I implore anyone not to smile when purchasing a ticket to see Ninja Assassin. Just saying the words “Ninja Assassin” should spark a silly grin on your face.
I’m not going to over-simplify and proclaim that making a good ninja movie is the easiest thing in the world. But I never would have guessed that doing so is as difficult as James McTeigue’s Ninja Assassin makes it appear at times. This is a big-budget movie with a top-flight crew and a star blessed with undeniable magnetism, not to mention the R-rated freedom to provide the copious blood and gore that so many genre fans crave. Not only that, it’s got massive geek credit, thanks to a script written by J. Michael Straczynski, a lead role by K-pop singer Rain and even a place for ninja movie legend Sho Kosugi. How can you mess up something like Ninja Assassin? Other than Peanut-Butter Sandwich or Free Wi-Fi, no two words in the English language have ever been more of a perfect fit for one another. Good or bad, it’s fun to watch, at least on a primal, blood-letting level.
Unfortunately, it’s still got some issues in it that could be considered bothersome by most. Click the jump to find out more.
Ninjas are being hired by foreign and domestic governments in Berlin to kill certain targets. Europol research agent Mika picks up the money trail, thus making her a target of the ninjas-for-hire (known as the Ozunu Clan), whose very existence is one of myth and mystery. Raizo is an ex-ninja Clan member, hell-bent on killing the entire Ozunu Clan after the wrongful murder of his friend. Unfortunately for the ninjas, Raizo was the best ninja the Clan ever produced. By saving Mika from certain death, Raizo teams up with the Europol agent to destroy the Ozunu Clan forever.
And really, that’s all you need to know. Because you know what? That’s fun, just like the movie. But, there are some fairly glaring points to the movie. The blood-letting starts right in the beginning with an assassination attempt and never lets up. The overuse of CGI blood is a little much and often too comical, but the sheer brutality of each fight should make up for it. Legend has it that this shooting script is the result of J. Michael Straczynski rewriting a previous script draft in 53 hours. That feels a tad bit generous; I would have guessed the time frame is more of a lazy Saturday afternoon.
The photography is terribly dark. The reason is irrelevant; the result is that McTeigue shoots nearly every moment of combat with the participants drowning in shadow. At times, that is ideal, as when a few ninja are flitting in and out of shadow. Generally, however, it’s counter-productive. It may have eased pressure on the budget, but the blanket of darkness thrown over the movie makes each fight scene play like a spastic parody of martial arts. While the premise is fairly basic, it’s also a little too complicated for a film called Ninja Assassin. A lot of time is spent on the upbringing of Raizo in the ninja camp, time that easily could have been cut in half. More scenes featuring Raizo fighting and assassinating ninjas were needed to warrant the title of Ninja Assassin; instead, we’re stuck in the past watching him train, creating longer and longer down time between action sequences, thus relying on characters, dialogue, and story to move the film along. For something like Ninja Assassin, that’s not a good thing.
But you know what? Ultimately, it could be a lot worse. Rain, who plays Raizo, is a South Korean actor and dancer
who, like Jason Scott Lee in the Bruce Lee bio-pic, Dragon, is not a martial artist by trade. That means there’s a little bit of clever hiding to be done by McTeigue to avoid any possible lapses in the hand-to-hand combat. But Rain is believably stoic, an expressionless coldness beaten into Raizo from a young age. Some of those scenes, with a child caned by his sensei, are more difficult to watch than heads being cut in half. It’s this type of emotion that, while not top-notch acting, works well enough for this movie.
Ninja Assassin may be the definition of “entertaining trash.” It’s a mindlessly entertaining movie filled with gory, bloody violence that would make most horror fans cringe, featuring ninjas doing ninja things, from vanishing into thin air, hiding in shadows, and climbing up walls Spider-Man style, to kicking, punching, slicing, dicing, and throwing ninja stars with the speed and accuracy of a machine gun. As strange as it sounds, however, there simply isn’t enough ninja action to hold the film together. The mediocre storyline, excessive flashback sequences, and boring characters aren’t enough to fill the void in between the ninja killing. Ninja Assassin holds its own against other ninja films, but it isn’t the defining piece of ninja cinema that you may have hoped for.