Film Review: In 'Ninja Assassin,' blood flows like gravy, and we love it
Three stars for the ultra-bloody “Ninja Assassin”? That’s nothing compared to the number of stars in the film itself — lethal shuriken stars, those pointy weapons that the martial artists in this movie hurl as blithely as guests tossing rice at a wedding. One of their targets is a “forensic researcher” (Naomie Harris) whose car is hit by so many stars it looks like a map of the Milky Way; of course, none of the weapons thrown by these allegedly expert marksmen actually punctures the car’s tires.
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Forget about romance, "Ninja Assassin," starring South Korean pop star Rain (above) as Raizo the assassin, is all about nonstop mayhem.
Rated R for strong bloody stylized violence throughout, and language
Length: 99 minutes
Released: November 25, 2009 NationwideScore: 0.5
Cast: Rain, Naomie Harris, Ben Miles, Rick Yune, Sho Kosugi
Director: James McTeigueProducer: Grant Hill, Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski
Writer: Matthew Sand, J. Michael Straczynski
Genre: Action/Adventure
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures/Dark Castle Ent.
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That’s OK, because logic has no more place in “Ninja Assassin” than does Santa Claus. Action fans won’t mind, because, yes, Virginia, there is an exuberantly absurd ‘B’ movie in theaters this holiday weekend, and it’s spurting enough blood to substitute for all the gravy that will be poured on mashed potatoes in Memphis through Christmas.
“Ninja Assassin” was directed by James McTeigue (“V for Vendetta”) and produced by some of Hollywood’s wealthiest cheesemongers, including Joel Silver (“Lethal Weapon”) and the Wachowski Brothers (“The Matrix”), but it never tries to be anything but a slick update of the cheap martial arts thrillers distributed by Cannon Films in the 1980s. “Ninjas vs. Commandos!” is just one of the colorful phrases that might have been splashed on the movie’s poster if this were the good old days of exploitation.
To its credit, “Ninja Assassin” dispenses almost entirely with romance and other story elements to focus on nonstop mayhem, too frequently staged and edited with the chaos of a Jason Bourne adventure rather than the violence-as-performance elegance of a Shaw Brothers epic. The bloodletting is relentless but mostly digitally animated and thus cartoonish, even when heads are sliced in half, torsos are bisected and men are gutted like fish. (If “Ninja Assassin” and “Saw VI,” to name two recent examples, qualify for an R rating, what is the purpose of NC-17?)
The lack of actors whom American audiences will recognize adds to the ‘B’ movie flavor. The South Korean pop singer known simply as Rain stars as Raizo, a deadly assassin who has fled his clan and the master who taught him to blend into the shadows and do handstands on beds of nails. The master is Sho Kosugi, whose ninja films of the ’80s — “Enter the Ninja,” “Revenge of the Ninja,” “Ninja III: The Domination” — provided this movie with its model. The movie is played with deadly seriousness, thank goodness, but the dialog acknowledges the silliness of “wack jobs wearing pajamas” wreaking havoc in “the modern world.” The non-ninja-relevant dialog is even funnier. When the forensic researcher, whose nosiness uncovers the ninja conspiracy, butts head with her boss, he barks: “When you want to do the insubordination tango, let’s go!”
— John Beifuss, 529-2394
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