Ninja Assassin (Movie Review)

Maet

The Altoid Duke
Jul 31, 2008
1,247
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[HEADING=2]Ninja Assassin[/HEADING]​

Every now and then, action movies like Crank and Shoot ?Em Up come along with the audacity to ignore all established genre conventions and attempt to blaze their own trail in the mainstream. Such movies seek to reinvent the genre, or at the very least leave a mark on its hallowed pantheon. Ninja Assassin, with its frenetic action and over-the-top violence and gore, may on the surface appear to be another such film, yet its lack of charm causes it to be immediately forgettable, while the absence of any filmmaking ability makes it nearly incomprehensible.

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The plot of Ninja Assassin is your standard betrayal and revenge affair, the only unique aspect of which is that it?s our hero, Raizo (Korean Pop-star ?Rain?), who does the betraying while his former allies are the ones on revenge. A thousand year old clan responsible for the training of ninjas hits a bit of a rough patch when they decide to go co-ed and admit orphaned girls into the program, and romance flourishes between Raizo and a female character so clichéd and generic that I couldn?t be bothered to remember her name. The father of the clan is a man who?s as sagely and revered as he is aggressive and extreme, and his policy of ritually murdering those who try and escape the way of the ninja doesn?t sit all too well with Raizo. After being forced to wield the ceremonial sword against one of his fleeing brethren, Raizo himself defects from the clan, and goes into hiding from his former allies, as well as international police agencies clamouring to eliminate the threat of the ninja from the world entirely.

Revenge plots aren?t the most sophisticated fables in the world, and Ninja Assassin?s hyperbolic tale of vengeance is no more complicated than that of any other film. Yet Ninja Assassin, for whatever reason, seems to feel ashamed of its own simplicity. There?s a remarkable amount of needless exposition that causes the film to become irrevocably tedious, and it bludgeons the mind so much that the audience can no longer be receptive to even the most visually interesting bits, unintelligibility notwithstanding. There?s no rhythm to the sequences, be them action of expository, and Ninja Assassin takes so long to check off the routine plot points that boredom or frustration (or both) becomes inevitable.

I suppose that the chief reason for the arduous pacing is that Ninja Assassin aspires to tell two different stories and have them intersect along the way. Raizo?s mission is only one half of the overarching story and, being the most violent and climactic, is largely resigned to the second half of the film. Until then, we?re forced to tag along with Mika and Ryan (Naomie Harris and Ben Miles), two Europol agents who are investigating high profile assassinations believed to be executed by ninjas. If I were naïve, I?d say that this half of the story exists to add additional context. But, in all seriousness, involving police agencies is probably the only way they could reasonably add guns, explosions, and car chases, and still maintain the façade of a sober film.

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In building up to that, Ninja Assassin decides to break flow further by liberally using flashbacks to demonstrate how ninjas are trained to become that peculiar paradox of a merciless and honourable killing machine from a very young age. These are the points at which I often had to remove my glasses and massage the inside corners of my eyes. I can tolerate bad acting and bad dialogue up to a certain point, but these occasions are so extensive and pervasive that my patience snaps and I seriously contemplate walking out of the theatre. These moments aren?t deliberately awful lampoons, nor are they overly necessary for the proceedings. These are examples of helplessly inept filmmaking that takes the good elements of other films of the genre and, largely through botched interpretation, misuses them entirely. It?s as if the filmmakers understood the value of such sequences in other films, and dutifully shoehorned them in despite the fact it contributes absolutely nothing to theirs.

I?m not above a good and irreverent action film, and I don?t need excessive wit, confidence, and panache, to have a decent experience with something as rudimentary and base as Ninja Assassin. What I do need is competence, and preferably colours other than black punctuated with some sort of gelatinous neon red. There are noble ideas in here, and a more competent filmmaking team probably would?ve been able to pull off a perfectly serviceable, if a bit bland, eastern action flick adjusted for western attitudes. But everything it attempts to do is immediately undercut either by filmmaking ineptitude or by a complete misunderstanding of what makes these sorts of films appealing. Sadly, Ninja Assassin is resigned to rest in that deep nadir between hyperbole and camp.

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Note: If you think that this is one of my poorer reviews, I can?t say that I don?t agree with you. Ninja Assassin is so bad that I wouldn?t have even reviewed it if I weren?t immensely bored. Truth be told, I?m surprised that I wrote this review at all.
 

Pimppeter2

New member
Dec 31, 2008
16,479
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Hah, Still a great review!

Anyways, I don't believe many thought that this movie would be very good in the first place
 
Apr 28, 2008
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I went to see this movie for 1 reason: To see ninjas fighting other ninjas.
They did that nicely, I was satisfied, and now I moved on.

Nice review, and it was forgettable.
 

domble

Senior Member
Sep 2, 2009
761
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I know what you mean about Crank and Shoot 'em' up, those films had a strange kind of charisma about them.
This sounds like it was trying for something like that but had a severe attack of "jesus, what the hell are we doing!?" somewhere along the line.

I loved the review, but you didn't go into the pressing issue of Pirates vs ninjas. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to consider the constant battle between two groups of people that in no way intersected at any point in history. Fact.
 

Azmael Silverlance

Pirate Warlord!
Oct 20, 2009
756
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I was having rly high expectations for this movie. I actually was planning on going to cinema or waiting for the DVD release. Now i think ill use the backdoor n see if its worth it. I bet good money that this movie will be hit in Asian tho. After all we do have Rain inside.