Be forewarned if you are coming to this as a martial arts fan - Aiki is not your typical genre flick. In fact I would question whether it's a martial arts flick in any sense at all. Instead of the usual mix of mythology, hero worship, and action, Aiki deals with the physical and emotional trauma of coming to terms with disability.

What distinguishes Aiki is its gritty and unflinching focus on the redemption of its central protagonist. Opening quickly, Aiki rushes from the boxing ring to the hospital bed.

There begins the slow and agonising rehabilitation of Taichi, a boxer who has been paralysed in a car accident. In his trauma and the isolation of a shrinking world he turns away friends out of his shame at his own lack of self-sufficiency. Particularly humbling is his daily routine of dis-impacting his own rectum. And it is here that Taichi's rehabilitative struggle really begins.

No longer able to box, Taichi begins to look outward for acceptance in new areas. And as he learns to recognize and work from within his limitations, he begins to open up to new possibilities: new friends, a new girlfriend (Tomosaka Rie), escape from the doldrums of unemployment. Taichi discovers Aiki-Jujutsu. Thinking that he is learning another fighting discipline he slowly discovers that his success revolves around something else, or as another wheel chair bound compatriot poetically says, "On a slope turn only one wheel. Remember, there are no flat roads."

Taichi's martial arts training becomes the slow realization that becoming one with your opponent may also mean becoming one with your wheel chair. If he can accept that then it will no longer be his opponent.

This fine film is a refreshing antithesis to those typical and increasingly dull B-Movie martial arts action flicks typical of the repetitive Karate Kid, Steven Seagal, or Jet Li productions.