After suffering a surprise attack from a group of flying ninja that devastates the village, the Hidden Leaf sends a small force for to retaliate. Meanwhile Naruto, Sakura and Hinata are sent to investigate an attack against an isolated village along with a wondering doctor and his young apprentice but the doctor is also the target of Sasuke who is on an errand for Orochimaru.
`Bonds' is an entertaining but basic film. On the plus side the animation is generally good and there are some very nicely done scenes here and there, the Pearl Harbour homage attack on the Leaf at the beginning of the film is particularly good, as is the Leafs' retaliation. It is also always nice to see Naruto and Sasuke fighting together again, even if it felt somewhat forced, and Sasuke himself is generally nicely handled.
The film does have some large flaws unfortunately. The main problem is that with the film only lasting around ninety minutes, there isn't really enough time to develop the new characters introduced for the film. I cannot help but think that if they had had time to develop these characters a bit more, then some of the events of the movie would have had a bit more of an impact. Another problem is that Hinata, Sakura and a number of other characters are dreadfully underused, Hinata in particular seems to only be included make up the numbers.
Overall this was a reasonable movie that was better than the previous `Naruto Shippuden' movie but not by much and deserves a low four stars.