Ninja Assassin

Ninja Assassin (2009)

28% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 78 reviews)

Runtime: 99 minutes

Directed by: James McTiegue

Starring: Rain, Naomie Harris, Ben Miles, Rick Yune, Sho Kosugi

From: Warner Brothers/Legendary Pictures/Dark Castle Entertainment

Here is a movie that I saw on Saturday night, due to me being bored and not having anything to do; having a theatre that’s only 3 and a half miles away from where I live is pretty convenient. It’s a flick I’ve heard about for months now but when it came near releasing time, there were mixed reviews, and I’m not talking about the critics; I’m talking about action/martial arts fans.

This is about a young ninja (Korean pop star Rain; there's a joke about him looking like he was in a boy band; he WAS in a boy band way back when. Some people laughed in the theatre in a way that suggested they were "smart" and knew that bit of trivia too) and it shows his current life and how he grew up to be a ninja; that process was arduous and very difficult, to say the least, especially if it’s run by a legendary martial arts actor like Sho Kosugi. Mixed in with that is an investigation by EUROPOL in Berlin (where much of the current-day scenes are set in) into the role that ninjas have had in history in assassinating people, thus explaining the title. Without giving too much away, Rain’s character ends up being a protagonist that you root for.

The action and blood… you’ll get to see in the opening scene that it’s *very* bloody and violent; a ninja lays waste to some ruffians at their hideout and it’s glorious stuff seeing them get torn to shreds (literally) and all the blood flying about, even if it’s CGI and it’s not that realistic. The rest of the movie doesn’t match the opening in terms of intensity, but there’s a good amount of wild action that you get to see. Sure, it’s filmed in a way that isn’t what I’d call “shaky cam” but it’s very quick editing and the camera doesn’t stay in place and moves around a lot. It’s an unfortunate trend of action moves in recent years but given the gimmick of ninjas being so stealthy, I can excuse it somewhat, and it didn’t bother me too much in this movie as much as it did some others. The action was entertaining and there was bloody carnage.

As for the story.. it’s for the birds. Then again, even in those “chop-socky” movies that I rate highly (such as some of Jackie Chan’s American flicks or the great duo of Tony Jaa’s Ong-Bak and The Protector) have stories that aren’t worth talking about but the action stuff is so grand you don’t care that much about the stories. If the story would’ve been better and the action filmed more satisfactory to my tastes, this would’ve been pretty awesome; as is, though, I had a good time with it and if you like this sort of flick, you may want to go see it on the big screen… at least in a dollar theatre in like 2 months or so if you must.