rebranded herself the Samurider, and it’s likely in this guise that many martial arts fans will have seen her either on YouTube or social media showing off her impressive skillset. Jade fulfils many of the commenters on such videos demands that she be given her own movie, but as the expression goes, you should be careful what you wish for.

In Jade West plays the titular title character, in which an animated opening sequence explains how she and her brother moved from London to the U.S. after their parents were murdered, falling in with a gang which ultimately led her to shoot her own sibling. Swearing to never use a gun again, now she’s someone who (as the narration explains) “you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley”, although bafflingly none of this backstory has any relevance to the actual plot (especially the part about never using a gun again!). When we meet West she’s still someone who has gangland connections, with one of her acquaintances entrusting her with a hard drive that seemingly everyone is after. That includes Dacascos as an Interpol agent, who we meet in a pointless flashforward scene to 24 hours later within the first 5 minutes, likely an attempt to get his face onscreen as quickly as possible since it won’t appear again for the next 45.

Once the hard drive is in West’s possession, she essentially spends the next 80 minutes running from one location to another, getting constantly captured by the bad guys, and getting into fights with a variety of lackeys. Basically all of the ingredients for a lean little action flick, except there’s one problem – the ingredients for this recipe have been bought from a dollar store reject shop. Jade is unfortunately a lacklustre affair and frequently feels a lot longer than its punchy 88-minute runtime would suggest, with a narrative thrust that loses steam within the first 15 minutes.

While watching West run away from poorly rendered muzzle flashes (courtesy of lackeys that seem incapable of shooting someone that’s right in front of them) in one of the first scenes can be forgiven, once the realisation sets in that things aren’t going to get any better, the ride starts to become a rough one. One of the biggest issues is that the setting that Jade takes place in feels strangely desolate. The street shoots were obviously done at night when nobody is around, and the many indoor scene unfold in empty warehouses or barren office space. The generic soundtrack does its best to inject some energy into the emptiness, but it’s fighting a losing battle.

What’s worse are the sets. “Wait a minute, this production could afford to build sets!?” you say. Well, bear in mind these sets are so shoddily constructed that they have about a foot high gap in the bottom of them where the wall is supposed to meet the floor, almost as if they realised the plywood was cut too short, then decided to just go with it anyway. This is most glaring during the finale, when West goes on a hacking and shooting rampage, but it becomes almost impossible to look away from the fact that the walls don’t reach the ground, exposing the wooden beams that they’ve been attached too behind. Another unfortunate shot is framed looking at West from below while she drops 2 spent clips from the pistols she’s wielding in each hand, which should look cool, but only serves to highlight that they didn’t think a ceiling was needed.

It’s never exactly clear what tone Bamford is going for with Jade, with the whole thing feeling like it was haphazardly put together. It initially seems to be going for a straight laced Tarantino-lite actioner, before increasingly attempting a comedy vibe that doesn’t quite work (at one point West is referred to as “Bruce Leroy”), while occasionally detouring into out of place quirkiness (in another scene West slits a characters throat, the blood splatter on the wall spelling out ‘FATALITY’, along with a booming voice announcing the same). None of it feels consistent, and to exasperate things, do we really still need characters who unironically hold their gun sideways in 2025!?

Of course, more than anything the production is intended as an action showcase for West, and to that end the fights are delivered courtesy of fight coordinator Daniel Rizzuto (The Mother, Boss Level) with assistance from Tony Vittorioso, as well as West and Bamford also contributing. While West undeniably has the moves, the biggest issue with the action is that it lacks any real wow moments (unless you count killing someone with a projectile afro comb), with her physicality feeling like it’s been dialled back. Any director who’s seen her two-footed front flying kick in her showreel and decides to not include it as part of the choreography mustn’t have their head screwed on, and James Bamford is that director. So yes, she hacks and slashes effectively, but there’s nothing here that feels like it’s something we haven’t seen plenty of times before.

If Jade’s intention was to act as a calling card for West’s talents then it fails miserably. A poorly executed mess that has far too many inadequacies to ignore, while she may have a future in the world of DTV action, here’s hoping the next time we see her its alongside a co-star like Scott Adkins or Michael Jai White (how about a Jade and Bone team-up?). As it stands there’s little to recommend in Jade, unless you’ve been contemplating what Mickey Rourke would look like in a lacey red mesh shirt, in which case you’re in luck.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 3/10